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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."

22 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!
  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. 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!

  6. 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 ||
  7. 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.'"
  8. 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.

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

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

    Maybe you meant Apple?

  11. 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.