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It's not even that clever, really. The camera power rail must be physically close to the camera, so it's trivial to hang an LED off it. A device manufacturer has to go out of their way to make it so the LED and camera function are independent, and I'm sure many do, for the worst reasons you can possibly think of.

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It's more a testament to how little most companies care. The solution is simple and yet most products are defective.

For most products the LED is not a simple on/off indicator. It signals device state, user confirmations, ota updates, etc etc etc.

I’m at a loss for how you would signal all of that without a GPIO.

The record indicator should be purely reserved for showing if the camera is on. If you want to show all that other stuff, put a second LED on it.

It could be a typical design that the camera and LED always have power, and the LED is switchable.

Giving the camera plus LED a separate power supply means that the camera has to boot or come online, which maybe increases the dwell time. And the camera is not visible on the USB bus when powered off.

I think there's more engineering to Apple's design than it first seems.

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