Stalking Venus

I just came across this little gadget this evening. I love my new MacBook laptop to bits, and the backlight - when it works properly - is dead sexy as well as incredibly useful. But the problem is that the little sensor thingy that Apple builds into the computer to determine the level of ambient light doesn’t seem to work very well.

Firstly, it’s badly situated. Instead of being located somewhere at the top of the screen - like maybe next o the iSight camera, or on the reverse side of the screen - it’s located under the speaker grills to either side of the keyboard. This means that it’s literally almost impossible not to set off whenever you’re typing, as your hands cast shadows over the sensors.

The only control option Apple has included is a basic control panel that allows you to set whether or not you want to use the sensor at all. There’s no way to specify the level, and no way to turn the thing on or off when you want to.

Enter Lab Tick. I’m sure there’s a great story why this simple and effective application has such a wonky name, but frankly, I don’t really care. What I do care about though is the fact that this app adds all of the backlighting functionality that Apple should have in the first place.

The application doesn’t run in the dock, and has no icon in the System Preferences panes, but instead runs from the menu bar at the top of the screen. In its basic form, it’s a slider that does just what you expect it to do, namely allow you to manually adjust the backlighting quickly and easily.

It also contains a slightly unusual implementation of a preferences pane. Open the slider, click the cog, and select Preferences to access a pane that allows you to do things like override Apple’s control of the backlight, start at login and adjust power saving settings.

It’s a simple and great product that does exatly what you expect it to. It could be improved slightly through better integration into the Apple system preferences panes, and it would be nice to see an option to control the screen dimmer (also controlled by the ambient light sensor) in a future version.

If you own a MacBook and the keyboard backlight bothers you, then go and download this from the Lab Tick website.