I think it's safe to assume that they knew what they were doing. Apple sweats the details, like making a sleep indicator light that pulses to the speed of a heartbeat.
Bet yours is a couple years old. They really reduced the intensity when they switched to unibody enclosures.
Anecdote: My first MBP was a graduation present from my parents just before I graduated HS. For some unmemorable reason they “grounded” me from it for a day or two (during finals, maybe?) - but in its sleep state, it was keeping them from sleeping, themselves, with its bright, pulsing LED as it sat on Mom's dresser. I had to laugh just a little at what felt, to me, like Apple-sponsored karmic revenge :)
The current MacBook Air doesn't have a sleep light - the next round of MBPs might not have one either. The idea it to close the laptop when you are not using it. Sleep is the default state, so no need for a status indicator. Just like the iPhone/iPad/iPod.
There's a big difference between the MBP and the Air/iPhone/iPad/iPod though -- solid-state drives. The sleep indicator tells you when it's safe to pick your computer up.
Sleep is the default state, so no need for a status indicator.
Wrong!
Sleep may be the default state but I definitely want to see whether it's really in that state - or in some other.
I hate this kind of wishful thinking from hardware designers.
It's the same mindset that removed the status LED from the Samsung Galaxy S. A status LED that exists on almost every other android handset and that is very useful for indicating missed calls, low battery and many other things (it's freely programmable).
Congrats Samsung and Apple, you saved on a $0.20 part - but in the wrong place.
Ah yes, that's the patent I was looking for, upvotes all around :). I mistakenly googled for 'heartbeat' instead of 'breath', for which only the GigaOM article turned up.
"The average respiratory rate for adults is 12-20 breaths per minute, which is the rate that the sleep-indicator light fades in and out on most Apple laptops. Older models such as the Macintosh PowerBook, however, use a blinking LED indicator, with discrete pulses in one-second intervals.
The other day, I noticed that my friend’s Dell laptop had a similar feature but with a shorter fade-in-fade-out period. Its rate was around 40 blinks per second, or the average respiratory rate for adults during strenuous exercise not very indicative of something in sleep-mode."
Nah, they're just doing it to be cool. Nothing in a quiescent, stable state (ie not requiring attention) should be animated. Animation - even a pulse - pulls your attention. Yes, you can /learn/ to ignore an animation, but you shouldn't have to do that in the first place.
http://gigaom.com/apple/the-pursuit-of-perfection-hidden-gem...