Apple: Using a camera cover might damage your MacBook's display | Hacker News Reader

Apple: Using a camera cover might damage your MacBook's display

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53 pointshacsky98 comments

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:

https://images.techhive.com/images/article/2015/12/isight-02...

That was good privacy-first design.

They still have that design ...

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.

People are more worried about the camera turning on unexpectedly than they are about hearing something they weren't supposed to.

you could working from home without a tshirt because its really hot.

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.

> If your work environment requires you to cover the camera on your Mac notebook, follow these guidelines to avoid damaging the display:

> Make sure the camera cover is not thicker than an average piece of printer paper (0.1mm).

> Avoid using a camera cover that leaves adhesive residue.

> If you install a camera cover that is thicker than 0.1mm, remove the camera cover before closing your computer.

To me this sounds reasonable.

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.

Because people don't trust the activity LED.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/12/perv-...

Has Apple fixed the issue? Most likely. But do you trust Apple completely? Would a $0.50 piece of plastic solve that trust issue?

Sure but you can just use a 0.1mm sticker. 4 thou is a lot for a camera cover unless it's one of those plastic ones with the sliding window

I'm guessing the sliding thing is what most people use. People do use their cameras, but want to be sure it's off when it's off.

The unreasonable part is that this does not seem to be necessary on literally any other laptop.

People just kept doing what they have been doing for years with their old laptops, but now their very expensive new laptop broke -> unreasonable.

Old plastic laptops were bendy, creaky and had very high tolerances, but people didn't quite like the downsides of that.

So Apple makes a metal machine with very low tolerances that feels super solid.

> feels super solid.

But breaks, so yeah "feels" is the keyword here.

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.

The point is that we cannot trust Zoom or any software to always have sane defaults, and it is a professional hazard.

I use a bit of blue painters tape, which is thin enough not to put significant extra pressure on the display.

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.

I am surprised Apple for all its wealth in industrial design and user experience haven't figured out people need a physical cover on their cameras

if they added one it would be a form of implicit admittance that the camera is always recording

But it’s not always recording, and few people use a camera cover.

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.

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".

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.

> 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.

Those pivots were only possible once Ive left.

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).

FaceID doesn't exist on the Mac and uses synthetic data for training [1].

And I don't believe anyone on here is talking about camera covers for their phone.

[1] https://machinelearning.apple.com/research?page=1&sort=oldes...

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.

( https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT208108 ).

It can also help to improve facial recognition in photos which Apple has been featuring for some time now in their Photos app.

>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).

1: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/security/secbbd20b00b/...

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.

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”

[0] https://support.apple.com/guide/security/hardware-microphone...

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.

Somehow other laptop manufacturers starting with Lenovo have figured it out and are providing built-in physical lens covers.

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.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/lenovo-thinkshutter-laptops-...

Exactly. Industrial designers are trained and then paid to solve these kinds of seemingly intractable (to us mere mortals) design problems.

I'm surprised you're surprised. Apple has been deviating from good UX little by little every year now.

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.

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?

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.

I’d argue the Mac is nearly as locked down too, at least as far as the permissions that apps have and are granted, for things like the mic and 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.

or pointing at you on the toilet

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.

I have a phone with a pop-up front facing camera and it's great. Sad to see it going away in favor of in-display cameras and notches.

> 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.

It’s literally not. Cameras and ambient light sensors are different things.

You skipped right over “True Tone” which has to use the camera. Because color.

From https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208909:

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.

Find reveals 0 matches for the word “channel” on that page.

That’s because the word is “multichannel”. Safari on iOS, at least, doesn’t find “channel”. Not sure about other browsers.

True and that’s weird.

Because Safari is shit. Real browsers find it fine.

Nope, it uses the light sensor.

It uses a multichannel ambient light sensor, which is not a camera. https://www.ifixit.com/News/54122/macbook-pro-2021-teardown

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”.

Has anyone verified independently that the camera power is hardwired to the LED power on recent Apple hardware?

Seems worth checking.

My goal isn't to know when I'm being spied on, it is to avoid being spied on at all :)

And I suppose barring that, ignorance is bliss to you?

Not at all, only pointing out the skewed perspective surrounding this topic.

Worse actually, there is no physical indicator LED on the latest (M1) laptops, it's an indicator icon in the menu bar.

In the "better" category, Apple claims webcam access is controlled by the secure enclave processor, which is more than most manufacturers do.

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!

> Good old MacBooks had a LED indicator for the mic.

No, this is not true. Apple never included a physical indicator for microphone use on any computer.

> Good old MacBooks had a LED indicator for the mic

Are you sure about that? I've had the plastic MacBook and a few MacBook Pros, and none of them had a hardware visual indicator for the mic.

Would add that the microphone is hardware disconnected when lid is closed:

https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/security/secbbd20b00b/...

So you should have some guarantee that no one is spying when laptop is sleeping at least.

This is not actually "hardware disconnected", more like "firmware disconnected". Consider Purism Librem 14 if you actually want a hardware kill switch.

> Worse actually, there is no physical indicator LED on the latest (M1) laptops, it's an indicator icon in the menu bar.

This isn't true. I just tested it. There is definitely a physical LED next to the camera, within the "notch" area of the display.

Same with the M2 Air. Physical indicator in the notch.

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

It hardly matter much, but yes, worth checking.

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.

Also, LEDs do fail.

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.

> 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.

It's especially problematic when those users are children. E.g. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/11/us-stu...

> 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.

Not all security measures are logical or affective. They are compulsory though.

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?

https://www.publicschoolreview.com/blog/is-your-school-spyin...

There are plenty of other examples of cases where this specific brand of paranoia is reasonable

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.

[0]: https://www.allure.com/story/online-predators-blackmail-sext...

She was compromised by social engineering, not by accessing a MacBook camera while bypassing the led

"They" can be anyone with the latest 0-day exploit.

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).

Privacy has a cost in most cases. This being an unusual example of cost.

Or make a model without cameras.

I’ve had a camera cover since 2015, hasn’t damaged any of my macbook pros or macbook airs. Not gonna stop using one.

same.

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.

The level of paranoia nowadays is too damn high

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