It's salt

My MacBook Pro Has Outputs I Didn't Know About

Something I didn’t know until a few days ago: MacBook Pros come with combo audio jacks. That’s right, both input and output jacks can take an 1/8” electrical or S/PDIF plug. You’re probably thinking …great. I assure you, this a good thing to know in case you’re ever in the situation I was in a couple days ago.

I was listening to music on my headphones, when for some reason I decided to unplug them and use my MacBook Pro’s internal speakers. Instead of aural stimulation, I was greeted with silence. I was trying unsuccessfully to turn the volume up when I noticed the mute icon in the on-screen volume display, even though the volume was maxed.

Properly confused, I tried plugging in my headphones again, removing them, plugging them in again, ad nauseam. Finally I noticed a light of sanguine hue falling on my finger as I removed my headphones from the audio jack. My first thought was that my audio jack was broken, and this light was some sort of problem indicator. I went to google for confirmation, where I learned that in a way it was, but it really wasn’t.

What I was seeing was an enabled S/PDIF output, enabled somehow by a switch (electrical, mechanical, or otherwise) inside the jack. Some people reported having to bring MacBooks with similar symptoms in for repair. Others suggested a fix involving shoving a toothpick into the jack to set the switch causing the malfunction to the proper state. Since I wasn’t comfortable with either of these solutions, I plugged in my headphones once more, wiggled the jack around something fierce until, eventually, something in there went right and I had the use of my internal speakers back.

So who knew? You get a two-for-one deal on audio jacks when you buy a MacBook Pro. I’m glad I paid for features I’ll never use and, if it wasn’t for a hardware malfunction, would never have been aware of!