Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

MacBook Pro "hidden" key combinations

Blondie :)

Blondie :)

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
May 12, 2010
698
3
Prescott, AZ
Hello everyone,

Recently I have been learning some of apple's "hidden" key combinations for their computers.

Some of the things that I have learned so far:
Pressing Shift+control+eject = turn your keyboard and screen off immediately while keeping computer on

Presssing option+space bar while looking at a pdf in finder = view the pdf in full screen mode.

Pressing control+option+command+8 = invert screen colors in order to preserve battery life (darker pixels = longer life).

Does anyone else know of any interesting key combinations to make tasks on the mac easier?
 
Isnt the color invert hard on the eyes? what other uses is the inverted color for other than saving battery life? (if that is one in fact).
 
Jungiii said:
Isnt the color invert hard on the eyes? what other uses is the inverted color for other than saving battery life? (if that is one in fact).
Click to expand...

You are wrong, dude. The inverted color are there only to help people with certain eyes problem. It has nothing to do with saving battery energy.
 
Jungiii said:
Isnt the color invert hard on the eyes? what other uses is the inverted color for other than saving battery life? (if that is one in fact).
Click to expand...

Honestly, I don't know. Personally, inverting the colors doesn't hurt my eyes, but I definitely don't prefer it. Does anyone have any thoughts on what other benefits inverting colors would have?

Mrguidogenio said:
You are wrong, dude. The inverted color are there only to help people with certain eyes problem. It has nothing to do with saving battery energy.
Click to expand...

Inverting colors should increase battery life though, shouldn't it? More black pixels = less LCD usage = slightly greater battery life? That's what I've always been under the assumption of
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

Sorry, but inverting the colors = worse battery life on LCDs. LCDs use more power to remain black as opposed to CRTs which use more power to light up the screen. Not that the savings or drainages are going to be significant compared to actually running the LCD...
 
Menge said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

Sorry, but inverting the colors = worse battery life on LCDs. LCDs use more power to remain black as opposed to CRTs which use more power to light up the screen. Not that the savings or drainages are going to be significant compared to actually running the LCD...
Click to expand...

Well that's quite interesting. Never knew that before. Thanks :) haha
 
Mrguidogenio said:
You are wrong, dude. The inverted color are there only to help people with certain eyes problem. It has nothing to do with saving battery energy.
Click to expand...

Maybe it wasn't invented to preserve battery life but if definitely does save battery life. The color white being displayed on a screen takes up the most energy and resources because it needs to be made using almost a full color spectrum whereas darker black or brownish colors require much less energy and color. And we all know how much google and apple love their white backgrounds in stuff

See blackle.com
 
Blondie :) said:
Honestly, I don't know. Personally, inverting the colors doesn't hurt my eyes, but I definitely don't prefer it. Does anyone have any thoughts on what other benefits inverting colors would have?
Click to expand...

I can field this one -- as a member of the dodgy eyes clan, I find it much easier to read block text when using the white-on-black setting. I find it's particularly useful on the iPhone.
 
The inverted display is for accessibility, it is intended to be used by those who have very poor eyesight. IIRC there is an option for it in the Universal Access settings.
 
ThirtyThr33 said:
Maybe it wasn't invented to preserve battery life but if definitely does save battery life. The color white being displayed on a screen takes up the most energy and resources because it needs to be made using almost a full color spectrum whereas darker black or brownish colors require much less energy and color. And we all know how much google and apple love their white backgrounds in stuff

See blackle.com
Click to expand...

Sorry, no. Already been disproven above. In order for a LCD display to turn a pixel black, it must rotate the crystal (all three actually) in order to fully block the light, where for white it simply doesn't run a current at all, which allows all the light to pass through. A little more knowledge of display technology would help here.

jW
 
Blondie :) said:
Pressing control+option+command+8 = invert screen colors in order to preserve battery life (darker pixels = longer life).
Click to expand...

Longer battery life? No. Not true at all, it takes the same amount of power. Your backlight is what is drawing most of the juice in the display, not the LCD panel itself.

Edit:Guess I was beat to it.
 
Mal said:
Sorry, no. Already been disproven above. In order for a LCD display to turn a pixel black, it must rotate the crystal (all three actually) in order to fully block the light, where for white it simply doesn't run a current at all, which allows all the light to pass through. A little more knowledge of display technology would help here.

jW
Click to expand...

I'm really confused then...why does blackle.com say that it has conserved so many kilowatt hours if every LCD display that views the site consumes more power?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back