7 ms·

I was recently trying to figure out whether the microphone is usable when using my notebook in clamshell-mode. Turns out Apple added a privacy/safety feature to

I was recently trying to figure out whether the microphone is usable when using my notebook in clamshell-mode. Turns out Apple added a privacy/safety feature to all Apple silicon-based Mac notebooks and Intel-based Mac notebooks with the Apple T2 Security Chip. It will hardware disconnect the microphone when the lid is closed, based on the lid sensors. Pretty cool safety feature!! Even though I'm sad I can't use my mic in clamshell mode

fsflover 4y ago
The correct solution would be to have a hardware kill switch for the microphone (and camera). This is exactly what Purism laptops offer.
- sdfhbdf 4y ago
  Probably not in Apple’s “it just works” design philosophy. Also that’s another moving piece that can break.
  - JamesSwift 4y ago
    I mean... it doesnt seem uncommon to have people dock a closed laptop so I would argue it doesnt "just work".
    - dymk 4y ago
      How would a microphone work with the lid closed anyways? It’d be muffled. If you’re docking your laptop closed, you’ve got an external webcam / mic if you need those inputs.
      - vbezhenar 4y ago
        Why would I need to get mic if I have it in laptop? It makes very little sense to me.
        dymk 4y ago
        So then you dock it with the lid open, in which case the mic and camera work fine and aren’t muffled…
        OmarAssadi 4y ago
        For the same reason you might have other external peripherals. A laptop, realistically, can only fit something so decent inside of it. The 2020+ MacBooks do have surprisingly OK internal mics, but that's about all they are: OK. Maybe I'm just an extra-big baby about it all. But what I find a little annoying with the COVID-era of work-from-home and distance learning is how few people seem to care about audio. Even as a teenager on TeamSpeak, rather than getting a more expensive graphics card or whatever, I spent my money on an SM7B. Now it is more important than ever. Maybe this isn't reasonable, but I feel like if not for yourself, to prevent "sorry, can you repeat that?" moments, you kind of owe it to the people who have to listen to you. Like as an autistic person, hearing a dozen people's overlapping background static, tinny compressed audio, etc, it really, truly slowly drives me nuts. I can't deal with that level of auditory sensory stuff all day. If someone has a bad microphone, I want out of the call ASAP. A Shure SM58 will last you a lifetime, fit on your desk, cost <$100, and no one will ever complain about sound again.
        dividedbyzero 4y ago
        People don't know how bad they sound. It's as simple as that I think, there is no easy monitor functionality in Teams and friends like the preview image for camera, so there is no urgency.
        slavik81 4y ago
        The laptop microphone will pick up whatever noise is in the room. It's easier to filter out background noise with a microphone that is closer to your mouth.
      - orangepurple 4y ago
        Two+ tiny holes at the top of the lid facing upwards when the lid is open and at you when the lid is closed
      - brutusurp 4y ago
        The position of the mic on the newer laptops is unmuffled. It's actually a very high-quality signal that can't be muffled. The only way to quiet it is to "kill" it; disconnect it.
      - JamesSwift 4y ago
        The same way it used to work, by putting the input on the external facing portion of the case. Or even better, have both so that it can optimize for the current clamshell mode.
- dymk 4y ago
  This is a hardware kill switch, in the form of a (set of) transistors
  - fsflover 4y ago
    Can it be reprogrammed?
    - jeffbee 4y ago
      No. It is bare logic.
      - fsflover 4y ago
        Interesting. Note however that my comment was a reply to "I can't use my mic in clamshell mode". A normal kill switch would solve this.
- earlyam 4y ago
  A cool feature on laptops would be a jumper you could physically disconnect, and a tiny window (on say, the bottom of the laptop) to verify it hasn't been reconnected.
  - kube-system 4y ago
    If you need a window on the case of your laptop to verify that your hardware hasn't been tampered with, you've got bigger problems.
    - meltyness 4y ago
      You're against transparent technology?
- kube-system 4y ago
  When it comes to privacy, for the vast majority of users, sane defaults are better than requiring the user to take manual action.
  - victor106 4y ago
    Exactly!!! This might seem like I am an Apple fanboy but I am not, I have plenty issues with Apple products but when it comes to Privacy Apple is the only company amongst the big tech we can trust. Microsoft, Google, Facebook are all anti-privacy and just about using dar patterns to steal users info. It’s disgusting.
    - fsflover 4y ago
      > when it comes to Privacy Apple is the only company amongst the big tech we can trust No, it's not: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34299433 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34299433, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26639261 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26639261, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26644216 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26644216.
    - kube-system 4y ago
      I wouldn't leap that far, I'm just talking about the lid switch on a laptop here.
  - raxxorraxor 4y ago
    It is still the correct solution. A sensible default doesn't conflict here, but hardware switched are the only solution where you can be entirely sure.
    - kube-system 4y ago
      The problem is a separate switch leaves mainstream non-paranoid users unprotected, because it requires conscious activation by the user. And anyway, a lid switch is a hardware switch. But most importantly, it activates passively during normal usage patterns.
- matthewmacleod 4y ago
  No, that's not the "correct solution". It's another valid solution, with a different set of costs and benefits.
- 908B64B197 4y ago
  I'd rather have an LED on the same circuit as the microphone. If it's live, it has to send current through it. Easy to observe.
- j45 4y ago
  Even if it was configurable to disable either.
itslennysfault 4y ago
[flagged]
crazygringo 4y ago
The microphone is located inside the left speaker grille anyways, so it would be terribly muffled in clamshell mode anyways. Note this is in contrast to previous models where the microphone had a tiny hole on the left edge (next to USB-C ports) and it could be used in clamshell mode. Which at first I thought felt like a downgrade... but the reality is that your laptop isn't usually in a good position for mic pickup when it's closed anyways -- people often keep it off to the side or something, under a monitor riser, etc. While the speaker grille location, being front-facing rather than side-facing, is far better for picking up voice when using the laptop normally. And that anybody using a mic in clamshell mode usually already has one in their webcam or AirPods or headset or a dedicated mic anyways. So all in all it seems to work out pretty well.
- prettyStandard 4y ago
  Can confirm with my older MacBook that anytime I try to use the microphone with the lid closed people always complain.
- j45 4y ago
  I have leaned on the clamshell mode mic from time to time as well. Tbh getting a simple but high quality mic has been nice. It picked up a Steelseries Tusk. It was the highest recording quality I could find for in ear headphone with a small boom mic for the dollar. Easy to leave one each in my bag and desks if I like it. I’m considering finding a way to use the mic only. It doesn’t hurt to be the clearest sounding person by a long shot on most calls. https://www.amazon.com/SteelSeries-Tusq-Mobile-Gaming-Headset/dp/B096L3ZJ26/ https://www.amazon.com/SteelSeries-Tusq-Mobile-Gaming-Headse... https://www.rtings.com/headphones/reviews/steelseries/tusq https://www.rtings.com/headphones/reviews/steelseries/tusq .. the recording quality section is of interest.
- bilekas 4y ago
  The 2015 pro model i have is an absolute nightmare for the fan as the mic was picking up the noise of the fan and so the CPU was working overtime to cancel the noise leading to cascading fan and heat noise. Ended up just disabling it completely permanently. Was a particularly bad design i think.
alin23 4y ago
In case you or anyone else needs to disable the MacBook screen and still use the mic, camera, keyboard, trackpad etc. I added a feature called BlackOut in my Lunar app that can do that (https://lunar.fyi/#blackout https://lunar.fyi/#blackout). This allows "clamshell mode" without closing the lid. (although some people might want to close the lid for desk aesthetics, this feature is not for them) On Apple Silicon with macOS Ventura the feature can really disconnect the screen by Command-clicking the power button: https://shots.panaitiu.com/x52NJxpR https://shots.panaitiu.com/x52NJxpR There's also a write-up on how I reverse engineered this feature: https://alinpanaitiu.com/blog/turn-off-macbook-display-clamshell/ https://alinpanaitiu.com/blog/turn-off-macbook-display-clams... On older systems, BlackOut mimics a disconnect by setting the screen to 0 brightness and mirroring it to avoid windows getting trapped there.
- Firmwarrior 4y ago
  haha, that was a really interesting writeup. It looked a lot like the process I end up following when I try to reverse engineer something The whole way through I kept wondering "Wow, I wonder how he's going to tie this all together in the end!" .. and then I got to the end
- cscharenberg 4y ago
  This is incredible software. Thank you for linking to it. It has features I've long wished for in a laptop!
dheera 4y ago
And how are we supposed to trust Apple that this is in fact what's happening? With a Framework laptop I have a hardware physical switch and I can actually open it up and see the PCB trace and verify that it disconnects the microphone.
- zamnos 4y ago
  At the point that you're opening up the laptop and chasing traces, you can do the same thing with Apple devices (with a bit more difficulty). It's not like they're made with rainbows and moonbeams. If you're at that level of paranoia (no judgement if it's justified or not) and have the skill to, just open up the Apple device and chase PCB traces. If you go down that route, iFixit's a good resource with lots of helpful pictures. (But still sometimes not enough.)
  - dheera 4y ago
    If it's in-chip, it won't be with PCB traces, it would be solid state inside the chip and you wouldn't be able to verify without inspecting the wafer, which is way outside my area of expertise. It doesn't sound like there's a mechanical relay that they are using for this. There's also that if it's inside the chip, there is a risk that malicious software or buggy firmware can still enable it against your permission. With a Framework laptop you can peel back the bezel and it's right there in plain sight. If the switch is in the off position it's a hard physical break to the microphone circuit. There is no possible software that can enable the microphone.
    - zamnos 4y ago
      Nothing can beat a physical switch but even if it's solid state, unless it's in the CPU itself (it isn't) there still need to be traces in/on the PCB to bring the data from the microphone to the rest of the system, so just probe those traces when the lid is open vs closed. Or learn how to decap chips. There are some really awesome videos out there about that on YouTube! More importantly though, Apple learned their lesson with the iSight which had a software-based activation LED. They assumed a random script kiddie wouldn't have the smarts to be able to hack the kext kernel module to turn the camera on without also turning the LED on. Unfortunately they learned about the Internet shortly thereafter where random script kiddies were able to get instructions on how to modify that kext, leading to some embarrassing moments, for some (possibly naked) high school teens, and for Apple. Thats why the linked article is very careful to specifically mention that even having root and being able to manipulate kexts is not enough to silently use the microphone while closed. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35059224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35059224
r00fus 4y ago
Just use a headset or external mic. If you're in clamshell you're probably at your desk/home office so that's quite reasonable. Also nice - if I'm WFH and one of my family walks in with some drama, I close the lid, go clamshell mode, and I am quite sure any corporate spyware isn't listening in.
- dividedbyzero 4y ago
  I wish there were good quality webcams without microphones. My external microphone has a mute switch but my Streamcam mic is still available to any corporate spyware.
  - reductum 4y ago
    I wish the same. In the meantime, I like using these physical USB switches to easily disconnect my webcam when not in use: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07X82661H https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07X82661H
    - dividedbyzero 4y ago
      There don't seem to be any USB3 capable ones sadly. The webcam I use supports USB2 too, but image quality takes a noticeable dip.
samstave 4y ago
>>"Apple silicon-based Mac" What does "silicon-based" - mean? What other computer is not 'silicon-based'? -- Is there a way to mechanize the HW detachment of microphone connections at will while using the machine open? That would be great - if you had a physical switch on the side of machine, which physicall moves the mic wire a mm away from the contact. --- Weird thing - I put tape over my webcam at all times, unless in use, obv. After some time I received a pop-up alert on windows 11 and it lasted briefly, and went away - but freaked me out: "You should unblock your webcam" or something to that effect, I dont have the exact wording - but it was an alert telling me to unblock visibility of my webcam - I think it may have mentioned something about UX reasons - but it happened so quick I missed all the wording. Yeah - tape over your cams. ---- It would be cool to have a phone case where is the case screen-facing-flap is closed, it pulls the wool over the eyes of the front-facing cams, so even in 'sleep' mode when the case is closed, the phones cams are all covered... but the mic is a different creature. ------ Remember when NSA was intercepting cisco equipment to install HW back doors in devices shipped to 'enemy' states. We have known forever about NSA HW backdoors... but a case that can manipulate the HW MIC switchoff mechanism of a phone with such capability would be cool. Else ; we need 100% trustworthy ability to disable our Spy-Pilots.
- sirsar 4y ago
  > >>"Apple silicon-based Mac" > What does "silicon-based" - mean? What other computer is not 'silicon-based'? Read as (Apple silicon)-based.
  - samstave 4y ago
    Thank you. Wasn't aware.
- weberer 4y ago
  "Apple Silicon" is the brand of processors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_silicon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_silicon
  - samstave 4y ago
sixothree 4y ago
I assume clamshell mode would affect heat dissipation through the keyboard.
dclowd9901 4y ago
Lid sensors? Why didn’t they just have a hinge that the wiring ran through that disconnects at a certain angle…

fsflover 4y ago

The correct solution would be to have a hardware kill switch for the microphone (and camera). This is exactly what Purism laptops offer.

sdfhbdf 4y ago
Probably not in Apple’s “it just works” design philosophy. Also that’s another moving piece that can break.
- JamesSwift 4y ago
  I mean... it doesnt seem uncommon to have people dock a closed laptop so I would argue it doesnt "just work".
  - dymk 4y ago
    How would a microphone work with the lid closed anyways? It’d be muffled. If you’re docking your laptop closed, you’ve got an external webcam / mic if you need those inputs.
    - vbezhenar 4y ago
      Why would I need to get mic if I have it in laptop? It makes very little sense to me.
      - dymk 4y ago
        So then you dock it with the lid open, in which case the mic and camera work fine and aren’t muffled…
      - OmarAssadi 4y ago
        For the same reason you might have other external peripherals. A laptop, realistically, can only fit something so decent inside of it. The 2020+ MacBooks do have surprisingly OK internal mics, but that's about all they are: OK. Maybe I'm just an extra-big baby about it all. But what I find a little annoying with the COVID-era of work-from-home and distance learning is how few people seem to care about audio. Even as a teenager on TeamSpeak, rather than getting a more expensive graphics card or whatever, I spent my money on an SM7B. Now it is more important than ever. Maybe this isn't reasonable, but I feel like if not for yourself, to prevent "sorry, can you repeat that?" moments, you kind of owe it to the people who have to listen to you. Like as an autistic person, hearing a dozen people's overlapping background static, tinny compressed audio, etc, it really, truly slowly drives me nuts. I can't deal with that level of auditory sensory stuff all day. If someone has a bad microphone, I want out of the call ASAP. A Shure SM58 will last you a lifetime, fit on your desk, cost <$100, and no one will ever complain about sound again.
        dividedbyzero 4y ago
        People don't know how bad they sound. It's as simple as that I think, there is no easy monitor functionality in Teams and friends like the preview image for camera, so there is no urgency.
      - slavik81 4y ago
        The laptop microphone will pick up whatever noise is in the room. It's easier to filter out background noise with a microphone that is closer to your mouth.
    - orangepurple 4y ago
      Two+ tiny holes at the top of the lid facing upwards when the lid is open and at you when the lid is closed
    - brutusurp 4y ago
      The position of the mic on the newer laptops is unmuffled. It's actually a very high-quality signal that can't be muffled. The only way to quiet it is to "kill" it; disconnect it.
    - JamesSwift 4y ago
      The same way it used to work, by putting the input on the external facing portion of the case. Or even better, have both so that it can optimize for the current clamshell mode.
dymk 4y ago
This is a hardware kill switch, in the form of a (set of) transistors
- fsflover 4y ago
  Can it be reprogrammed?
  - jeffbee 4y ago
    No. It is bare logic.
    - fsflover 4y ago
      Interesting. Note however that my comment was a reply to "I can't use my mic in clamshell mode". A normal kill switch would solve this.
earlyam 4y ago
A cool feature on laptops would be a jumper you could physically disconnect, and a tiny window (on say, the bottom of the laptop) to verify it hasn't been reconnected.
- kube-system 4y ago
  If you need a window on the case of your laptop to verify that your hardware hasn't been tampered with, you've got bigger problems.
  - meltyness 4y ago
    You're against transparent technology?
kube-system 4y ago
When it comes to privacy, for the vast majority of users, sane defaults are better than requiring the user to take manual action.
- victor106 4y ago
  Exactly!!! This might seem like I am an Apple fanboy but I am not, I have plenty issues with Apple products but when it comes to Privacy Apple is the only company amongst the big tech we can trust. Microsoft, Google, Facebook are all anti-privacy and just about using dar patterns to steal users info. It’s disgusting.
  - fsflover 4y ago
    > when it comes to Privacy Apple is the only company amongst the big tech we can trust No, it's not: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34299433 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34299433, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26639261 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26639261, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26644216 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26644216.
  - kube-system 4y ago
    I wouldn't leap that far, I'm just talking about the lid switch on a laptop here.
- raxxorraxor 4y ago
  It is still the correct solution. A sensible default doesn't conflict here, but hardware switched are the only solution where you can be entirely sure.
  - kube-system 4y ago
    The problem is a separate switch leaves mainstream non-paranoid users unprotected, because it requires conscious activation by the user. And anyway, a lid switch is a hardware switch. But most importantly, it activates passively during normal usage patterns.
matthewmacleod 4y ago
No, that's not the "correct solution". It's another valid solution, with a different set of costs and benefits.
908B64B197 4y ago
I'd rather have an LED on the same circuit as the microphone. If it's live, it has to send current through it. Easy to observe.
j45 4y ago
Even if it was configurable to disable either.

itslennysfault 4y ago

[flagged]

crazygringo 4y ago

The microphone is located inside the left speaker grille anyways, so it would be terribly muffled in clamshell mode anyways. Note this is in contrast to previous models where the microphone had a tiny hole on the left edge (next to USB-C ports) and it could be used in clamshell mode. Which at first I thought felt like a downgrade... but the reality is that your laptop isn't usually in a good position for mic pickup when it's closed anyways -- people often keep it off to the side or something, under a monitor riser, etc. While the speaker grille location, being front-facing rather than side-facing, is far better for picking up voice when using the laptop normally. And that anybody using a mic in clamshell mode usually already has one in their webcam or AirPods or headset or a dedicated mic anyways. So all in all it seems to work out pretty well.

prettyStandard 4y ago
Can confirm with my older MacBook that anytime I try to use the microphone with the lid closed people always complain.
j45 4y ago
I have leaned on the clamshell mode mic from time to time as well. Tbh getting a simple but high quality mic has been nice. It picked up a Steelseries Tusk. It was the highest recording quality I could find for in ear headphone with a small boom mic for the dollar. Easy to leave one each in my bag and desks if I like it. I’m considering finding a way to use the mic only. It doesn’t hurt to be the clearest sounding person by a long shot on most calls. https://www.amazon.com/SteelSeries-Tusq-Mobile-Gaming-Headset/dp/B096L3ZJ26/ https://www.amazon.com/SteelSeries-Tusq-Mobile-Gaming-Headse... https://www.rtings.com/headphones/reviews/steelseries/tusq https://www.rtings.com/headphones/reviews/steelseries/tusq .. the recording quality section is of interest.
bilekas 4y ago
The 2015 pro model i have is an absolute nightmare for the fan as the mic was picking up the noise of the fan and so the CPU was working overtime to cancel the noise leading to cascading fan and heat noise. Ended up just disabling it completely permanently. Was a particularly bad design i think.

alin23 4y ago

In case you or anyone else needs to disable the MacBook screen and still use the mic, camera, keyboard, trackpad etc. I added a feature called BlackOut in my Lunar app that can do that (https://lunar.fyi/#blackout https://lunar.fyi/#blackout). This allows "clamshell mode" without closing the lid. (although some people might want to close the lid for desk aesthetics, this feature is not for them) On Apple Silicon with macOS Ventura the feature can really disconnect the screen by Command-clicking the power button: https://shots.panaitiu.com/x52NJxpR https://shots.panaitiu.com/x52NJxpR There's also a write-up on how I reverse engineered this feature: https://alinpanaitiu.com/blog/turn-off-macbook-display-clamshell/ https://alinpanaitiu.com/blog/turn-off-macbook-display-clams... On older systems, BlackOut mimics a disconnect by setting the screen to 0 brightness and mirroring it to avoid windows getting trapped there.

Firmwarrior 4y ago
haha, that was a really interesting writeup. It looked a lot like the process I end up following when I try to reverse engineer something The whole way through I kept wondering "Wow, I wonder how he's going to tie this all together in the end!" .. and then I got to the end
cscharenberg 4y ago
This is incredible software. Thank you for linking to it. It has features I've long wished for in a laptop!

dheera 4y ago

And how are we supposed to trust Apple that this is in fact what's happening? With a Framework laptop I have a hardware physical switch and I can actually open it up and see the PCB trace and verify that it disconnects the microphone.

zamnos 4y ago
At the point that you're opening up the laptop and chasing traces, you can do the same thing with Apple devices (with a bit more difficulty). It's not like they're made with rainbows and moonbeams. If you're at that level of paranoia (no judgement if it's justified or not) and have the skill to, just open up the Apple device and chase PCB traces. If you go down that route, iFixit's a good resource with lots of helpful pictures. (But still sometimes not enough.)
- dheera 4y ago
  If it's in-chip, it won't be with PCB traces, it would be solid state inside the chip and you wouldn't be able to verify without inspecting the wafer, which is way outside my area of expertise. It doesn't sound like there's a mechanical relay that they are using for this. There's also that if it's inside the chip, there is a risk that malicious software or buggy firmware can still enable it against your permission. With a Framework laptop you can peel back the bezel and it's right there in plain sight. If the switch is in the off position it's a hard physical break to the microphone circuit. There is no possible software that can enable the microphone.
  - zamnos 4y ago
    Nothing can beat a physical switch but even if it's solid state, unless it's in the CPU itself (it isn't) there still need to be traces in/on the PCB to bring the data from the microphone to the rest of the system, so just probe those traces when the lid is open vs closed. Or learn how to decap chips. There are some really awesome videos out there about that on YouTube! More importantly though, Apple learned their lesson with the iSight which had a software-based activation LED. They assumed a random script kiddie wouldn't have the smarts to be able to hack the kext kernel module to turn the camera on without also turning the LED on. Unfortunately they learned about the Internet shortly thereafter where random script kiddies were able to get instructions on how to modify that kext, leading to some embarrassing moments, for some (possibly naked) high school teens, and for Apple. Thats why the linked article is very careful to specifically mention that even having root and being able to manipulate kexts is not enough to silently use the microphone while closed. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35059224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35059224

r00fus 4y ago

Just use a headset or external mic. If you're in clamshell you're probably at your desk/home office so that's quite reasonable. Also nice - if I'm WFH and one of my family walks in with some drama, I close the lid, go clamshell mode, and I am quite sure any corporate spyware isn't listening in.

dividedbyzero 4y ago
I wish there were good quality webcams without microphones. My external microphone has a mute switch but my Streamcam mic is still available to any corporate spyware.
- reductum 4y ago
  I wish the same. In the meantime, I like using these physical USB switches to easily disconnect my webcam when not in use: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07X82661H https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07X82661H
  - dividedbyzero 4y ago
    There don't seem to be any USB3 capable ones sadly. The webcam I use supports USB2 too, but image quality takes a noticeable dip.

samstave 4y ago

>>"Apple silicon-based Mac" What does "silicon-based" - mean? What other computer is not 'silicon-based'? -- Is there a way to mechanize the HW detachment of microphone connections at will while using the machine open? That would be great - if you had a physical switch on the side of machine, which physicall moves the mic wire a mm away from the contact. --- Weird thing - I put tape over my webcam at all times, unless in use, obv. After some time I received a pop-up alert on windows 11 and it lasted briefly, and went away - but freaked me out: "You should unblock your webcam" or something to that effect, I dont have the exact wording - but it was an alert telling me to unblock visibility of my webcam - I think it may have mentioned something about UX reasons - but it happened so quick I missed all the wording. Yeah - tape over your cams. ---- It would be cool to have a phone case where is the case screen-facing-flap is closed, it pulls the wool over the eyes of the front-facing cams, so even in 'sleep' mode when the case is closed, the phones cams are all covered... but the mic is a different creature. ------ Remember when NSA was intercepting cisco equipment to install HW back doors in devices shipped to 'enemy' states. We have known forever about NSA HW backdoors... but a case that can manipulate the HW MIC switchoff mechanism of a phone with such capability would be cool. Else ; we need 100% trustworthy ability to disable our Spy-Pilots.

sirsar 4y ago
> >>"Apple silicon-based Mac" > What does "silicon-based" - mean? What other computer is not 'silicon-based'? Read as (Apple silicon)-based.
- samstave 4y ago
  Thank you. Wasn't aware.
weberer 4y ago
"Apple Silicon" is the brand of processors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_silicon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_silicon
- samstave 4y ago

sixothree 4y ago

I assume clamshell mode would affect heat dissipation through the keyboard.

dclowd9901 4y ago

Lid sensors? Why didn’t they just have a hinge that the wiring ran through that disconnects at a certain angle…