Apple solves the magnetic MacBook lid problem

One simply has to love some features of the aluminum unibody MacBooks. Like the magnetic lid "lock". Not only it keeps the lid closed, the magnet has no moving parts, so there is nothing that could break. The design is clean. The magnet is also radiating magnetic energy, bending properly the cosmic waves and preventing the carpal tunnel syndrome. And if you keep the MacBook on your lap, as a laptop, the magnet is well positioned to heel your body.

But many users are reporting problems with the magnetic lid lock. Mac simply would not stay shut. If I put it vertically in my trusty Tumi bag, for example, it springs opens for about 5 millimeters. Like on the picture below:



This is quite annoying, because you don't know what will happen in the bag. If it opens some more it would wake Mac up from sleep mode. It happened to me a few times, even if it was bumped closed again it stayed on, drained the battery, got hot, very hot ... Not very pleasant at all, because in the bag the cooling is a problem.

I asked some Apple using friends for advice. The answers were something like:
  • "mine shuts just fine",
  • "why would you want to carry it in a bag; people would not know you have a Mac then",
  • "why would you want to have its lid closed? If MacBook opens itself, it has a reason to do so. Why do you always want to be smarter that Apple?",
  • "it is because you are running Windows 7 on your Macbook",
  • "You radiate negative energy towards the Mac",
  • ...
I was contemplating many solutions, such as a big elastic band, a suitcase locker band, duct tape, Velcro, neoprene sleeve, elastic bandage ... Duct tape is perhaps the best, however, even with a silver one I don't think it would be aesthetically a match for the design of a Mac. I could take it to a service, but then I would have to work on my 230€ Lenovo Ideapad Netbook (that does keep the lid close, without a magnet and without a latch). For who knows for how long!

Apple proved, however, that it is superior to all competitors, and fixed the problem! The lid stays closed! I can take my MacBook places again!

Popular posts from this blog

Updated! Synchronizing Moon+ Books on Android

Image
I do a lot of reading on my Android devices, phones and tablets. After a long search I selected  Moon+ Reader , the  Pro  version. The killer feature was the way bookmarks and underlining is handled. I mostly read non-fiction and like to mark important passages. And I want to be sure my marks are available forever. After I am done with a book, I create an Evernote clip from my marks and comments. With Moon+ this is done with a single click. I did most of my reading on my Nexus 7 tablet, but when my phone was getting bigger I realized it would be nice to do some reading there as well. And it would be even nicer if I could synchronize the books, notes etc. Synchronizing book files Moon+ provides functionality to sync books (.epub, .pdf ...) to cloud, but they are just pushed to cloud and this is the end of the story. They will not end up on your other device. So you need to do it like this:  Create a backup of the Moon+ main folder. Just in case. Many android f...
Read more

Rescue Operation

Image
I noticed two outlets I was publishing at, the Blogactiv and the DigitalPost went 404 . Thanks to the Internet Wayback Machine and my email archive I was able to save the content and move it here - with original dates. Blogactiv (2007-2020) DigitalPost (2015-2017).
Read more

Council on Scientific Information in the Digital Age: Too Little Too Late

I have been involved in publishing on the World-Wide-Web since 1992 and with scholarly publishing since 1995, also as a co-editor of a peer-reviewed journal ITcon and a coordinator of a framework program SciX, that was studying the topic in depth. The bottom line is that in the scientific publishing process there is a decreasing value added by the publishers. The research is funded by the governments or the industry, performed by the researchers, papers are written and reviewed by them for free, only at the very end a publisher comes along that takes over the copyright, publishes the work and sells the journal at great expense to the community that created and edited the content for free. At the Competitiveness (Internal market, Industry and Research) Council meeting in Brussels, on 22 and 23 November 2007 a conclusion has been reached on scientific information in the digital age: access, dissemination and preservation . It recognizes: the major contribution of universities, internati...
Read more