The earliest Apple camera that I'm aware of was the external iSight webcam which had both an LED to tell you when it was on and an iris that physically blocked the lens by twisting the camera head:
Just curious, why is a camera considered somehow more privacy invading than a microphone? I would rather like to have physical switch for mike. I don’t really care if someone sees my ugly mug picking boogers. Listening in on business discussions in the next room over is another story. Let alone the contents of the machine itself or the rest of the network that “they” probably already have if they are capable of turning cameras on and off.
I think in a work environment that makes sense. However as a average person sitting on home watching netflix with questionable amount of clothing on, what I say barely matters, but what the camera sees can be extremely privacy violating.
In my case, this is actually happening right now :) In the view of several potentially hacked cameras. But I still don't care at all about that image leaking somewhere. But I still prefer to step outside the room when discussing personal information over phone.
Yeah that just seems like common sense. Dunno why people use those hard plastic covers that prevent the lid from closing properly and put all the pressure on one part of the LCD.
For me, covering my work computer’s camera isn’t out of concern for malware
Some software like Zoom has invasive defaults, where a meeting host may choose to force cameras on for participants when they join a meeting. I don’t trust software to respect me, so the tape makes sure turning my camera on or off is always my decision.
There is a Zoom setting in preferences “stop my video when joining a video meeting”. There is also the dialog that pops up before you join asking if you want to join with or without video.
I don’t see any way for a host to force video on. All I see is that they can send a request to you to turn your video on.
If you disable the dialog to turn on video, and the host “sends a request to turn video on”, the participant will be forced to turn their video on initially when joining a meeting and have to manually disable it.
Anyway, the Zoom example is the least important part of my comment. I can’t trust any of those settings, because Zoom might change the defaults or overwrite what I have. I can trust tape, though. Tape won’t betray me for the sake of engagement metrics.
The title is inaccurate. The linked webpage says “Don't close your MacBook, MacBook Air, or MacBook Pro with a cover over the camera”. You can use the cover all you want, just don’t close the screen with the cover.
This is just common sense. Don’t close a screen and wedge something in there that occupies the millimeters of space between glass and metal. If you do so, you’re taking a risk, which maybe you’re ok with if your cover is thin, like a PostIt note.
From an industrial designer's perspective (I'm not an industrial designer), a physical camera cover adds moving parts that can break, get stuck or wear out. It also makes the laptop's lid thicker. And it adds some friction to video calls as people would just forget to open the camera cover.
Lenovo has a plastic bezel around the screen which makes it easy for them to add this feature [1]. I am not an Industrial Engineer but it would seem much more difficult to do this with glass and not impact the structural integrity of the screen.
Having just had my screen be ruined by a micro-fracture I would rather just trust the green indicator dot than be without my laptop for a week.
We are talking about the company that had the "courage" to remove the headphone jack, and my MacBook "Pro" has just two Thunderbolt ports. No USB, no SD, no Ethernet. So I wouldn't try to find any consumer-friendly logic here.
You are making the assumption that there is a need for a physical cover. Apple’s solution is a camera with an inline indicator light that is not under app or OS control.
No, it would be a privacy feature, just like hardware microphone disconnect is [0]:
“All Apple silicon-based Mac notebooks and Intel-based Mac notebooks with the Apple T2 Security Chip feature a hardware disconnect that disables the microphone whenever the lid is closed”
The same way that adding options is a form of implicit admittance that they don't always know best what their users do?
Apple's attitude has always been condescending. Forcing users to fit the product, instead of the other way around. Then again, this totalitarian mentality isn't only confined to Apple.
No, if they added one it would show that they actually care about reassuring their users' privacy, instead of merely saying "trust us".
> Apple's attitude has always been condescending. Forcing users to fit the product, instead of the other way around
It's funny because having actually worked at Apple this isn't the case at all.
They do a lot of product market research and PMs always read Radar, Feedback Reporter etc. Look at the recent pivots on keyboard, TouchBar, MagSafe, SD card etc.
It's more that people such as yourself are being condescending by assuming that your view of the world is the right one and everyone else is wrong.
In this case you assume that people (a) don't trust that Apple always shows the indicator light when the camera is on and (b) are willing to accept a thicker device for this feature.
But people are still using Apple products and seems fine with the totalitarian approach. Perhaps they care more about delivering values to the general customers, e.g. no physical cover for slightly smaller form factor? (if this is the constraint against having a physical cover)
Perhaps it's just me, I wonder why would people say that they love open-source while using devices with such a closed ecosystem, using various approaches to make it incompatible other things.
That may be the case for geeks like us. We’re not Apple’s core customer though. For the vast majority of them, Apple does indeed know better. The iPhone is proof of that.
And now that most buttons are controlled by software anyway, where’s the difference to a “physical” button? Better to have a hard-wired camera light that you cannot bypass.
Apart from that, not having to choose often feels more liberating than restricting. You’re almost guaranteed to be overwhelmed by options and feel stupid afterwards, no matter what you chose, because there is always a better choice to be made. Ever detailed a new car? It’s paralyzing. Base models are simply base templates. Options creep in. If you allow several, intransparent dependencies appear, frustrate you and soon you expect everything to be completely modular.
Better to have a small number of pre-defined, comprehensive packages.
Not really - if they wanted they could come up with some bullshit marketing it as a "feature" - e.g. "Now with Cover to protect the high resolution retina lens of the camera" etc. I suspect they don't want to include a camera cover, (and would prefer to discourage the practice) so that they can use it to collect more data (lighting, environment etc) and to improve FaceID (hopefully only for those who have enabled it).
I meant for the data - they can use the Camera on the mac to capture the facial features of the user ... daily or weekly captures of the face can certainly help to improve and reach the goals of FaceID:
> Face ID automatically adapts to changes in your appearance, such as wearing cosmetic makeup or growing facial hair ... Face ID is designed to work with hats, scarves, glasses, contact lenses, and many sunglasses. Furthermore, it's designed to work indoors, outdoors, and even in total darkness.
And to improve features like:
> Even if you don’t enroll in Face ID, the TrueDepth camera intelligently activates to support attention aware features, like dimming the display if you aren't looking at your device or lowering the volume of alerts if you're looking at your device. For example, when using Safari, your device checks to determine if you're looking at your device and turns the screen off if you aren’t. If you don’t want to use these features, you can open Settings > Face ID & Passcode and disable Attention Aware Features.
>I meant for the data - they can use the Camera on the mac to capture the facial features of the user ... daily or weekly captures of the face can certainly help to improve and reach the goals of FaceID
You're picking a very odd target for this in Apple, who are pretty clear about their attitude on privacy, especially when it comes to cameras and microphones - for instance modern Macs and iPads have hardware disconnects for the microphones[1] when closed & Macs have green indicator LEDs wired into the camera hardware to make it impossible to activate the camera without the light coming on (as noted in the article we're commenting on!)
Also, you're still talking about FaceID: the parent comment pointed out that FaceID doesn't exist on the Mac. Craig Federighi was actually asked about FaceID support for the new notch Macs when they were released, and he said that he didn't think there was a benefit vs the TouchID sensor because it'd still be necessary to have the user tap a physical button to confirm actions -- e.g. for purchases or privilege escalation. The camera assembly would also need to be thicker & larger to put the FaceID projector & IR camera in place.
On using continuously (and surreptitiously/illegally) captured camera data to improve FaceID's model of the owner for iPhone/iPad: there's just no need to continuously capture - there is already plenty of opportunity to update the face model every time the phone is unlocked. I don't know what the stats on this are but I'd imagine users are unlocking their phones hundreds of times a day.
>It can also help to improve facial recognition in photos which Apple has been featuring for some time now in their Photos app.
They already have lots of data here from your photos already, and since they're stored in your photo library your Mac has access to them to re-run recognition if needed if an updated version of the Photos app comes with a model update. Not to mention that by using above-board data they are able to get corrections for classification errors (since the user operating/looking at the computer may well not be the account owner).
I appreciate the time you have taken to appreciate explain some of the things. I would tend to believe most of it if I wasn't so cynical to Apple's claims towards privacy personally (but that's me, and I can understand if you have a different stand on this). E.g. Once I updated my macOS, I noticed that all my previous privacy settings had again be reset to their default settings (including changing the settings in macOS firewall to allow Apples services to connect to my computer) that would allow Apple to harvest more of my personal data (data privacy laws are quite lax in my country). And now they are becoming an ad company and will use this same data against me. Cynical me wouldn't be surprised to learn if Apple was using the Camera on the Mac and iDevices to try and determine the emotional state through facial recognition, and collecting data on what a user does in that emotional state on the device - Apple already tracks what apps you open, what files you create, all your iMessages, all your safari browsing data and bookmarks etc.What better means to improve and offer personalised ads ...
I can understand being cynical given that experience.
Personally I trust them on privacy more than any other tech company, and I think would give them the benefit of the doubt that what you experienced was a settings bug (or a well-intentioned firewall exception) - but I'm sure I would feel differently if it was my settings that had been reset, and I know that once that trust is shaken it's nearly impossible to rebuild it.
Even so, they'd still be better off because at least the option would be there. It's no surprise Apple and other corporations still decide the "best way" for the consumer is to remove options, not keep/add to them.
Many people spend the time to cover their computer’s camera — either justifiably so or otherwise — but how many of those same people cover their phone’s front-facing camera?
How is that even comparable? A Laptop's camera is always pointing at you or your room. A phone's camera is mostly in your pockets or pointing at the ceiling.
How often is the phone on, and when it is, not pointed at you or your immediate surroundings?
We’ve had plenty of app developers manipulate the microphone without permission until Apple cracked down on it. With the latest versions of macOS, Apple has done the same. But it seems to me if people are wary of their computer, maybe they shouldn’t forget about the other computer they’re probably looking at way more often.
To be fair, phones are pretty locked down. An iPhone is probably the most secure computer that is easily available to (and able to be kept secure by) ordinary consumers.
> Covering the built-in camera might also interfere with the ambient light sensor and prevent features like automatic brightness and _True Tone_ from working.
Literally saying a Mac camera is an always-on device, regardless if the LED is illuminated or not.
Please quote the text you are referring to. I was unable to find any reference to. “multichannel light sensor” or anything that supports your above assertion. I would also point out a camera is in fact a “multichannel light sensor”.
The True Tone technology in Mac computers, Studio Display, and Apple Pro Display XDR uses advanced multichannel sensors to adjust the color and intensity of your display and Touch Bar to match the ambient light so that images appear more natural.
Yes, some security researchers at Johns Hopkins found an issue in older models (before 2013) that was since fixed and now it's should be impossible to circumvent it by software. https://daringfireball.net/2019/02/on_covering_webcams
As a former colleague pointed out: If some on is so far into my computer that they can disable the camera LED and turn on the camera, having leaked pictures of me walking around in my underwear is the least of my concerns.
He had a point. We're so afraid of bad guys spying on us using the built in camera that we forget if they are so far into our machines they can steal pretty much everything else.
I wish the camera's power circuitry were set up such that the LED were an integral part of it, so the LED failing would make the camera inoperable too.
The camera probably still gets voltage without the LED turning on, I remember a Louis Rossmann video where a Macbook failed to boot because of an overcurrent-caused defect in the camera.
The funniest thing about that was the fuse protecting the camera was intact.
There is a physical indicator LED for the camera. The LED indicator can't be seen if the camera isn't in use. Try launching Photo Booth and you'll see the LED indicator.
But, the latest Macs don't have a LED for the mic, which is a disappointment. Good old MacBooks had a LED indicator for the mic.
EDIT: sorry, my memory failed me. The old MacBooks didn't have a LED for the mic. On white plastic MacBooks (2006), there's two black dots around the camera. The dot on the right side is a LED for the camera. The dot on the left side is the mic, not the LED indicator for it. Thanks for correcting me!
This is not actually "hardware disconnected", more like "firmware disconnected". Consider Purism Librem 14 if you actually want a hardware kill switch.
> If your work environment requires you to cover the camera
Genuinely curious if this is a thing.
Between the 4 cameras in my phone and the CCTV everywhere, seems a bit of a little odd for the computer camera point directly at the operator to be the greatest concern and mandated to be covered.
Of course people arent just covering their camera, they are doing something to disable the audio capture as well right?
> seems a bit of a little odd for the computer camera point directly at the operator to be the greatest concern and mandated to be covered.
People who are working remotely, especially from home, are often in control of everything except their work laptop. The camera pointed right at you is poised to capture extremely private and intimate moments, because you don't _expect_ it to be on. But there's a precident of laptops owned by third-parties spying on their users.
> People who are working remotely, ... The camera pointed right at you is poised to capture extremely private and intimate moments
My private and intimate moments are had while my work laptop is off. The web filter blocks youtube, so I doubt private and intimate websites are allowed between zoom meetings.
A private and intimate moment could just be you hugging your son. It doesn't have to be porn. And while you may argue your coworkers seeing you hug your son isn't a big deal, the point is that it needs to be up to the user to decide.
Some work environments prohibit cameras because they may capture sensitive information or activities. On business laptops, a “camera delete” option is often available for this reason.
If practical I generally prefer something physical over a software solution.
Back in the less precision engineered days I used a cover - but since about 2015 I've been using a bit of blue masking tape. Works fine and in 7 years I've never had issues with adhesive residue
While (as others have pointed out already) there is a hardwired LED next to the camera on all portable Macs, you can buy very thin, reusable camera cover stickers e.g. from the EFF: https://supporters.eff.org/shop/laptop-camera-cover-set-ii
the camera covering never made sense to me and just seems like amateur hacker paranoia. if there truly is a "They" monitoring our every action in front of a computer, why are They more concerned about what we look like over what we're saying or doing on our computer?
That's not the point of a camera cover. It's not to protect against an APT (which is what I'm hoping you mean by a "they") but rather it is to serve as a last line of defense against an attacker that has compromised your system and hopes to use compromising photographs of yourself to get paid.
This isn't unreasonable. Attackers that have managed to compromise systems do use compromising photos as leverage. Literally it's called sextortion[0]. With the small price of a camera cover, you can be reasonably confident you're not a victim.
This actually happened with my friend's laptop. They were using a physical camera cover for a while and it was fine, but one day the laptop fell (not very hard) and the screen LCD cracked right down the middle (half the screen was green, very gruesome).
Use a piece of light-tack masking tape. Problem solved.
I recommend "washi tape" if you can find it.
Pro tip: fold one end of the tape over onto itself to stick together, you now have a pull-tab to easily remove the tape it if you need to make a video call.
https://images.techhive.com/images/article/2015/12/isight-02...
That was good privacy-first design.