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When you place an open display plastic unibody MacBook upon a closed display MacBook of almost any kind, the display will cut out when it goes past the ninety degree angle. I am thinking its a pressure point issue or a magnet issue. Though not entirely sure.

Its consistent enough to see it, but infrequent enough not to worry about it, since stacking laptops is a no-no, but occurs when doing mass imaging.

Has anyone else out there seen this strangeness?
What may be causing it?

Nathan Greenstein
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James Butler
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I've had this happen to me a few times, and it is annoying. My best guess is that the magnets in one MacBook are tricking the other one into thinking that the lid is closed. I know that it's at least possible to intentionally trigger the magnet that detects if the lid is closed, and my guess is that the other MacBook has a magnet in close proximity that's triggering it.

Community
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Kyle Cronin
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Yes, I've had this happen; I thought the display was toast. Extremely faint (barely visible) image, not asleep, could occasionally get the image displayed to change. Read this post, picked up the laptop and … fine image. But I set it right down where it had been (yes, on top of another unibody MacBook) and the display stayed lit - repositioned slightly (it took a few tries) and replicated the problem.

Magnet idea is tempting, but I don't think it's the case as my machine didn't actually go to sleep - in fact I'd assume that closing the case would make the display black, not just extremely dim.

Cajunluke
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David Agnew
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Can you tell if the MacBook is going to sleep when it goes past 90 degrees? If it's not going to sleep and the display itself is cutting out, it may be an issue with the LVDS connection on the logic board.

If it's actually going to sleep, Kyle may be right in that it's a magnet issue or a false triggering issue.

Matt Love
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I got the same problem with two Dell XPS 13 when one is stacked on top of the other. When being stacked on the other, the top one goes to sleep and pressing the power button can't wake it up; when it however moves out of the bottom one's frontal edge, it wakes up automotically. This is true even the bottom one is powered off.

Conclusion: The sleeping mode is most probably caused by magnet on the bottom of the top laptop and the top of the bottom laptop, which are used for the lid-closing procedure of the laptop.

Peter
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