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After seeing this question, it made me wonder: why don't Macs have hard drive activity lights?

It seems there is no actual meaningful use for them nowadays, so is that why Apple decided not to include them on Macs?

If so, why do PC manufacturers still insist on putting them on every single computer?

Glorfindel
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Connor W
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5 Answers5

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I'm surprised at the number of people who don't see a use for HD activity lights. I can think of several:

  • Knowing when your computer is slow/frozen because of disk I/O instead of a hung process or error
  • Indication that there is a lot of disk I/O when there is no good reason for there to be (process running in the background)
  • Indication there could be an issue with a physical drive - if there's no process running, and the light is still blinking like mad to access your page file, there may be an issue.

Personally I think they will have a resurgence with the increased use of SSD's. SSD's are faster to be sure, but they are also silent, which means there will be literally NO indication that there is a lot of disk activity happening without a light.

JNK
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4

I remember reading/hearing Jonathan Ive say that he takes as much time considering what to exclude from Apple products as he does to what to include. Apple has the luxury of total control of its hardware. It's more of a design decision, in the quest for elegance and simplicity.

The PC components market is driven totally differently, with each manufacturer competing on features. Apple does not have to compete with any other company in the same way, as it has total control of what goes into its computers (hardware and software).

This is why it takes so long for legacy features to be deleted from PCs (like parallel, serial and PS/2 ports), while Apple can just choose to stop using old technology on a design basis (like floppy drives, ADB port, Motorola and PowerPC compatibilty, etc).

paradroid
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3

PC Manufacturers do not put them on every machine - but, as a (small) manufacturer, I can tell you that I am severely limited on what parts I can buy - and nearly all cases do come with them.

Many motherboards also have features such as IR, additional fan controls and a few other things - people just use what they want out of force of habit.

As for why Apple don't use them - I can only guess that as it isn't a required feature (like the 56k modem), it is a way of cutting down a bit of bulk and more importantly, cost.

William Hilsum
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3

The answer has a lot to do with the Apple sense of style. They're big on minimalism, and fewer lights on the chassis is a good thing in that regard. IIRC, the only light on the laptop is the power. They also lack caps-lock and num-lock lights.

The Dell Studio laptop I bought back in April also lacks caps-lock and HD-Activity lights.

SysAdmin1138
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My opinion:

  • No one really needs them (seeing the world from a consumer perspective here)
  • They look ugly (most times)
  • There are better ways to indicate hard disk access nowdays (i.e. MenuMeters, iStatMenus)
lajuette
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