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A comment on Intel driven MacBook Pros have secondary ARM processor for Touch ID and security. Parent comment

Re:Intel driven MacBook Pros have secondary ARM processor fo... by johnm1019 on Saturday October 29, 2016 @12:53PM (#12824834)
I'm guessing it's not that simple because there may be situations when the camera has power and is capturing an image (think hot-standby) but is not transmitting image data to the world outside the sensor package.
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Re:Intel driven MacBook Pros have secondary ARM processor fo... by adrianN on Saturday October 29, 2016 @01:01PM (#12824900)
I don't want my camera to capture pictures without the LED being on, ever.
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Re:Intel driven MacBook Pros have secondary ARM processor fo... by vigilant on Saturday October 29, 2016 @01:46PM (#12825214)
And what if I turn on the camera for a tenth of a second, take a picture, and turn it off. You won't notice the LED being on for a tenth of a second. Software makes it easier to prevent such things.
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Re:Intel driven MacBook Pros have secondary ARM processor fo... by TillE on Saturday October 29, 2016 @03:59PM (#12826013)
You definitely don't need software to add a little delay for turning off the LED, but sure, it would be slightly more complicated than just a dang wire.
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Re:Intel driven MacBook Pros have secondary ARM processor fo... by GuiA on Saturday October 29, 2016 @05:42PM (#12826563)
Just wrote a test app on macOS that initializes the camera, gets the first video frame, and turns it off. You definitely notice the bright green LED being on for a split second.
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Re:Intel driven MacBook Pros have secondary ARM processor fo... by culturestate on Saturday October 29, 2016 @06:10PM (#12826704)
You only notice it immediately if you're looking for it. I've gone minutes with the camera on before noticing the LED while I was distracted by other stuff on the screen.
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Re:Intel driven MacBook Pros have secondary ARM processor fo... by cormacrelf on Sunday October 30, 2016 @05:01AM (#12828779)
Source code?
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Re:Intel driven MacBook Pros have secondary ARM processor fo... by CapacitorSet on Saturday October 29, 2016 @01:53PM (#12825263)
Why not both? It is trivial to make a circuit such that the LED is on if either there is power to the camera, or the software tells you to.
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Re:Intel driven MacBook Pros have secondary ARM processor fo... by halflings on Saturday October 29, 2016 @02:21PM (#12825476)
I would guess you could do the same with a circuit, even if that means you lose on flexibility (but given the concerns of many users, I'd say it's worthy).
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Re:Intel driven MacBook Pros have secondary ARM processor fo... by ThrustVectoring on Saturday October 29, 2016 @08:19PM (#12827313)
A small piece of black tape or a physical shutter is likely a better choice. Who cares if the camera is on if it can't pick up anything?

The microphone, on the other hand, is kind of a bigger deal and still has that issue.

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Re:Intel driven MacBook Pros have secondary ARM processor fo... by therein on Saturday October 29, 2016 @10:01PM (#12827695)
Yeah, exactly since the camera in the previous generation MBP actually had 4GB SD storage on it.
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