Working with the new 13" aluminum MacBook on a daily basis turned out to be one awesome addition to my office Mac Pro. It is small enough to carry around virtually anywhere and it surprisingly is powerful enough to do my daily work on it on the go or away from the office.

Working on it on a daily basis there were two things that really started to annoy me. It has two dim options activated by default. I decided to turn both of them off. Looking through the internet it seems I am not alone. I decided to put this in the tutorial section of this blog to visually show how to do it.

Both dim settings can be accessed through the System Preferences:



The first one is easy to find. It is accessible though the Energy Saver icon of the System Preferences. It particlarly annoyed me when I was reading something on the computer, like an e-book, or looking at the art work I am working on. After 3 minutes on battery the display dimmed significantly. I understand this is a energy saving setting but in my case I like to decide when I want to dim the screen especially when I am working. That is why we have the nifty F1 and F2 keys to adjust the brightness.



The default setting is shown above, it is set to 3 minutes. Just adjust the 'Display Sleep' setting accordingly. I pulled it all the way to the right where it shows the 'never' setting. First dim problem solved!

For me the second dim option was not as easy to find. Since the built in iSight is functioning as a sensor to adjust the dim of the screen I looked for anything iSight. I was on the completely wrong track and finally found it though the 'Displays' icon of the System Preferences. It particularly annoyed me when I had a light source behind me and moved my head. Almost every time I moved my head the screen dim adjusted. On the other side I have to say I am always impressed by the way Apple invents new things to improve the overall user experience. For me I rather have it turned off.



Above you can see a screenshot of the factory settings. To turn the ambient light function off just uncheck the 'Automatically adjust brightness as ambient light changes' option.