Hardware microphone disconnect (2021)
support.apple.com
support.apple.com
Pretty cool safety feature!! Even though I'm sad I can't use my mic in clamshell mode
Maybe I'm just an extra-big baby about it all. But what I find a little annoying with the COVID-era of work-from-home and distance learning is how few people seem to care about audio. Even as a teenager on TeamSpeak, rather than getting a more expensive graphics card or whatever, I spent my money on an SM7B. Now it is more important than ever.
Maybe this isn't reasonable, but I feel like if not for yourself, to prevent "sorry, can you repeat that?" moments, you kind of owe it to the people who have to listen to you. Like as an autistic person, hearing a dozen people's overlapping background static, tinny compressed audio, etc, it really, truly slowly drives me nuts. I can't deal with that level of auditory sensory stuff all day. If someone has a bad microphone, I want out of the call ASAP.
A Shure SM58 will last you a lifetime, fit on your desk, cost <$100, and no one will ever complain about sound again.
This might seem like I am an Apple fanboy but I am not, I have plenty issues with Apple products but when it comes to Privacy Apple is the only company amongst the big tech we can trust.
Microsoft, Google, Facebook are all anti-privacy and just about using dar patterns to steal users info. It’s disgusting.
No, it's not: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34299433, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26639261, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26644216.
And anyway, a lid switch is a hardware switch. But most importantly, it activates passively during normal usage patterns.
Note this is in contrast to previous models where the microphone had a tiny hole on the left edge (next to USB-C ports) and it could be used in clamshell mode.
Which at first I thought felt like a downgrade... but the reality is that your laptop isn't usually in a good position for mic pickup when it's closed anyways -- people often keep it off to the side or something, under a monitor riser, etc. While the speaker grille location, being front-facing rather than side-facing, is far better for picking up voice when using the laptop normally. And that anybody using a mic in clamshell mode usually already has one in their webcam or AirPods or headset or a dedicated mic anyways.
So all in all it seems to work out pretty well.
Tbh getting a simple but high quality mic has been nice.
It picked up a Steelseries Tusk.
It was the highest recording quality I could find for in ear headphone with a small boom mic for the dollar.
Easy to leave one each in my bag and desks if I like it. I’m considering finding a way to use the mic only.
It doesn’t hurt to be the clearest sounding person by a long shot on most calls.
https://www.amazon.com/SteelSeries-Tusq-Mobile-Gaming-Headse...
https://www.rtings.com/headphones/reviews/steelseries/tusq .. the recording quality section is of interest.
Ended up just disabling it completely permanently. Was a particularly bad design i think.
I don't think the hardware disable is meant as a UX convenience ("let's always disable it in clamshell mode because it sounds terrible"), as that could have just been done in software. It's meant for people privacy-conscious people who want to see a closed laptop and be able to assume it's not recording.
Meanwhile, I'm looking at this throwaway aside in the article:
> (The camera isn’t disconnected in hardware, because its field of view is completely obstructed with the lid closed.)
and thinking to myself that somebody is going to figure out how to record audio given just the "completely obstructed" view of the camera.
There's a long history of attackers reliably detecting logging keys with audio using just inter-keystroke latency and some histograms, or easily figuring out PINs tapped out on a phone screen because the OS doesn't bother putting access to accelerometers or gyroscopes behind an app permission. Attackers get very creative, especially when they're told that something is "impossible".
I wrote some fiction about this. The cosmic microwave background is hiding an audio signal. It's the sound of a keyswitch. Humanity uses the radio astronomy equivalent of these techniques to discover which keystroke caused the big bang.
This allows "clamshell mode" without closing the lid. (although some people might want to close the lid for desk aesthetics, this feature is not for them)
On Apple Silicon with macOS Ventura the feature can really disconnect the screen by Command-clicking the power button: https://shots.panaitiu.com/x52NJxpR
There's also a write-up on how I reverse engineered this feature: https://alinpanaitiu.com/blog/turn-off-macbook-display-clams...
On older systems, BlackOut mimics a disconnect by setting the screen to 0 brightness and mirroring it to avoid windows getting trapped there.
The whole way through I kept wondering "Wow, I wonder how he's going to tie this all together in the end!" .. and then I got to the end
With a Framework laptop I have a hardware physical switch and I can actually open it up and see the PCB trace and verify that it disconnects the microphone.
There's also that if it's inside the chip, there is a risk that malicious software or buggy firmware can still enable it against your permission.
With a Framework laptop you can peel back the bezel and it's right there in plain sight. If the switch is in the off position it's a hard physical break to the microphone circuit. There is no possible software that can enable the microphone.
More importantly though, Apple learned their lesson with the iSight which had a software-based activation LED. They assumed a random script kiddie wouldn't have the smarts to be able to hack the kext kernel module to turn the camera on without also turning the LED on. Unfortunately they learned about the Internet shortly thereafter where random script kiddies were able to get instructions on how to modify that kext, leading to some embarrassing moments, for some (possibly naked) high school teens, and for Apple.
Thats why the linked article is very careful to specifically mention that even having root and being able to manipulate kexts is not enough to silently use the microphone while closed.
Linux is a little better. But it's not just the OS. I might be in a Google Meet call where I have given microphone access, but can I trust the mute button? I'd rather have a physical mute.
Also nice - if I'm WFH and one of my family walks in with some drama, I close the lid, go clamshell mode, and I am quite sure any corporate spyware isn't listening in.
What does "silicon-based" - mean? What other computer is not 'silicon-based'?
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Is there a way to mechanize the HW detachment of microphone connections at will while using the machine open?
That would be great - if you had a physical switch on the side of machine, which physicall moves the mic wire a mm away from the contact.
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Weird thing - I put tape over my webcam at all times, unless in use, obv.
After some time I received a pop-up alert on windows 11 and it lasted briefly, and went away - but freaked me out: "You should unblock your webcam" or something to that effect, I dont have the exact wording - but it was an alert telling me to unblock visibility of my webcam - I think it may have mentioned something about UX reasons - but it happened so quick I missed all the wording.
Yeah - tape over your cams.
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It would be cool to have a phone case where is the case screen-facing-flap is closed, it pulls the wool over the eyes of the front-facing cams, so even in 'sleep' mode when the case is closed, the phones cams are all covered... but the mic is a different creature.
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Remember when NSA was intercepting cisco equipment to install HW back doors in devices shipped to 'enemy' states.
We have known forever about NSA HW backdoors...
but a case that can manipulate the HW MIC switchoff mechanism of a phone with such capability would be cool.
Else ; we need 100% trustworthy ability to disable our Spy-Pilots.
Read as (Apple silicon)-based.
[edit] just following up, it was UnnaturalScrollWheels, which have been notarized: https://github.com/ther0n/UnnaturalScrollWheels/releases/tag...
But yeah, MacOS is a little like Gnome Shell. It requires a few basic apps to make it usable, but after that it's pretty excellent.
Installing random packages to fix OS stuff that should work out of the box was fun for a while :-)
no operating system ever has arrived on a user's computer completely configurable to any given user's preferences.
you're complaining about something that simply isn't possible without third party software and time spent by the user in question.
You're holding it wrong
However, it's often quite opinionated. So Apple's intended functionality may or may not jive with your preferences. This is neither a defense nor criticism of Apple, and it's not a defense or criticism of your preferences either.
I will point out that anecdotally, I don't hear too many people wanting their mouse's scrolling to work in the opposite direction as their trackpad. I think Apple's probably got well over 99% of the userbase covered with the defaults and opinions here. From a software/QA/UX perspective things get wild pretty quickly if you cover every < 1% use case.
you, the user, should expect it to work without any tweaks or workarounds
For example on Apple devices I've often wanted a feature that would let me skip PIN/FaceID authentication when connected to my home network. No such feature exists. But I'd say there's a clear distinction between a missing feature and "not just working."
Of course, "it just works" is a vague marketing phrase that they haven't used in a long time, perhaps a decade or more? So, whatever. You have the power to decide it means whatever you want it to mean, and then decide if Apple meets your made-up standard or not. I freely admit that's what I'm doing.
Really? I always heard it as something more like "we've thought of everything, all the details, and you don't have to fiddle with our products like with Windows." I think essential functionality is always implied, with any product, but with Apple, it seemed like their promise was for a higher level of user experience than that.
Acknowledged that this is an old marketing statement (I believe it was a Jobs-ism, which dates it), but please look at the context of the thread.
it seemed like their promise was for a higher
level of user experience than that.
Whether this is your cup of tea or your worst nightmare, I don't think this is particularly controversial!
Additionally, I think it's also uncontroversial that they're able to pursue/achieve a higher level of polish specifically thanks to the fact that they choose not to pursue the infinitely long tail of hardware combinations and software configurability. After all, as engineers we know that N possible feature toggles and knobs quickly can quickly approach 2^N or even N! combinations that need to be thought about and tested.
In short, I think it's sort of baffling to think that the omission of some pet niche feature equates to a piece of software "not working."
In contrast, if that omission makes you think the software stinks or simply isn't for you, that would make total sense to me.
The vast amount of MacOS apps built by the community to undo Apple's terrible and backwards UX choices, and the amounts of sales those apps get, disproves your theory that over 99% of people are fine with the defaults Apple forces on its users.
The more settings you have, the more inevitable this becomes... Assume for a moment that any given default you set, works well for 99% of your userbase. Then, the number of users satisfied with every last default breaks down as follows:
1 setting -> 99% of users satisfied 2 settings -> 98% of users satisfied 20 settings -> 81% of users satisfied 200 settings -> 13% of users satisfied
Apple has a lot of settings. Even if their defaults in general work for greater than 99% of their users, it becomes unrealistic at scale that every single default will satisfy any particular user, let alone all of them. Thus, those third-party apps that you see become popular in aggregate. That doesn't necessarily mean that Apple's defaults are wrong. They could be absolutely killing it on the defaults, and you would still expect to see these results -- in which case you would expect them to devote their attention to the common case, and to let the third-parties pick up the edge cases.
I suspect the same is true in the general case in the ios app store: that there is a long tail of apps used by a tiny %age of users, but with an enormous user base that's enough to make a free or even paid app.
And after about 35 years of mousing and about four years of iphoning I expected to want to revert apple's change to mouse-gesture-scrolling with Lion, but after only a few seconds I was sold. YMMV, of course, but I agree with the "99%" hypothesis.
that's a creative re-wording of "you're holding it the wrong way."
Not all Apple fans have been on board with the slow morph from general purpose computer to walled-garden console -- although admittedly that audience is probably mostly gone, anyway.
Apparently you had to use your iPhone 4 without a case and press a finger horizontally over the antenna line. I wasn't even able to trigger it in that pathological way. It was about as realistic as complaining your laptop doesn't work while being roasted in a microwave oven.
There are countless reasons to dislike Apple, including many factual reasons and of course personal taste. Not the biggest fan myself.
But when I see that iPhone 4 antenna issue mentioned, I know there's a particular sort of sentiment behind it.
OK, this is my biggest pain point after switching to MacOS for work, so let me go on a rant. Not only can't I imagine this particular scenario covering 99% of the userbase - I can't imagine anyone wanting this behavior with a regular mouse that has a scroll wheel (as opposed to buying Apple's Magic crap, which Apple wants you to do). Literally every other system is set up so that scrolling the wheel down would scroll the page down. And pretty much every laptop I've used had natural scrolling on a touchpad either by default, or as an option (a separate option from the mouse setting).
I could maybe see it sort of working if your mouse wheel has an infinite scroll feature, but even then it's super unintuitive.
But OK, let's buy into "think different" approach (AKA "we will break every convention ever set by man 'cause we're quirky like that") and assume that this is somehow more convenient if you haven't been contaminated by using other systems. What's the harm in providing a setting for other people? Like you said - it's a preference and a very simple one and a very common one, clearly not a 1% use case. How is this not a part of the system? The only answer I can find is: "we want you to buy Apple Magic Mouse, it feels natural there". The way the Apple pushes you into their shitty ecosystem is so anti-consumer that it boggles my mind that there's not that much pushback for it.
So far my experience after switching to MacOS had a very clear pattern: How do I enable "feature x"? -> Wait, I can't, seriously? This is basic OS functionality, how in the world is this not a default feature? -> (dig through dozens of "you're using it wrong" comments) -> OK, let's download yet another third party app then, I'm sure it will never serve as a vector for a supply-chain attack.
I had to edit some values in Windows Registry to get my gaming machine with Windows and a scroll wheel to scroll the same way my Mac does (which I prefer). Now you can imagine.
I have my phone, my laptop, my iPad, and two iPads for my kids, all on my account. I literally am unable to make my kid’s iPads forget my AirPods, because it is tied to the apple account. If I have the iPads forget them, it forgets them on all my devices. It is annoying as hell, I have to leave Bluetooth off on my kids iPads.
https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/set-up-a-childs-devic...
I think there's a hack involving getting a cheap phone number for each toddler, adding that to iCloud, then disabling message delivery to that number but I haven't tested it.
The ideal solution is iOS on iPad gets multiple user account support (like general purpose Macs and PCs have had for decades....), and you could just quickly throw on a new kid account, but Apple clearly like forcing you to buy one iPad per user account and reinstall everything every time it gets a new user - shared devices aren't as great for the company bottom line.
The sad thing is this support is largely there in the OS already built; its just locked to schools/businesses and is a PITA to setup for private owners:
https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/shared-ipad-overv...
Honestly, the lack of multiple user accounts is borderline criminal in my opinion, especially on the high spec expensive M1 iPad models that cost as much as a multi-user laptop.
In a world where (generally speaking) people are expensive and hardware is cheap, Apple probably thinks each person having their own device is easier than trying to shuffle around - potentially - 1 TB home directories for each person.
We're getting closer, but storage and networks need to get even better before the majority of regular people can do this and will tolerate it, not just the power users.
There is nothing cheap about iPads, especially the models that have the same M1 processors and similar pricepoints as a MacBook. It's laughable they don't have multiple user support today, and is solely to protect sales of the devices.
I'm genuinely surprised someone would defend this behaviour. Imagine you bought any other computer for north of 1000 dollars and you could only log one person in at a time - its unheard of, and was solved decades ago.
Again, iOS is already a multi-user OS - Apple just choose to artificially restrict how you can use it.
> potentially - 1 TB home directories for each person.
This is just being silly - people log families and many users into drives far smaller than this all the time.
> There is nothing cheap about iPads, especially the models that have the same M1 processors and similar pricepoints as a MacBook. It's laughable they don't have multiple user support today, and is solely to protect sales of the devices.
Compared to the days when people had 1 machine (e.g, mainframes) and connected to it with comparatively dumb terminal devices, yes, hardware is cheap.
For a more recent example, I'll point out that the first computer I was reasonably involved with getting into our house was a Dell 4100 in the late 90's. At the time, it cost ~$1400, a not insignificant portion of that price attributable to a CD-RW.
In short, you probably couldn't really get anything below $1000 - given that baseline, I don't know how you could say things aren't cheap when we now have Chromebooks in Edu/Business which are at best $250-300.
At least publicly, Apple doesn't break out P&L for each product/division, although they do give sales numbers, so it's difficult to say if missing features which let them hit a price point have an impact.
> I'm genuinely surprised someone would defend this behaviour. Imagine you bought any other computer for north of 1000 dollars and you could only log one person in at a time - its unheard of, and was solved decades ago.
iOS/iPadOS still has UNIX underneath, so multiuser is definitely possible, even if it's not exposed in the GUI in all situations. Give it time.
> This is just being silly - people log families and many users into drives far smaller than this all the time.
My point about the size of home directories is colored by my own experience - for example, I don't use streaming music services and am a bit of a video hoarder - ask people with kids how big their photo libraries are and I think you'll be surprised how much the average person is carrying around with them.
I'm sorry but I still find this hilarious. You can spend over 2k on an iPad that already has a cutting edge M2 CPU, the same CPU family that supports multiple users on every other non-iPad device, we are not waiting on anything here. Everything needed exists and has done so for decades.
Time is not required. A change to how Apple runs its iPad business is needed. This hasn't been a technical choice for a long time.
> yes, hardware is cheap.
You can buy an iPad in configurations up to 2500 dollars. For a single user computer. These are not cheap computers by any reasonable definition, given the amount of compute power you can buy for 1000 dollars elsewhere (including from Apple!).
> potentially - 1 TB home directories for each person.
> ask people with kids how big their photo libraries are and I think you'll be surprised how much the average person is carrying around with them.
Almost no kids have 1 TB iPads in my experience - they are far too expensive for children! Almost no adults have 1tb iPads given their cost as well really - it turns an iPad into a 4 figure device. But perhaps you think 1500 dollars + taxes is "cheap" for a single user computer with 1tb of storage too?
My final point - almost all of their competitors can do this today, often on much lower specification hardware too. Windows 11, Android and ChromeOS tablets all can have multiple user accounts, just like almost any other plain ole computer made in the last 20+ years.
I'd be worried that little Timmy would accidentally turn on photo sync or something for the adult's account and see... certain pictures he should not be seeing kinda-thing. Or iMessage and send something to someone. Though; if you're strict about the restrictions feature or guided access you should be safe?
I realized a couple weeks later MacOS display continuity (or "sidecar"?) was connecting to my Mac Mini located directly upstairs using it as a 2nd monitor while I'm downstairs.
My apple watch also regularly unlocks my Mac Mini when I'm downstairs (Mac Mini in a bedroom upstairs).
All of these features pose serious security issues if your physical location isn't secure/trusted.
There really should be a "Travel Mode" for MacOS that disables features like these. No one wants airport security to open a laptop and have the apple watch immediately unlock it for them while standing 20 feet away (or in another room).
I personally boot my laptops to the filevault screen and no further when going through the security checkpoints. Keeps the disk encrypted and requires my password to continue.
"That computer? Oh yeah, I just picked it up, officer; was going to start configuring it when when I arrive at my destination."
1: it depends on the person what that is, but it should be believable, "in character" so to speak.
https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/change-guest-user-s...
That can get you into trouble with customs when the device looks new.
Sadly that is not the Apple way. We'll have to wait years for them to come up with a "solution" that doesn't involve a disable button. If they even decide to work on it.
Have you tried macOS Lockdown Mode?
Per Apple, “Lockdown Mode is an optional, extreme protection that's designed for the very few individuals who, because of who they are or what they do, might be personally targeted by some of the most sophisticated digital threats. Most people are never targeted by attacks of this nature.”
Now that I have an apple silicon Mac and a keyboard with touch id, I turned that feature off.
Two fingers under the watch (far enough to cover the heartbeat sensor) and a swift upwards yank will pop the strap underneath and it’ll lift right off.
The thing is, if someone has your unlocked watch, what can they really do? This is a question I’ve never really known the answer to and doubt you ever would know clearly.
Certainly banking apps don’t seem to have a lot of functionality on watchOS, but I’m unsure to what extent being signed in on an unlocked watch is the same as being signed in on an unlocked phone. Can i authorise a new phone just from the watch? I can certainly get 2FA codes to the watch, so the answer I guess is maybe.
The good news, however, is that you don't appear to be able to use the Apple Watch mask unlock feature to pass further Face ID checks deeper in the system once unlocked, so your banking apps & password manager is safe... but your messages & e-mails are not...
My Apple Watch 7 regularily "forgets" that I am still wearing it. I have to enter my code roughly 2 times a day.
So to me, it feels like presence detection actually fires way to often in situations where the watch is still on the wrist.
It was neat for a couple of days until I was walking out of the room and my mac unlocked itself.
Last I heard
That's really mostly so that I don't lose my iPhone which I actually care about.
Point being, I feel this is getting into xkcd://538 territory.
Though certain EU courts can “make you give up” your password, as far as I know. Nonetheless, security is only good when it is used — widely-used biometrics with a potentially stronger password (due to not having to enter it all the times) is statistically safer for the population over everyone having “password1” as a secret. Especially with a good fallback like emergency mode on iphone/apple watch. Afterwards only the password can unlock the device, and it is a single long press of two hardware buttons.
“RIPA regulates the manner in which certain public bodies may conduct surveillance and access a person's electronic communications. The Act:
enables certain public bodies to demand that an ISP provide access to a customer's communications in secret;
enables mass surveillance of communications in transit;
enables certain public bodies to demand ISPs fit equipment to facilitate surveillance;
enables certain public bodies to demand that someone hand over keys to protected information;
allows certain public bodies to monitor people's Internet activities;
prevents the existence of interception warrants and any data collected with them from being revealed in court.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_Investigatory_...
But “going to court” rarely happens. 95% of cases are plea-bargained.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/plea_bargain
Given overwhelmingly evidence and an overworked public defenders office, you’re not going to take a chance on going to court where you will probably lose.
Can you configure it to power off when the lid shuts?
I’ve used it for years now with a variety of watches and Macs and I’ve always had to be right next to the computer with a fairly clear line of sight between them. Even putting my watch on the other side of my body is normally enough to make it tell me that the WiFi signal isn’t strong enough to unlock it.
[1] For cheapest devices, a physical button that goes to the next available device would still make a world of difference.
I use a USB/bluetooth headphone DAC/amp. Most of the time, I plug it into my work laptop and listen to videos/music while I work. Sometimes, if a video ends or if I pause playback, my iPhone (which INSISTS on connecting to the amp) will take over and start playing music.
I really wish you could turn off auto-connect to bluetooth devices.
Airpods/MacOS - listening to background music. Phone call comes in... VERY LOUD facetime 'ring' announces on mac that I'm getting a phone call.
Pick up phone to answer it... holy tamole - it's minimum 8 seconds between clicking 'answer' and... eventually airpods switching over to phone - most of the time. To the calling party, I've 'answered', but they can't hear me - or... can sort of hear me, but I can't hear them. The speed at which the 'switch' takes place, and the visual delay (air pod icons turning on, then off, then on again, then a floating top notification saying "airpods connected"...)... this is always minimum 8 seconds. Usually 10-11.
I just say "hang on, i'm switching my earpiece over..." and wait. Annoying. Given that this is all in their ecosystem, I expect this to get better, not worse. I'd rather this sort of experience get fixed vs more emojis, or 'sidecar' or whatnot.
The long/short of it is, both devices 'know' about the airpods. Call comes in to phone, during an answer, having airpods switch to the phone quickly - like, under 2 seconds - is what I'm expecting. I'm not sure that's an unreasonable expectation (maybe it is?). At some point, I would think, given all the neural-core-AI stuff in the phones and ecosystem, it should know that I always switch airpods to phone to talk... maybe do it automatically at some point?
The phone now knows my daily routine, giving me traffic updates 10 minutes before I normally leave to hit the gym. Yet... the 'fill in your email' prompts on the phone suggest 'my' email address is something I have not actively used in 11 years. I don't understand the 'why' behind some of these things. If the device is going to learn... when will it learn I don't use that email address any longer? Obviously separate issue, but... as has gone on for decades - we get loads of new features, but often little attention paid to clean up and refine last year's new features.
Fwiw, this seemed to work smoothly two years ago. And then… updates. AirPod firmware updates. iPhone updates. macOS updates. Nothing works the same as it did 2 years ago for maybe … 2 months or so. And there’s no going back. :(
It's far from universal. Most users never expect to understand their software in the first place, and so put a lot more value on new features. If anything I'd say developers put too much effort into polish, since we're the very small demographic that actually appreciates it.
Also: I don’t get a lot of calls anyway. But when I do, I tend to wander around as well. So it makes complete sense.
1) It's a distraction. I am also one of those people who turned on "Silence unknown callers" to send everyone I don't know to voicemail. If it's important, you'll get a message there. My phone either lives in my pocket or is on the desk next to me, so it's very unlikely I'd miss something.
2) At least with AirPods, although I have "connect automatically" turned on, I will never intentionally connect them to more than one source at a time.
Therin lies madness and bugs.
I had to reread my own sentence to make sure I wasn't being a complete moron.
NOTE TO SELF: COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE
Let's say you're listening to a Youtube MV on your computer while cleaning the dishes. A Skype call comes on your phone, and you take it.
- Do you still hear the youtube sound in the background ?
- What does the play/pause button do on your earbuds ? Or the volume button ? Which source does it act on ?
- An alarm starts on your iPad somewhere in the house, how do you stop it ? Do you keep getting the sound until you physically find the device and act on it ?
And that's just 2 min of thinking about it. Not saying it can't be done, just that you'd need to deal with all the edge cases as well. Auto switching sources is annoying (I personally disabled it when I had airpods, and don't use it on any headset), but I think having all sources active at all time could be as annoying, or worse. If Apple couldn't solve auto-switching, I wouldn't be holding my breath for them to solve the all-devices at the same times edge cases.
There’s a reason it’s a shambles.
It means the airPods keep X active connections with any device that says it could emit sound at any time, while also harmonizing sound levels as the devices don’t have the same settings, and mixing it all at the end.
That feels like a lot to ask for tiny devices with limited battery. Now that could be a nice idea for a separate device that keeps all these bluetooth connection alive and deals with all the mess to deliver a single stream to your earbuds (albeit with double the latency)
However, if a Macbook is sleeping and closed with no peripherals attached, I can’t see any use case for waking from bluetooth. It doesn’t make sense.
Does seem like it'd be nice if the behavior were something you could toggle, though.
I don’t think I’d recommend the preference to anyone who doesn’t already/still share it. But it’s a blissful quiet.
And then there's me who still uses headphones with cables. I plug the cable into the device, it plays from this device, never fails. I also never need to charge my headphone. I still don't understand why anyone would voluntarily replace cables with wireless when it's such a worse use experience.
Low power devices like AirTag rely entirely on Bluetooth LE and the Find My network to determine their location.
Besides, receiving consumes more power than sending, theoretically Apple can just shut off the receiving part and send intermittently (every 2 sec or so) and achieve very minimal power usage.
Again, this is just speculation, I’m genuinely interested in the details.
Is there any OS that offers that by default? I don't remember ever seeing that on Windows or any linux distro I used.
Besides, MacOS is cherished by many as a UX/UI masterpiece, yet there are many annoyances that need to be fixed by the user. For example window management is a big one, I simply haven’t been able to achieve the comfort of i3 on my work Mac. (tmux comes close, but I can’t run Firefox in there)
I am not able to disable WiFi from the login screen.
I think it would be a horrendous decision to allow random people to do this.
But maybe that’s beside the point, I’m interested why you see this as a bad thing?
Drains the battery fast too.
I don't see why not, given that it's also possible to use external wired microphones in clamshell mode.
Not always, my monitor goes to sleep and turns off. At this point, macOS should turn Bluetooth off? How would I wake the computer then? I would have to open it.
> Find My would not be able to find and more importantly report a location.
That might be another reason why Bluetooth stays on. On a laptop, I'd rather have Find My working in clamshell mode (given the theft risk).
So I’m not sure about turning off bluetooth entirely, but waking via bluetooth should be turned off when the laptop is closed without a display attached. There is no use case for waking via bluetooth without a display.
There are a ton, computers are incredibly useful devices.
If I close the screen I can play music out of those speakers for a pretty long time. And if I can sleep/wake from a Bluetooth keyboard when I’m not using it, I can stretch that into a long weekend.
…or at least I can on Windows where this is possible.
In general, Windows 10 computers work on boot in clamshell mode. Drivers load, external USB devices are useful, displays work.
On Apple devices, corporations *must* enable FileVault, a full disk encryption utility, to meet some compliance standards. The problem is that Apple really locked this down, even to USB-C docks. My docks use the Display Link driver to load the screens, so as a result I need to physically open the laptop every day, use the laptop keyboard to enter my password, wait for the login process to complete, then close the laptop and connect the dock.
It would be very nice if they could allow some drivers to be whitelisted, or even make an "official" apple dock with full FileVault support.
I suppose I could use a Mac Studio or Mini, but corporations seem dead set on providing laptops to employees.
Other than that I would say Windows generally handles scaling better, but this is an area that the latest OS (Ventura) really improved. Macs today are much better at scaling and switching displays than in the past.
Just fyi, at least on my M1 MacBook, a regular, non-Displaylink (ie HDMI or Display Port connection) doesny require opening the laptop to login, even using an Bluetooth keyboard. I'm sure there's a usb-c hub that's your preferred form factor if you don't like the dongle-style breakout boxes.
I don't have the issue you're referring to unless I completely shut off either machine, which I almost never do. Do you completely power off your machine at the end of each day? When the machine is just locked my external displays power up and display the login screen just fine.
Can't concur with this. My windows laptop is has its lid closed and is outputting to a display. Only thing I do is uncheck the default behavior of putting the laptop to sleep when the lid is closed. This should be enough. Did you do this?
There may be conditions around having input devices as well, can't recall exactly.
There also used to be a setting to disable wake up from bluetooth devices but it seems to have disappeared. (I was using that setting to prevent a DualShock 4 gamepad - which powers on all too easily - connected via bluetooth to wake the computer)
Kind of unrelated but it sucks that Macs don't do multiple displays over a single cable because Apple refuses to support it in their GPU via the built-in MST hub (that otherwise is put to use for driving the Pro Display XDR).
A few comments down:
> @asveikau: I think you should be able to play music while the lid is closed. That seems like a reasonable use case.
Also, wouldn't having a different behaviour, based on specific classes of devices, create more confusion for users?
Oh, and, all together now: Bluetooth sucks!
Yet when my Macbook is asleep in my bag with no peripherals attached, my headphones will connect and wake the Mac.
The left hand does not know what the right hand is doing. It literally makes no sense.
On one hand, its kind of nice for my trip from my home office into the main office. Opening up my laptop at the other location its already properly connected to the WiFi, applications are already "warming up" and syncing their statuses to the things that changed, bluetooth keyboard and mouse can actually wake the device from "sleep", etc. It gives a far more seamless experience moving from one place to the other.
But I also get the pain of this too. Pulling out my laptop on the airplane and seeing it already at like 93% battery since I left earlier that morning isn't great.
I remember back in the late 90s and early 2000's the dream of having some kind of low power notification screen on the lid or edge of the laptop. I always wanted that: being able to quickly see some of the info without fully booting up or accessing music from the computer while on the go. Of course, smartphones became a thing and have mostly eliminated needing the laptop to do those tasks.
You plug your laptop into your dock and close it, and suddenly your AirPods stop working, even though the rest of the computer works fine?
Set computer up on a table, pair Bluetooth speaker, put on your favorite streaming service, close the lid and walk away, the music filling the room. Totally reasonable.
What this is about is engaging Bluetooth devices while asleep, which doesn’t make any practical sense.
I think part of the problem here is that defining "in use" is actually very difficult, and it's literally something where two different users (or even the same user at different times) could have different expectations for the same circumstance as defined in code.
Also FindMy relies on BT to work.
An option to disable BT when the lid is closed might be nice, but it shouldn't be the default. I think most people do not want that.
It’s also really funny how fast all my Apple devices “steal” a BT connection. Both my mb air and my tablet beat all my windows machines at taking over a BT device no matter what I try. I should try to race my tablet and the Air to see which one wins.
I think users with wireless peripherals would find it irritating if every time they sat down at their desk they had to open the lid to wake their laptop.
However, I notice that it sleep mode it will have tons of network traffic and I wish there was a setting to make it really turn off when the lid is closed and not do anything.
annoying
~/.sleep: /opt/homebrew/bin/blueutil -p 0
~/.wakeup /opt/homebrew/bin/blueutil -p 1
What would be nice is physical switches that are easily replaceable - but this also impacts a device's water-proofness and thinness. And the market prefers those two factors over switches, generally.
Home button went non-mechanical the year before Face ID was introduced FWIW.
What Apple came up with works perfect as it adds some privacy while affecting the user in no way. This is also combined with permission dialogs for mic access and an indicator light showing the mic is in use.
This could be solved with a simple dialog box telling the use to check the switch.
> What Apple came up with works perfect as it adds some privacy while affecting the user in no way.
Far from perfect. Anything except physical disconnect switches can be overridden with software, and companies like Apple can be compelled to cooperate with creating back-doors. Which opens up those same back-doors to bad actors figuring out how to use them.
this is in hardware and cannot be tampered with. apple also doesn't make backdoors, haven't you heard of what happened with the FBI?
When I disable the Mic/Camera on my Librem 5, I have a notification on the screen that shows they are disabled. Same with my laptop. When I disable wifi, if I go to the notification area, it says "Disabled by hardware switch". So....there are ways to do this.
(For example, it’s my understanding that turning turn off a iPhone, it’s bluetooth, etc — does not actually completely turn them off. Also appears hardware/OS specs vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction; for example, it is my understanding China limits a number of iPhone’s hardware/OS specs for domestic iPhones.)
"iPhone Findable After Power Off >"
> iPhone Remains Findable After Power Off > Find My helps you locate this iPhone when it is lost or stolen, even in power reserve mode or after power off. > > The location is visible in Find My on your other devices, and to people in Family Sharing you share location with. > > You can temporarily turn off Find My network and it will resume when this iPhone is powered on again. > > OK > Temporarily Turn Off Finding
If you click Temporarily Turn Off Finding, you need to enter your passcode. This is to prevent phone thieves from just turning off your phone to make it untraceable.
My expectation is that if you Temporarily Turn Off Finding, the bluetooth radio is fully off.
- https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/87580/how-does-an-...
Not that this isn’t a design oversight, but it might be mitigable until Apple makes design tweaks to fix it.
It's a bit annoying, but I'm sick of getting delamination after 1 year. I got this M1 Max with the thought that it will be relevant for app development for at least 5 years, and I still want to be able to work outside in the sun until then.
Too many compromises were made to make macbook thin (unreliable keyboard, cooling, power delivery, battery, ports, non removable SSD...). Apple should make a model that is a bit thicker without those compromises!
And my Asus does not have key fingerprints on screen...
I disagree about making it thicker. The newest MacBook Pros are already extremely thick and heavy. I don't want to be carrying around a brick just because some people don't wash their hands or clean their keyboards every once in a while.
I had other laptops that left fingerprints. But Macbook Air had glass so thin it would randomly pop from temperature difference (well known issue)!
Nobody is forcing you to carry brick around. But some people like to carry brick and Apple should make a new model just for them (MacBrick). Is "wash your hands before use" mentioned in macbook manual?
And how do you even clean keyboard on Macbooks? That thing falls apart with a bad look, and it costs like $800 to replace. I can not imagine removing key caps just to clean it up!
Yeah, why can't it double as a hammer too?
>And how do you even clean keyboard on Macbooks
The same way you do it on any other laptop.
>That thing falls apart with a bad look
No it doesn't.
>But some people like to carry brick and Apple should make a new model just for them
No they shouldn't, go buy your brick from someone else.
Allow me to present the sexiest-ever evidence to the contrary: The G3 "Wallstreet" Powerbook. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerBook_G3
Apple has made excellent portable dev workstations in the past. After the release of the Unibody Macbook Pro though, the focus of their hardware and software focues far, far away from developers. The new 14"/16" lineup is a good return to form, but in the context of how developer-unfriendly modern MacOS is it feels pyrrhic.
If you don't relate to someone's opinion, you don't have to justify Apple's stance against it.
This is where you lose me. Go to any tech company with pockets deep enough to afford whatever hardware its employees want and the vast majority will have MacBook Pros running macOS.
MacOS is simply shit for development. Even garbage proprietary Unix like Oracle Linux come with uniform packaging and up-to-date coreutils. MacOS had it's chance to be a developer platform (Xserve) and it just highlighted the most greedy, dysfunctional parts of Apple. It needs tough love to improve, because as-is it feels like Apple is ignoring the industry.
God I'd hope not. For programming, I cannot think of a single reason you'd want a glass display over a matte one. Maybe if you program in direct sunlight? Even still...
I'll go ahead and agree with the other commenter. Part of why I no longer buy Apple hardware is because of these compromises that they assume I want. Trying to bridge the gap between a "creator-class" laptop and a programming machine hasn't worked out hardware-wise (see: Touch Bar). Paying $500 extra for nano-textured glass that shatters the same from a waist-height fall isn't a solution, either.
It doesn't bother me since other manufacturers fill this gap, but I'd like to see more options regardless.
Step 2: Don't work while eating or use your external keyboard
It’s been driving me mad and I can’t find anything about it online.
macOS 13.1? appears to have solved this problem. Better late than never.
And even plugging in a charger before it actually died wouldn't save it: It'd try to turn stay on but the pending hibernation would kick in and it'd die.
The "fix" for me was to turn off deep sleep. Technically now they'll drain more during sleep, but that's preferrable than being broken during sleep.
The whole experience was disappointingly Linux though. Having to read through the Console to figure out it was a kernel panic and not a power issue, having to read through Darwin sources to track down where exactly in the hibernation it was failing, not the kind of stuff I expect to deal with from Apple hardware.
Oh, and the machine forgets its audio settings when this happens, too. Always tries to revert to built-in speakers while it's closed despite having a CalTech hub with speakers I've selected dozens of times.
I don't understand why laptops continue to have such weird power-management problems. I thought we fixed this stuff ages ago.
It probably wouldn't work well due to the obstruction anyway.
You are able to use an external monitor with your laptop closed, it's not an edge case to want to use the computer's mic in that case.
Not everything has to be a futuristic gesture you know, could just have a hardware switch like on the librem phones. Also more reliable than the sensors, and that's something I would like for a privacy feature. Knowing that it's disconnected and can't be tampered with.
Not only HW disconnect of the mic, but the speakers as well. I want a switch on the side that does the equivalent of taping over the camera. No software can use them when they're off, period.
Take back your privacy.
The microphone is far more important.
Pictures of your face are simple and easy to acquire; you give them up willingly every time you walk into a convenience store, airport, bank, or use an ATM. They're not secret and their compromise does not harm you.
I can't think of a reason not involving TLA conspiracy that has everyone so allergic to a physical switch that disables microphones and a shutter that the camera cannot see through. Cheap, easy, reliable, desirable. Pick any four yet nobody, absoutely nobody does it and if they do they drop it almost immediately.
Lenovo T series have a physical switch that moves the camera in the lid to turn it off, whole camera slides sidways a little but doesn't cover the lens.
Me at 30: Cool.
As far as closed source being safe, I don't think open source is safe either. We have seen some horrendous exploitable bugs which lived in open source code for years. Just because something can be thoroughly audited, doesn't mean it is.
I've personally been around a lot of years, and I'm just no longer convinced that a handful of sincere and enthusiastic volunteers can be better at security than a highly motivated, well paid, staff of competent engineers. These systems are just too complex nowadays. I get the concept of open source and having the ability to review the code, etc., but in practice stuff happens anyway in either case. Sorry for the rambling, but I guess I'm just not so convinced any more about the absolutist arguments concerning the relative merits. Maybe I'm just getting too cynical...
This is the point of the article. There is no software involved. It can’t be hacked.
Others have replied to the specifics here, but I'd like to add that "every chip can be hacked" is just categorically false (unless you also allow for physical access for "hacked", but then that would apply to the physical switch as well).
"Chips" are neither magical devices, nor are they necessarily running something akin to software, or controlling everything purely through software even if they do.
As a simple example, you can be very confident that a (real) ROM is a ROM, and that its contents cannot be changed by software.
Please, Apple, instead of engineering a better kill switch which requires me to trust you, just install an actual kill switch that I can see for myself does what I want.
[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2022/11/14/apple-class-action-user... or https://9to5mac.com/2023/01/09/apple-privacy-tracking-lawsui...
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/09/23/iphone-...
Especially that you leave more than enough data for advertisers by simply using facebook/messenger and interacting with other people, or just searching google, it simply wouldn’t make economic sense to create such a software/hardware which would drain batteries like no tomorrow, and open them up to serious backlash.
Here is a fun thing that happens if you keep your laptop on to play some music or maybe run a light server with the lid closed.
The backlight of the LCD turns off, but the LCD does not turn off.
This causes screen burn in. There is no way to turn the screen off when you shut certain model mac laptops.
So on one hand, we have a company offering neat privacy gimmicks and on the other, deploying anti-consumer practices at every corner of their product.
Privacy is the bait that will trap you into their money sucking ecosystem. Manage it yourself or companies will always find a way to use it to exploit you. Even when they are not busy actively violating your privacy.
So, to replicate you only need to ensure the laptop stays on while the lid is closed. In my case I was using the laptop as a white noise machine for months.
A few weeks in I opened the lid and noticed burn in. I tried to find ways to manually turn the LCD off but I could find no verifiable way to do this. The only solution I ended up with was running that screen saver with the wavy colors.
The LCD screen does NOT turn off when the lid is closed. Only the backlight, which will NOT prevent burn in.
I am positive all mac laptops are suicidal.