http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/101/the-futures-not-so-bright Mac & Technology Writings by Daniel Jalkut Wed, 17 Mar 2010 22:33:24 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9 hourly 1 http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/101/the-futures-not-so-bright/comment-page-1#comment-1184 Perry Clarke Sun, 12 Mar 2006 20:24:41 +0000 http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/101/the-futures-not-so-bright#comment-1184 I think one aspect of the revised lighting strategy on the new laptops that is confusing people is what happens when it is neither light nor dark (twilight). The older machines (I had a 17" G4 1GHz) would ramp up the intensity of the keyboard backlight inversely to the ambient light in the room in a purely linear manner. One can see how this would seem to be a good idea, the darker it gets, the brighter the backlight gets. Unfortunately due to the color of the backlight (white) and the color of the keys (silver) there was a period when the backlighting of the keys would make the letters on the keycaps seem to disappear altogether and one was actually better off switching the backlighting off. They appear to have "fixed" this by (to my eye) adjusting the brightness of the backlight on some kind of curve that makes it extra bright at the problematic ambient light level thus solving the problem of the disappearing keycaps. Personally, I feel the keyboard backlighting comes on too soon and could be left off way past this point which would also solve the problem. All in all, I find the new backlighting to be merely different than the old, I spend just as much time manually adjusting it as I did before, just at different times. However, a backlit keyboard is so useful that I'm more than willing to put up with a little hassle to use it. I think one aspect of the revised lighting strategy on the new laptops that is confusing people is what happens when it is neither light nor dark (twilight). The older machines (I had a 17″ G4 1GHz) would ramp up the intensity of the keyboard backlight inversely to the ambient light in the room in a purely linear manner. One can see how this would seem to be a good idea, the darker it gets, the brighter the backlight gets. Unfortunately due to the color of the backlight (white) and the color of the keys (silver) there was a period when the backlighting of the keys would make the letters on the keycaps seem to disappear altogether and one was actually better off switching the backlighting off. They appear to have “fixed” this by (to my eye) adjusting the brightness of the backlight on some kind of curve that makes it extra bright at the problematic ambient light level thus solving the problem of the disappearing keycaps. Personally, I feel the keyboard backlighting comes on too soon and could be left off way past this point which would also solve the problem. All in all, I find the new backlighting to be merely different than the old, I spend just as much time manually adjusting it as I did before, just at different times. However, a backlit keyboard is so useful that I’m more than willing to put up with a little hassle to use it.

]]> http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/101/the-futures-not-so-bright/comment-page-1#comment-1020 Joshua Bryant Thu, 02 Mar 2006 19:07:38 +0000 http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/101/the-futures-not-so-bright#comment-1020 As I mentioned in my comments on the znet site, he was comparing the keyboard against a PowerBook G4 1.5Ghz. If he would have done some research, he would have known that they did in fact increase the brightness of the keyboard backlight between the 1.5 and 1.67 revisions. It's noted in the documentation and was marketed as one of the selling features of the last revision. So, it has nothing to do with the MacBook Pro, it's simply that the MBP got the same keyboard as the last model PBG4 which is brighter than the older PowerBook's. As I mentioned in my comments on the znet site, he was comparing the keyboard against a PowerBook G4 1.5Ghz. If he would have done some research, he would have known that they did in fact increase the brightness of the keyboard backlight between the 1.5 and 1.67 revisions. It’s noted in the documentation and was marketed as one of the selling features of the last revision. So, it has nothing to do with the MacBook Pro, it’s simply that the MBP got the same keyboard as the last model PBG4 which is brighter than the older PowerBook’s.

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