You can see them with the naked eye, if you look from about 5-10cm away. (and, presumably, if you have excellent vision or are near-sighted)
Re:Apple's Supply Chain Secret
by pooriaazimi on Friday November 04, 2011 @03:31PM
(#3197405)
they're talking about the GREEN indicator, on top of the screen (which shows the iSight camera's status), not about sleep indicator (the WHITE, rectangular thing, beside the IR receiver).
http://venturebeat.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/macbook-air-w...
The ones on my wireless keyboard are easily visible as individual holes when the light is on from 2 feet away. I don't know if the iSight is different (not having a metal macbook), but they are probably very close to the same.
That is indeed the one I'm talking about. Yes, you can see it with the naked eye if you're close enough.
I din't pull out a microscope, but I did wonder why they didn't implement this for all the lights (battery-level indicators on the side, charging indicators on the power supply connector).
The battery lights display useful information by being visibly off. When you see 7 dots light up, you need to be able to see the 8th dark hole to know it's at 7/8 charge and not 7/7 or 7/10. Similarly for the charging indicator: when it's not charging, you want that to be obvious.
Arguably, knowing that the laptop camera (or the wireless keyboard bluetooth pairing) is not active is not as useful information.
I did. I used microscopic lens to see how they are made, you will see concentric holes that are microns wide.
I was amazed too, I knew it only could be made by lasers but I was delighted how someone could have that original idea. It is brilliant, and so elegant.