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A comment on Don't close your MacBook with a cover over the camera. Parent comment

Re:Don't close your MacBook with a cover over the camera by roenxi on Friday July 10, 2020 @07:42PM (#23797946)
I expect you are probably correct, but it doesn't really matter. If you don't want to be filmed, the correct engineering approach is not to have a camera pointed at you 24/7. It is a bit like the gun rule of not pointing a gun at things you don't want to shoot - sure, the trigger should be enough of a control, but accidents happen.

If you spend your entire life with a camera pointed at your face, your face (and activity) will be accidentality filmed by that camera sooner or later. Indicator or otherwise. The indicator light is a good idea but I'm still spiritually on the side of the tape people.

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Re:Don't close your MacBook with a cover over the camera by neltnerb on Friday July 10, 2020 @07:58PM (#23798047)
Indeed, I'm a little surprised Apple didn't follow the Thinkpad approach of simply having a sliding piece with an aperture that extremely obviously blocks the camera. Surely Apple can't seriously think their users would be confused by this and complain... I don't think my desktop computer's webcam is likely to get hacked either but I'm still going to unplug it when I'm not using it.

Complex systems are hard to secure.

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Re:Don't close your MacBook with a cover over the camera by hn_throwaway_99 on Friday July 10, 2020 @08:30PM (#23798233)
I can see Jony Ive's head exploding: "Sullying my perfect, smooth, invented-new-aluminum-machining-technology-to-make-it-possible masterpiece with some latch?! Why don't you go work for Dell."
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Re:Don't close your MacBook with a cover over the camera by wl on Friday July 10, 2020 @08:37PM (#23798287)
The original iSight camera had a leaf shutter. It's not a foreign concept to them.
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Re:Don't close your MacBook with a cover over the camera by saagarjha on Friday July 10, 2020 @09:24PM (#23798565)
The original iSight had a hundred times more depth and also happened to be an external camera. Bringing it up here is irrelevant.
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Re:Don't close your MacBook with a cover over the camera by bigwavedave on Friday July 10, 2020 @10:50PM (#23799044)
It's not irrelevant, it's information that allows any reasonable person to conclude that Apple implemented a solution before and has since decided to exchange that simple and effective failsafe for a marginally thinner product. I can't physically control whether I have a naked camera pointed at me all day but hey, at least my laptop can fit into a manilla envelope, right? Right? Totally worth it.
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Re:Don't close your MacBook with a cover over the camera by saagarjha on Saturday July 11, 2020 @03:59AM (#23800403)
It’s irrelevant to bring up iSight’s shutter because they are totally different products. It was literally hundreds of times larger than the cameras we’re talking about here; so it makes no sense to expect a shutter on these just because iSight had them more than a decade ago. That’s like saying that a racecar should have folding seats because a minivan might have it and they are both vehicles.
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Re:Don't close your MacBook with a cover over the camera by kumarvvr on Friday July 10, 2020 @10:10PM (#23798856)
There are a number of ways to do it, other than a sliding latch, in case Apple wants to avoid adding thickness to the screen.

1. Electrically blurred glass. 2. Polarizing filters 3. Power kill switch, in hardware. But I guess Applw will balk at this too.

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Re:Don't close your MacBook with a cover over the camera by rubber_duck on Friday July 10, 2020 @10:38PM (#23799000)
A peace of plastic in front of the camera is really simple to understand and trust - the rest you need to know about tech and trust someone did it correctly.
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Re:Don't close your MacBook with a cover over the camera by Jweb_Guru on Friday July 10, 2020 @10:55PM (#23799064)
None of those have the advantage of (for the end user) extremely obviously blocking light.
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Re:Don't close your MacBook with a cover over the camera by pfranz on Friday July 10, 2020 @11:31PM (#23799221)
I'm pretty confident after the 2008 camera exploit they engineered the camera to wire the active light directly to the camera power source, which I think is what you're talking about with #3. #1 and #2 seem kind of irrelevant to me. Unless it manually operated (in that case, why not use a physical switch?) it behaves the same as the green indicator light, relies on #3, and after its turned on it's already capturing.
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Re:Don't close your MacBook with a cover over the camera by comex on Friday July 10, 2020 @09:01PM (#23798434)
I wonder, do the ThinkPads with that feature have a thicker lid than Apple laptops? I suspect they be thicker anyway because of the touchscreen, which would then provide a few millimeters more room for a shutter. But I'm completely speculating.
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Re:Don't close your MacBook with a cover over the camera by dahfizz on Friday July 10, 2020 @10:16PM (#23798892)
I have a new X1 Carbon, and I don't have a MacBook to compare but I can't imagine needing my laptop to be lighter or thinner. It easily fits into any bag and I can carry it with one hand with no worry.

I will gladly trade a millimeter of thickness for increased functionality. It's the same thing where apple will ruthlessly optimize for thickness to the point where they can't cool the CPUs. They literally prefer form over function, as if the tool I use all day every day is an art piece.

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Re:Don't close your MacBook with a cover over the camera by userbinator on Friday July 10, 2020 @11:54PM (#23799323)
as if the tool I use all day every day is an art piece.

Isn't that part of the appeal of Apple products? People will gladly spend more because of the looks, not the functionality.

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Re:Don't close your MacBook with a cover over the camera by symlinkk on Friday July 10, 2020 @09:29PM (#23798597)
They probably don't do that because it implicitly says "we don't trust our software to be secure"
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Re:Don't close your MacBook with a cover over the camera by saagarjha on Saturday July 11, 2020 @04:01AM (#23800410)
But they have hardware disconnects for some of their sensors.
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Re:Don't close your MacBook with a cover over the camera by jojobas on Friday July 10, 2020 @08:57PM (#23798418)
Think different.
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Re:Don't close your MacBook with a cover over the camera by dng88 on Friday July 10, 2020 @09:39PM (#23798655)
It is the mentality not the thinking. In china no one trust anyone really. Hence security strangely is no 1 priority. Hence the cover is in Lenovo portable, but not apple. You are guilty somehow somewhere and to be checked out, and vice visa.

Like fish said to be the final species to discover water, one mainlander comes to hk and surprise to see us so relax about security. What the law even assume people are innocent until proved otherwise ...

the mentality of hermit in One of the largest population of ... hermits. You just put on your shell.

As now become one of the hermit by force and talked as a hermit, may I suggest they just do it away with the camera. Use a wireless or usb based one. No hacking possible.

Economically (if not ethnically) trust is important as it lower the transaction costs. Chicago school heritage I guess of pre NSO HONG Kong. I switch to my two mac Mini of intel and arm. Unfortunately still have the old 3 cable apple monitor (work well with both 2018 and 2012 MacBook Pro) that have a camera. Guess a cover is ok.

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Re:Don't close your MacBook with a cover over the camera by neltnerb on Saturday July 11, 2020 @01:33PM (#23803946)
I think you'd have to pay extra to buy a laptop without an integrated camera and microphone, not to mention there likely being no options that are also actually high performance laptops.

Yeah, not ideal.

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Re:Don't close your MacBook with a cover over the camera by nojito on Friday July 10, 2020 @08:24PM (#23798204)
The camera can't turn on without power going to the light.

The user controls which apps get to turn on the camera...no one else.

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Re:Don't close your MacBook with a cover over the camera by redisman on Friday July 10, 2020 @08:33PM (#23798261)
Would you notice it if it was one frame every 15 minutes for example? As for the second point, sure. In theory. If there’s no bugs or vulnerabilities or backdoors
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Re:Don't close your MacBook with a cover over the camera by eanzenberg on Friday July 10, 2020 @09:53PM (#23798741)
The led doesnt work that way. Stays on for 3s min
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