Make MBP sleep light work like in PowerBooks

[Dr_Maybe]

I liked the sleep light on my previous Apple laptops. I could look at the light, and if it was on, the laptop was asleep. Neat.

But on my MBP, when I close the lid, the light always turns on. So the light is pretty useless. I know that it lights in a pulse when asleep, but it is hard to tell the difference from the other kind of lighting. I don't have the patience to look at the light for a longer period of time to be sure that it is actually pulsating.

Once, I put the MBP in my bag while it was on, because I thought it was asleep. But apparently it wasn't! Not good.

I don't need a light to tell me that the screen is turned off. Is it possible to disable that feature, so it works like on G4 PowerBooks and iBooks?

 

[andrewmulligan]

I'm not sure there is a way to do what you'd like, but here is what I think the MacBook Pro does.

I think that the MacBook Pro's light works with the same as the MacBook's does, though I'm not completely sure. When you close the lid on MacBook the white light pulses. Obviously, it does that whenever it's sleeping. When the MacBook is sitting and the display turns off becuase you have it set to after x amount of minutes in SysPrefs, the light stays white. This tells you that it's not sleeping but that the display is off.

 

[Diatribe]

The problem with this is that it takes some time for the MBP to sleep so the light turns on, idicatating that the screen is off, but it is damn hard to tell right away whether it is pulsating(sleeping) yet or not. I don't like this change at all, I think they changed it for the worse.

 

[Dr_Maybe]

The problem with this is that it takes some time for the MBP to sleep so the light turns on, idicatating that the screen is off, but it is damn hard to tell right away whether it is pulsating(sleeping) yet or not. I don't like this change at all, I think they changed it for the worse.

Exactly, I agree.

Instant sleep when closing the lid, doesn't always happen instantly or at all.

 

[Diatribe]

Exactly, I agree.

Instant sleep when closing the lid, doesn't always happen instantly or at all.

Well I for one am hoping for the Santa Rosa platform and the flash memory making the secure sleep times faster and almost instantaneous. Before that I think we're out of luck.

 

[andrewmulligan]

Exactly, I agree.

Instant sleep when closing the lid, doesn't always happen instantly or at all.

Well I for one am hoping for the Santa Rosa platform and the flash memory making the secure sleep times faster and almost instantaneous. Before that I think we're out of luck.

Oh, that must be a MacBook Pro thing. My MacBook's light pulses right away... sorry guys.

 

[Bill Gates]

It probably has to do with the fact that in it's default sleep mode, the MacBook Pro writes the contents of memory to the hard disk in case of a power outage. It's essentially hibernation. However, it also sleeps for instant-on. The older computers did not write the memory to the disk, and simply went to sleep. See here for further reading, and how to change the sleep mode: http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/macosxhints/2006/10/sleepmode/index.php

 

[Diatribe]

Oh, that must be a MacBook Pro thing. My MacBook's light pulses right away... sorry guys.

That also depends on how much data gets written to the disk for the secure sleep. If you have a lot of apps open/data on the RAM, etc. it takes longer.
That may be one reason too. If not, well then I only hope that this gen MBP is as fast as your MB.

But either way it will be instantaneous once Santa Rosa gets here.