TL; DR
- iFixit says four LEDs behind the display light the new MacBook Pro’s Apple logo.
- A diffuser and a mirror-like coating replace the old backlight-cutout trick.
- Memory and HDMI are soldered, and USB-C replacement requires removing the logic board.
Some design choices or products vanish quietly and then return a few years later as if they were never gone. Off the top of my head, see-through gadgets, physical smartphone keyboards, flip phones, and wired headphones are a few classic examples.
What Apple did with the glowing logo on its older MacBook Pro models falls in the same category: discarded in favor of cleverer designs, revived to bring back a little nostalgia. A fresh teardown now explains how the glowing Apple logo actually works on the latest MacBooks, and the implementation is cleverer than I initially thought.
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How Does The Glowing Logo Work?
iFixit’s teardown of the touchscreen MacBook Pro reveals a strip of four LEDs layered behind the screen that illuminates the logo from the inside. The light passes through a diffuser, which, for those catching up, is a material that distributes the light evenly in all directions.
That’s how the entire logo, and not just four LEDs, appears to be illuminated.
Why bother with all that? Don’t the additional LEDs cut into the MacBook’s battery life? Older LCD MacBooks lit the logo through a cutout that let the panel’s backlight pass through translucent logo material, creating the glow we’ve seen in several movies and TV shows.
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| Aspect | Older LCD MacBooks | New ProLED MacBook Pro |
| Display type | LCD with a backlight | OLED, which has no backlight |
| Light source for the logo | The screen’s backlight | A strip of four LEDs behind the display |
| How light reaches the logo | Through a cutout | Through a diffuser and a coated logo |
| Logo coating | Not stated | Two-way-mirror style; metallic when off |
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The new touchscreen MacBook Pro, the ones with the PROLED display, use an OLED panel, where every pixel makes its own light. That’s why there are four additional LEDs to light up the logo. To compensate for the lack of a backlight, Apple added a two-way coating to the logo. Think of it as a two-way mirror.
It lets the internal light pass through but doesn’t let you see what’s inside, which is where the metallic appearance comes from when the LEDs are off.
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What Else Did iFixit Find?
Apple dropped the glowing logo in 2016, so its return feels like a wink to longtime fans. I find it a charming piece of engineering for something that does no work at all, though I would not buy a laptop for it.
Elsewhere, iFixit found a lighter machine. It features less aluminum in the base and lid, a slightly smaller trackpad, and a reworked hinge that reduces display wobble (when you touch the screen).
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Repairability isn’t as shiny, though. If you ever run into a faulty USB-C port, replacing it means removing the logic board. Even the memory and HDMI port are soldered in place. In simpler terms, neither can be swapped easily.
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