That cute sleep mode indicator...

[apostolosdt]

When Silicon M1 came to exist in our Macs, it brought along some non-prime changes, too. I adapted myself rather quickly---except for one "tiny" change the purpose of which I never understood. I'm talking about that little light on the front (except with the MP 6,1) that pulsated when the Mac was in sleep mode.

Not only was it practical, it was also a great sign of Apple's superior focus on the details. People seen it for the first time reacted rather amazed: "It's like breathing!"; "It's so soothing to stare at it!"; "Very clever detail!". And I guess it cost nothing.

Why Apple decided to kill it is a mystery to me. What about you?

 

[cateye]

Hot Take, with no offense intended:

The pulsing sleep indicator, like the light-up Apple logo, like the stickers, were twee, silly vestiges of a different Apple, a different marketing aesthetic, and a different set of design priorities. They could only be charming at discovery ("look, it pulses! eeeeee"), then instantly became unnecessary and forgotten.

Apple is now all about performance and the pace-setting quality of the products it creates. The need for little parlor tricks to create viral marketing through anthropomorphisms is long gone. We've all grown up in our relationship to technology, and thankfully so has Apple.

And I guess it cost nothing

In manufacturing, at Apple's level of enforced perfection and efficiency, everything always costs something.

 

[kitKAC]

Didn't the sleep light go when MacBooks stopped using spinning disks? No need to know when your machine is fully asleep before moving it when it doesn't have any moving parts anymore.

 

[EugW]

I really miss it too. I believe the last Mac mini model that had it was the 2014, which I owned up until 2022. I lost that feature with the M1 I bought then, but the M1 was too wide for my space under the monitor and thus I had placed it off in the corner partially hidden away, so I would not usually see that indicator light. Now that I have the M4 Mac mini right in plain view under the monitor, the lack of that pulsing sleep mode indicator is really jarring.

 

[Pakaku]

I also miss having those battery LEDs on the side, and just pressing that button to see how much charge it has without having to actually open the laptop.

 

[Basic75]

Why Apple decided to kill it is a mystery to me. What about you?

I think it's for cost cutting and also because newer Macs wake up all the time to do stuff and this is one of the places where Apple treats its customers like idiots and wants to hide details. My USB mouse lights up when the Mac wakes up making for a good replacement indicator.

 

[Mike Richardson]

The pulsing sleep indicator, like the light-up Apple logo, like the stickers, were twee, silly vestiges of a different Apple, a different marketing aesthetic, and a different set of design priorities. They could only be charming at discovery ("look, it pulses! eeeeee"), then instantly became unnecessary and forgotten.

Apple is now all about performance and the pace-setting quality of the products it creates. The need for little parlor tricks to create viral marketing through anthropomorphisms is long gone. We've all grown up in our relationship to technology, and thankfully so has Apple.

I remember the light on my 2002 iMac, and even my G5. It was helpful to differentiate between the screen just being off, and the computer being asleep. (Instead of a screen saver, I've always just set the display to go off after X minutes)

It's the loss of these sorts of tiny details that is worrisome. The software (macOS) is a slowly building dumpster fire, and the hardware has lost most of these small details, and has increasingly screwed up major details (the ****** thin keyboard fiasco, etc.)

Related article: https://grafik.agency/insight/apple-sleep-function/

 

[apostolosdt]

I remember the light on my 2002 iMac, and even my G5. It was helpful to differentiate between the screen just being off, and the computer being asleep. (Instead of a screen saver, I've always just set the display to go off after X minutes)

It's the loss of these sorts of tiny details that is worrisome. The software (macOS) is a slowly building dumpster fire, and the hardware has lost most of these small details, and has increasingly screwed up major details (the ****** thin keyboard fiasco, etc.)

Related article: https://grafik.agency/insight/apple-sleep-function/

Thanks a lot for that informative and well written article you’ve mentioned in your post. Alas, Apple is not the only high-profile company that has long been seeing its products as mere commodities—Hewlett-Packard and Leica come to mind.

I guess even more discouraging is that there are now “theorists” supporting those new trends. Well, life and all that.

 

[cateye]

Alas, Apple is not the only high-profile company that has long been seeing its products as mere commodities—Hewlett-Packard and Leica come to mind.

I guess even more discouraging is that there are now “theorists” supporting those new trends. Well, life and all that.

Spare me. They are commodities. People have far too much emotion invested in Apple and its products and assign to them value and status they don't deserve relative to competing products. That's what gets us to the point where people craft homilies to unnecessary "features," like that maudlin, misguided article.

I remember the light on my 2002 iMac, and even my G5. It was helpful to differentiate between the screen just being off, and the computer being asleep. (Instead of a screen saver, I've always just set the display to go off after X minutes)

And Apple removed that feature because it was no longer necessary. There isn't a meaningful difference between sleep and wake on a modern Mac. Moving between the states is near instantaneous and there is little benefit toward signaling state to the user since power consumption and heat are no longer pressing factors.

Apple removed the sleep light exactly because it manages details so well. Managing details means getting rid of superfluous functions and adornments with the same efficiency and purpose that they were added in the first place. The light's purpose was engineered away and it became an unnecessary affordance to how computers used to work and concerns we used to have. Pining for its return is assigning emotional value to something that doesn't deserve it.

 

[apostolosdt]

Spare me. They are commodities. People [...] assign to them value and status they don't deserve relative to competing products. [...] There isn't a meaningful difference between sleep and wake on a modern Mac. Moving between the states is near instantaneous and there is little benefit toward signaling state [...].

Apple removed the sleep light exactly because it manages details so well. Managing details means getting rid of superfluous functions and adornments with the same efficiency and purpose that they were added in the first place. [...]

Your (respected and well-written) opinion---and mine. And I'm not convinced my Mac Pro 5,1 (and my HP-67 and my Leica MP, for that matter) are commodities.

 

[cateye]

Your (respected and well-written) opinion---and mine. And I'm not convinced my Mac Pro 5,1 (and my HP-67 and my Leica MP, for that matter) are commodities.

Also with full respect to you and your position (and in appreciation of your measured reply! I intended no ill-will in mine), I would maintain they are still just commodities: A calculator and a camera. Their base functions are replaceable with any one of countless alternatives, and those capabilities will change and evolve through time independent of our relationships. For their time, both were notable in function and design, and there is nostalgia for that—their use is woven into the fabric of your history, I imagine. I cut my photography chops on a Canon FTb, a film SLR from the early 1970s that was wonderful for its accessibility, yet still requiring careful thought to use. Elements of the Canon UX present on that FTb persist straight through to the Canon R6 I shoot with now, an impossibly different camera in every respect, yet somehow still familiar. I owe my relationship to photography to that FTb, yet I would never want to use it again. I am nostalgic for what it taught me, and what I created using it, but not for the object. It represented a point in time that I've grown past.

I suppose my broader point is I find it strange how much people romanticize the objects themselves or features of those objects when it comes to Macs or iPhones or whatever Apple makes. It find it mawkish and creepy, to be honest. Through this lens, change becomes not an opportunity to do more, or to do it better, but an emotional crisis. And I don't get this. The Mac is still a Mac, and still unique in all the ways a Mac will always be—design is continuum, not a single destination. And what will always matter most is not which Mac we used, or that we used a Mac at all, but what it enabled us to do.

 

[Andy_2341]

Also with full respect to you and your position (and in appreciation of your measured reply! I intended no ill-will in mine), I would maintain they are still just commodities: A calculator and a camera. Their base functions are replaceable with any one of countless alternatives, and those capabilities will change and evolve through time independent of our relationships. For their time, both were notable in function and design, and there is nostalgia for that—their use is woven into the fabric of your history, I imagine. I cut my photography chops on a Canon FTb, a film SLR from the early 1970s that was wonderful for its accessibility, yet still requiring careful thought to use. Elements of the Canon UX present on that FTb persist straight through to the Canon R6 I shoot with now, an impossibly different camera in every respect, yet somehow still familiar. I owe my relationship to photography to that FTb, yet I would never want to use it again. I am nostalgic for what it taught me, and what I created using it, but not for the object. It represented a point in time that I've grown past.

I suppose my broader point is I find it strange how much people romanticize the objects themselves or features of those objects when it comes to Macs or iPhones or whatever Apple makes. It find it mawkish and creepy, to be honest. Through this lens, change becomes not an opportunity to do more, or to do it better, but an emotional crisis. And I don't get this. The Mac is still a Mac, and still unique in all the ways a Mac will always be—design is continuum, not a single destination. And what will always matter most is not which Mac we used, or that we used a Mac at all, but what it enabled us to do.

Those last 4 sentences are beautiful. Definitely a new view for me. Thank you.

 

[Mike Richardson]

There isn't a meaningful difference between sleep and wake on a modern Mac. Moving between the states is near instantaneous and there is little benefit toward signaling state to the user since power consumption and heat are no longer pressing factors.

When the computer is asleep, processes are suspended. I will not be woken up by notification alerts from iMessage or anything else like that. Any tasks that I had going on, such as encoding a video, will be paused. I'd say that's a huge practical difference, even if behind the scenes the ARM Macs work differently from the Intel or PowerPC ones.

Sleeping the Mac is part of my end-of-day routine. It (usually) means that I've closed most of the programs, wrapped up any conversations, etc.

The pulsing light humanized the cold metal box in a delightfully subtle way, without being friggin' creepy.

 

[Mike Richardson]

And Apple removed that feature because it was no longer necessary.

Maybe we are tired of being dictated to as to the necessity of features. (quietly writes on note card)

(I guess post auto-combine is broken or something.)

So, what explains this then? Why did Clarus reappear after all these years?

 

[Basic75]

There isn't a meaningful difference between sleep and wake on a modern Mac. Moving between the states is near instantaneous and there is little benefit toward signaling state to the user since power consumption and heat are no longer pressing factors.

Until that one day that you take your laptop in the morning expecting it to still be above 90% but you discover that some application prevented it from sleeping all night and you are below 25%.

 

[Mike Richardson]

Until that one day that you take your laptop in the morning expecting it to still be above 90% but you discover that some application prevented it from sleeping all night and you are below 25%.

My 2019 MacBook Pro has been doing this too. For no discernible reason. I picked it up and it was hot - no idea what the hell it was doing. 100% battery was wasted down to 24%.