So, this morning, I got up to discover my new Mac PowerBook's 12" LCD screen was virtually unreadable. The image on my external flat-panel display was nice and bright, as always, but the built-in screen had become dim and muddy.
"No worries," I said. "The screen dims like that just before the computer goes to sleep. I'll just stroke the touchpad, and everything will be fine."
I stroked the touch pad. The screen remained dim. Even the little Apple logo on the back looked gray and unhealthy.
I touched the power switch. Nothing. I disconnected the external monitor, thinking that, when the screen reset, my 12" inch LCD would flare to life. Still, my screen was dark.
Feeling a little Windows deja-vu, I shut everything down and restarted my computer. (Only the second time in a month I'd had to do so.) When the Mac started back up ... the screen was still dim.
I confess that, at this point, I felt a little panic. What now? Had a backlight gone bad in less than a month? And what would the procedure for repairs be? I bought my Mac from Amazon.com. Would the folks at User Friendly repair it? Would I have to drive to the Apple Store in Memphis? Would I be forced to pack up everything and send it to some distant Apple repair facility?
The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. I'm half-way through two complicated projects. Moving them back to my Windows computer would be a genuine pain.
As a last-ditch effort, I opened the System Preferences app and clicked on Display. There, I found a little Brightness slider, moved almost completely to the extreme left. I clicked on the slider, shifted it right, and my screen brightened again. Problem solved.
I'm relieved. At the same time, I'm also a little befuddled. I didn't move that slider. I'm not using any applications that should have moved that slider. So how, overnight, did that slider shift from extreme right to extreme left? What's the culprit? A ghost?
If any other readers have experience with this, drop me a comment, okay? Thanks.
