When using an external monitor, you might want to turn off the MacBook display to focus on the large screen.

Closing the lid does that, but you lose TouchID, the webcam, the nice keyboard and trackpad. Surely there must be a way to call into that same code that lid closing does.

The 2021 MacBook Pro came with a greatly improved miniLED XDR display which is advertised as being able to handle 1000 nits sustained brightness.

Contrary to everyone’s expectations, when the machine got into the hands of users, it was clear that the display was still capped at the previous 500 nits for normal usage.

My attempt at trying to break through that limit failed, but the details might be useful for someone more determined.