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.
