[HN Gopher] "Just a little detail that wouldn't sell anything"
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"Just a little detail that wouldn't sell anything"
Author : bobbiechen
Score : 88 points
Date : 2026-02-24 06:34 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (unsung.aresluna.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (unsung.aresluna.org)
| ViktorRay wrote:
| This is a neat article.
|
| I don't think I ever thought much about that light but now after
| reading this article...it really was a pretty cool and useful
| detail.
|
| The info about how the light's rhythm was meant to be similar to
| human breathing is cool too.
| bmacho wrote:
| That last ~gif~ mov really looks like a sleeping robot from a
| Pixar movie.
|
| I think all my laptops' LEDs first blink wildly when I close
| them, then change to a slower rhythm, that's not an Apple
| feature.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| The sleeping light - because what all hardware requires is
| blindingly bright LEDs that are always on. Even when that
| hardware is asleep
| bayindirh wrote:
| As the post states, it was almost always accompanied by a light
| sensor. It _always_ got dimmer either by that sensor or
| internal clock.
|
| My desk was at the end of my bed. The MacBook with sleep light
| was always on that. It was _never_ bright at night. Dimming
| half a second after I turn the light off. Even if the lid was
| closed.
|
| Oh, also, you can swap batteries of Macs during sleep if it has
| a removable battery, without losing state.
|
| This is why Apple is Apple.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| *Was
|
| That era is long dead and gone, regardless of the current
| state of such a light.
| elektronika wrote:
| Sadly, or not, they still sell the best laptops.
| kristianp wrote:
| The dot in the "i" in "Thinkpad" on my laptop's lid does this,
| copying the mac, I expect. It's red, mimicking the trackpoint.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Trackpoint's red color is also a story worth reading.
|
| No, I won't spoil it here. :)
| agent86 wrote:
| I couldn't find something to read about it, but I did find
| this to watch and learn about it.
|
| I won't spoil it here either :-)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwV1lEDJH9Y
| tim-tday wrote:
| I think the sleep light on the white plastic iBook was the first
| product feature I truly loved. My greatest hope is that I should
| be so lucky as to invent a single thing as great over the course
| of my lifetime.
| bitwize wrote:
| In the Choose Your Own Adventure novel _Supercomputer_ , you
| receive as the grand prize in a contest an AGI-capable computer
| and go on various adventures with its advanced thinking
| capabilities. One of its features is said to be a "smile light"
| which illuminates in a pleasing greenish color when the machine
| is happy. The breathing light always reminded me of Conrad's
| "smile light" and just went to show that Apple engineers were
| reading the right type of science fiction novel.
| bayindirh wrote:
| I loved that book! It also has some endings which familiarizes
| the reader with ethics.
| jonah-archive wrote:
| This someone jogged a memory of an all-time favorite line from a
| 2005 laptop review (well, more of a rant than a review):
| https://web.archive.org/web/20090709072628/https://arstechni...
|
| > [The power] light informs the user that the X41 is on--no,
| really. There should be an ontological indicator next to it to
| let the user know the computer really exists.
| alnwlsn wrote:
| That light was a big deal - I remember when I got into Arduino
| years ago this was one of the common projects people would do to
| add a breathing LED to everything, including a pumpkin:
|
| https://www.evilmadscientist.com/2010/a-pumpkin-that-sleeps-...
| MerrimanInd wrote:
| It could absolutely be false nostalgia since I was a Mac fan from
| about 2005 to 2009 with an MBP that had the breathing feature but
| this really felt like a high point for computer hardware. It felt
| slick and performant but still serviceable.
|
| Ironically, after a series of uninspiring Windows machines the
| next laptop that made me feel any level of enthusiasm like that
| Mac is my current Framework 13 running COSMIC on NixOS. Quite an
| about face!
| woadwarrior01 wrote:
| The Macbook battery indicator that's mentioned in the article,
| was so very good.
| mrexroad wrote:
| One of my early mentors worked on it. They mentioned the
| pulsation for the sleep indicator was modeled not just on the
| human respiratory rate, but specifically that of a _sleeping_
| adult. It came up when we were playing around with on /off
| dimming curves for a room based video conferencing product and
| discussing physical analogies we could model a curve on. Fun
| afternoon exploration, but in the end we just stuck with ease-
| in/out. I miss when you didn't need to overly justify taking an
| afternoon detour to explore whether something could be improved.
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(page generated 2026-02-27 23:00 UTC)