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MacBook Modded With Second Monitor Inside Logo

Posted by kdawson on from the heart-on-your-sleeve dept.

An anonymous reader from the Macmod forum wrote in with this appealing hack: "This is one of the coolest mods I've seen all year. Mac Moder EdsJunk submitted this mod to our forums late Thursday night. By cracking open a MacBook he was able to put a second monitor inside of the screen. The end result is sweet. The second monitor can make the Apple logo have any kind of background, like the clown fish, or the flurry screen saver."

34 of 153 comments (clear)

  1. Sup dawg... by juanfgs · · Score: 3, Funny

    we herd you like screens so we put a screen on your screen so you can watch while you watch..

    1. Re:Sup dawg... by ShieldW0lf · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Wonder if you can you play battleship with it...

      --
      -1 Uncomfortable Truth
    2. Re:Sup dawg... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      Hello! So, this is my first post on Slashdot (I love the name! It's so clever. When I tried to tell somebody the address, h - t - t - p, colon, slash, slash, slashdot dot org they got soooo confused! I laughed at the sheer cleverness of the founders!)

      Anyway, I'm just glad to finally be posting here on ole Slashdot. It's a pretty neat website, and looks so modern and clean! I wish I knew how to design websites as well as this one, I'd be a hit at the next office party after I redesign our internal bbs. It'll be super :)

      So, how's everybody doing this morning:) I'm great! Hope to hear back from you guys soon! Until then, ~Jason.

    3. Re:Sup dawg... by Tetsujin · · Score: 3, Funny

      There should be a moderation for "+1, Use of Meme" - I think that applies much better than "Funny" in this case... Then there could also be a matching "-1, Use of Meme"...

      --
      Bow-ties are cool.
    4. Re:Sup dawg... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      Ahh... we are all good over here. It's wonderful to have a new member in the Family.

      And best of all on this, most special day, ~Freddy.

  2. Wow by Chrisq · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I wa amazed that they could get one screen into such a thin lid!

  3. argh by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Informative

    "From the MacMod forums..." ... "Sorry but the board is temporarily unavailable, please try again in a few minutes."

    Seems like a relatively trivial hack, if you can get the video-out from the DisplayPort connector to work inside the machine somehow. Since the panel backlight is already exposed at the rear to light the Apple logo, the hardest part ought to be getting the backlight off of the LCD you want to cram in there.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    1. Re:argh by mstromb · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Relatively trivial?

      If this is something you consider commonplace or ordinary, I'd like to know what you'd actually consider impressive or of merit.

    2. Re:argh by hesiod · · Score: 4, Funny

      A life-size, fully operational Death Star. This is installing a very small monitor into a tight place. Kind of neat, but utterly useless.

    3. Re:argh by KillerBob · · Score: 4, Informative

      Compared to some of the mods that people are doing, this one is pretty easy. The backlight usually isn't even physically attached to the lcd, and the LCD itself is about 0.5-1mm thick (depending on brand/type). Buy an off-the-shelf 2" LCD, remove the backlight, and connect it to the motherboard through the appropriate connector. There's probably a little bowing just because of the space considerations, but other than that it's not a difficult mod at all. As GP said, the backlight from the main LCD is already exposed, and I'd think the hardest part of the mod would be putting some kind of polyvinyl or acrylate coating on the back LCD to prevent it from scratching.

      Laptop LCD's are remarkably easy to open up and work with. You just need the right kind of screwdriver.

      --
      If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
    4. Re:argh by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      If this is something you consider commonplace or ordinary, I'd like to know what you'd actually consider impressive or of merit.

      Don't get me wrong, I think this is a fantastically sexy mod. I don't think it was especially difficult, but then, I haven't cracked one open to check, have I? My point was that the nature of the machine in question makes this mod easier. The kind of thing which actually impresses me, however, is more like the full-custom super-art cases (like the classic HL2 case that was posted and then later duped here, IIRC) which are mighty works of creativity, or modifications which substantially increase functionality. This is just eye-candy, and you don't even get to look at it; in order to make it do anything interesting you have to piss away CPU time. Show me a complete PDA stuck into the case (a cellphone might be easier and would be more useful - is there an expresscard slot in there? you could use that space) which can do this stuff independently and I'll probably be as excited as you want me to be about this.

      Someone else said in this thread that this was a 100% jerkoff waste of time that only a Mac fanboy could love. I would put another qualifier on it; it's a 100% jerkoff waste of CPU time that only a Mac fanboy could love. NeXTStep was peppy on MC68040-based computers with like 32MB memory. OSX is a dog on a Dual G5 with 2 GB memory. The major difference I can see between the two operating systems (aside from compatibility changes and some new libraries) is that OSX has a lot more eye candy, emphasis on "candy", while NeXTStep had a professional look which is now dated.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    5. Re:argh by Chrisq · · Score: 5, Funny

      A life-size, fully operational Death Star.

      Pha, Saddam Hussain did even better than that, he made weapons of ms destruction that were totally invisible.

    6. Re:argh by Teilo · · Score: 4, Informative

      Seems like a relatively trivial hack

      Take it from someone who has actually replaced LCD panels in a MacBook Pro. This is NOT a relatively trivial hack.

      And you cannot just "get the backlight off the LCD". The back portion of the panel proper is a reflective surface. Take that off, and your panel goes dark, except for two of the edges where the CCFL tubes or LED arrays are located.

      On the MacBook Pro what this guy is doing would be nearly impossible. There is just no room between the panel and the shell. There's a bit more room in the regular MacBook.

      --
      Mir tut es leid, Menschen daß Einfältigfehlersuchenbaumfolgendenaffen sind.
    7. Re:argh by Junior+J.+Junior+III · · Score: 4, Funny

      Do not underestimate the power of the reverse side of the laptop screen.

      --
      You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
    8. Re:argh by drinkypoo · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I run OS X on a single-processor 1.25GHz G4 with 2GB of RAM and it runs just fine, assuming I keep the number of application I have open at any given time to a small number.

      Is that because you're running out of memory, or some other reason?

      Does your video card support CoreImage and CoreVideo?

      Yes, it did. I don't work there any more. When I quit I left with the Core Duo T2600-based laptop running Windows XP, which was much more responsive.

      But really, OS X is a very responsive OS on old hardware. Hell, I had 10.3 loaded on a 266MHz G3 and it ran OK.

      I ran 10.1 through 10.3 on a 266 MHz G3, and it did not run OK. I'm quite serious that if you put that next to a NeXTStep-installed Turbo Slab, and run through some basic tasks (author an email, browse some network shares, for example) then you will see that OSX is a dog. Its ancestor is about the same speed at some tasks and faster at most (until you get into big CPU crunching of course) and is running on a system that probably has less than half as much raw processing power as the average video card installed into a G3. The whole thing is subjective, I guess; if you learned (as my mother did) to be happy with Quadras while the PC users were getting processors with at first twice, then ten times the performance (literally) for the same amount of money or less, and running a cooperatively-multitasking operating system that would crash at the drop of a hat (any hat) then I guess OSX seemed fast to you.

      I mostly gave up on Apple when they were telling us that we should be happy with 68040-based machines when they could at least have given us an '060 while we waited for PowerPC. I gave up on them completely when PowerPC came out and it was fast for all of about a second and then got dogged by the PC again, and hard - and Apple told us we should pay more for the privilege. I gave them the benefit of the doubt and tried the G3. They fucked up the IDE chip and created UDMA errors with most hard drives. Their solution? Buy an IDE card, or disable UDMA through the use of a third-party commercial on-disk driver (e.g. FWB toolbox.) I then had to use the dual G5 at work, and was completely disappointed.

      I've been there with Apple since elementary school. I had an Apple ][+, which I followed with an Amiga 500. During that time I also used a IIci (as a teenager living at home, I had access to my mother's computer which she used to do graphic arts work like typesetting, mostly in pagemaker) a great deal, maintained it, tweaked it, et cetera. Eventually my Ami died and I got an IBM PC-1 with 448kB memory... anyway, the long sad story continues through a couple of Quadras and a Performa-badged Quadra (I forget which model(s) it was) and then a PPC601-based mac. Finally I got a 386DX25, put Linux on it, and said goodbye to all that nonsense. I've installed MacOS5 on a Lisa and all kinds of other useless Mac-related stuff and I sincerely wish I could get all of that time back and spend it on something useful, like studying programming. The amount of time I spent fucking with INITs and CDEVs alone would have been enough for a solid grounding.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  4. Cool... but limited by PrescriptionWarning · · Score: 4, Informative

    I could see the use of it being an extra interface for quickly showing you the date and time, and perhaps even if you have unread mail or IM's waiting for you, but if its just to display images its just a toy

  5. I'm surprised. by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If somebody managed to put a screen behind the logo, that means that there was some extra space in the original design. That seems very un-maclike. Apple has, repeatedly, shown a willingness to make considerable design sacrifices in order to shave off a few millimeters.

    1. Re:I'm surprised. by drinkypoo · · Score: 5, Informative

      If somebody managed to put a screen behind the logo, that means that there was some extra space in the original design. That seems very un-maclike. Apple has, repeatedly, shown a willingness to make considerable design sacrifices in order to shave off a few millimeters.

      That is not "extra" space. That space is there to allow you to push on the case without breaking your LCD. This guy has just squandered that and the first time he sets something heavy on his laptop by accident he's going to break his panel, because he's now going to push directly in the center of it. If Apple meant for there to be zero clearance there, they would have made it so. I've had (and expressed) lots of problems with Apple hardware in the past, but case design isn't one of them - albeit, Apple has gone substantially backwards in many regards. Ever take apart, say, a Mac IIci? It's actually kind of a joyful experience. Now, ever try to disassemble a classic iMac to make some upgrades? Egads! Even fucking around with the blue-handled Xcelite MacCaseCracker on a classic doorstop Mac is pleasant by comparison. I haven't taken apart a Mini, but the instruction photos leave me shaking my head.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    2. Re:I'm surprised. by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I'm quite fond of the G4 towers, and I hear similarly good, or better, things about the G5 and Xeon ones; but their all-in-one designs, laptop and desktop, seem to have escaped from a utopian universe where HDDs never have to be replaced.

  6. Re:Cool... but limited... only by your imagination by NeverVotedBush · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You could do virtually anything with this mod - as one poster put it, put the image from the camera on it, or you could scroll RSS feeds, put other logos inside the Apple cutout just to screw with people, an animated eye looking around and winking, etc.

    Maybe just a toy, but a very cool toy that could easily be very useful.

    I really like the idea of an eye looking around and blinking. You could even have it follow your cursor on the screen that you see so you could have it look at people and follow them around the room. Wink on a click.

    Very fun! The guy is clever!

  7. Youtube Vid of this by jDeepbeep · · Score: 5, Informative

    For those who may be having difficulty accessing TF(slashdotted)A

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is5GZNHPfo0

    --
    Reply to That ||
  8. cool hack by MoreDruid · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I read the article before the site went down, and the video is very impressive, the screen is recognized as a secondary screen, so you can basically display anything you want on it. In the video it shows playing some videos, an iTunes visualization and the output of the built in webcam (iSight).

    --
    The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.
  9. Re:Cool... but limited... only by your imagination by houghi · · Score: 3, Informative

    A toy if your case is open. Closed it could give you information in the form of icons. Or you could rent it out as ad space. Or a clock or ...

    And anyway indeed way cool. Makes me want one.

    --
    Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
  10. Get a room.... by epdp14 · · Score: 2, Funny

    While the visuals are absolutely stunning... I think this takes MacLoving to an all new level. I mean come on, a flaming apple? Whats next? The two Steves doing the tango?

  11. Re:Cool... but limited... only by your imagination by acidrainx · · Score: 2, Informative

    Unfortunately you can't close a Macbook without it going into standby. Not without a hack anyway.

  12. Re:Cool... but limited... only by your imagination by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The back light is off when the case is closed, so you can't see this. This is just a "toy" as you said, or more accurately a way of showing off (which is what the glowing Apple logo has always been). The sell an amazing number of machines because of that logo. It's easy to look around a room and see who's cool and who isn't.

  13. If only... by Pravetz-82 · · Score: 2, Funny

    ... they could put a server in their server to withstand a /. tsunami!

  14. Re:Cool... but limited... only by your imagination by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If you just installed a second screen in a laptop lid, I doubt that's going to phase you...

  15. Re:oled by Yvan256 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The Mac cannot hire anyone, it's a brand of computers.

    Maybe you meant Apple?

  16. Re:Cool... but limited... only by your imagination by firmamentalfalcon · · Score: 2, Interesting

    an animated eye looking around and winking, etc.

    That begs the question, can you wink with one eye?

  17. To people who tagged it as ''why'' by Ilgaz · · Score: 3, Informative

    Cray did even a more weird thing, on a multi million supercomputer which at most 4-5 super security cleared technicians would see in physical form.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray_T3D

    (from Wiki)
    'The Cray T3D MC cabinet had an Apple Macintosh PowerBook laptop built into its front. Its only purpose was to display animated Cray Research and T3D logos on its color LCD screen.'

    And it was 5th on Top 500 back in 1998.

  18. Extra server? by canonymous · · Score: 2, Funny

    If only they had added a second server inside it too...

  19. LCD Mod Website by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Hey guys.. im the one that did the mod.. I have put up a small website to keep you guys updated with tutorials, and even this very macbook on ebay here soon! Check it out! http://www.edsjunk.net

  20. See through screen by Kristy+Selvaggi · · Score: 2, Insightful

    They should import the image from the iSight camera :)