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jnguyen4

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 27, 2006
317
0
the logo on the case of my macbook always lit up. i just noticed that my light does not turn on anymore. is there an option for it to be on? like a power saver? thanx a lot !!
 

Josias

macrumors 68000
Mar 10, 2006
1,908
1
jnguyen4 said:
the logo on the case of my macbook always lit up. i just noticed that my light does not turn on anymore. is there an option for it to be on? like a power saver? thanx a lot !!

What? There's no option for it to be off. It is lit through the backlight. I can't see an explanation unless your backlight is broken? Are there dark spots on your screen?:confused:
 

Chundles

macrumors G5
Jul 4, 2005
12,037
493
jnguyen4 said:
the logo on the case of my macbook always lit up. i just noticed that my light does not turn on anymore. is there an option for it to be on? like a power saver? thanx a lot !!

It doesn't have a separate light, the light you see is from the backlight of the LCD screen.

It's basically just an Apple-shaped hole in the back of the screen. If you open your MacBook with the screen brightness turned all the way down and look at the screen whilst pointing the Apple logo at a strong light source (the sun maybe) you can see the outline shining through to the screen.

It will light up so long as the screen is lit.
 

Josias

macrumors 68000
Mar 10, 2006
1,908
1
jnguyen4 said:
no there are no spots on my screen. it is working fine.

That is plain magic. My only explanation is that something is sitting between the "apple shapd hole" on the back of the screen and the backlight.:confused:
 

Chundles

macrumors G5
Jul 4, 2005
12,037
493
jnguyen4 said:
no there are no spots on my screen. it is working fine.

Well, if your screen is working fine then the Apple logo is working fine - they both light up from the same light source.
 

jnguyen4

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 27, 2006
317
0
thanx you guys.... i juss had my brightness turned down pretty low to conserve battery life. and now that i turned it up it comes back. thanx again
 

lightforge

macrumors newbie
Sep 27, 2013
2
0
thanx you guys.... i just had my brightness turned down pretty low to conserve battery life. and now that i turned it up it comes back. thanks again

i've been reading a lot of posts about this topic from various sources and i am convinced of 2 things. first people lie about experiences.
The  on the back has a second light if you don't believe me try this.
download the program shades.
set the color to black or red or whatever the hell you want.
if you pick white you're hopeless and may god have mercy on your soul.
tune the dimmer so that your screen is pitch black.
voila: liars exposed, bullS. uncovered and a path to a light mod discovered.
place your laptop near a wall in a dark room you can clearly see a WHITE glow while your screen is black!!! (or red or whatever the hell you picked. or st.peter ) DISPROVED:eek::confused:
this lends to the notion that it has a separate light ,if separate, yet synced so closely as to fool even experts. Then it must have a process linked with the dimming of the display quite possibly part of the same function.

so if i knew how i would just locate that demon and dissect it then make an app to change it for example reverse it and link it to the keyboard so that when the
light is on then the  is off and when the  is on the keyboard is off except when the screen is dimmed all the way (indicating the desire to conserve battery power at which time it would just go off
 

chown33

Moderator
Staff member
Aug 9, 2009
10,706
8,348
A sea of green
The  on the back has a second light if you don't believe me try this.
download the program shades.
set the color to black or red or whatever the hell you want.
if you pick white you're hopeless and may god have mercy on your soul.
tune the dimmer so that your screen is pitch black.
voila: liars exposed, bullS. uncovered and a path to a light mod discovered.
place your laptop near a wall in a dark room you can clearly see a WHITE glow while your screen is black!!! (or red or whatever the hell you picked. or st.peter ) DISPROVED:eek::confused:
this lends to the notion that it has a separate light ,if separate, yet synced so closely as to fool even experts. Then it must have a process linked with the dimming of the display quite possibly part of the same function.

If you mean this Shades program:
http://www.charcoaldesign.co.uk/shades

then I'm pretty sure your proof isn't proof at all.

AFAICT, the Shades program works by changing the color-balance of the LCD screen. That is, if one would normally see a white window, Shades changes the color-balance lookup-table (LUT) so only the red pixels are turned on. Color calibration software does a similar thing, just over a much smaller range. You can also manually calibrate your screen color to be reddish, bluish, yellowish, etc.
System Preferences > Displays > Color tab > Calibrate button > "Expert mode" checkbox.

The thing about color calibration is that it only affects what the LCD portion of the screen does. It has no effect at all on the LED back-light sitting behind the LCD. It's that LED back-light that drives the lit-up Apple logo on the case, and the LEDs are white AFAICT. In particular, they are plain-white, not an RGB-triplet with hue-choosing capabilities.

If you believe otherwise, then the simplest thing to do is take a screen apart and look at the actual LEDs. You could also purchase (or at least investigate) replacement parts for the back-light and/or LCD screen. You should also look at any of the tear-down articles that cover the MacBook model of interest. I predict that in all cases you'll find the LEDs are white, and only white, not hue-adjustable.
 

lightforge

macrumors newbie
Sep 27, 2013
2
0
i see now that i was wrong about at least one thing, i never thought that the back light was colored, i did however think that people were saying that it didn't exist.

also the point of all this was to find a software solution to independently control the BL. (backlight)
yes that is the shades program. i was hoping that it would show that the 2 could be separated. i thought shades constantly displayed a plain colored semi floating transparent box( always on top)
solution i'm thinking custom firmware
 
Last edited:

chown33

Moderator
Staff member
Aug 9, 2009
10,706
8,348
A sea of green
also the point of all this was to find a software solution to independently control the BL. (backlight)
yes that is the shades program. i was hoping that it would show that the 2 could be separated. i thought shades constantly displayed a plain colored semi floating transparent box( always on top)
solution i'm thinking custom firmware

A floating transparent box is another way to control the color of the windows behind it. That may well be how Shades works; I didn't look into it in great detail. I was mainly relating how the color-balance of the LCD will cause "whites" drawn on the screen to appear as different hues. Think of the LCD like a gelatin color filter in front of the white LEDs. Change the color of the filter and the emitted light changes hue. An LCD panel can change the filter color electronically, where in a color gel filter you have to exchange the physical filter.

The color-balance LUT is one way to alter the screen's hue. A floating transparent window is another. Both of those affect only the LCD pixels, not the back-light that's behind the LCD shining through. That back-light is white, and isn't separately controllable from the light that illuminates the Apple logo on the back. They are literally the same LEDs.

And I think you mean "custom software", since "custom firmware" implies firmware in a ROM somewhere, which isn't really accessible for custom programming.
 

Dark Dragoon

macrumors 6502a
Jul 28, 2006
844
3
UK
You have two parts of the display you can adjust:-
1) The backlight brightness, which affects the brightness of the display and the Apple logo on the laptops lid. (Think of it as a lightbulb)
2) The pixels that make up the display panel, which affect the amount of light and it's colour that shines through. (Think of all the pixels as little red, green and blue transparent filters that allow various amounts of light though)

This is why the battery life is not affected when running the shades program, the white backlight maintains its brightness irrespective of what shades is making the pixels on your display do. As shades does not control the backlight.

In the same way that displaying a completely black image on your display will not affect the backlight and thus the colour/brightness of the Apple logo.
 
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