not having a led indicator for camera, and not having an ambient light sensor, this means they are using the camera as a light sensor
The MacBook Neo
881–890 of 1001 posts
Re: The MacBook Neo
#882not having a led indicator for camera, and not having an ambient light sensor, this means they are using the camera as a light sensor
yeah, I expect they use the camera as a make-shift ambient light-sensor, just with a lower frequency than a illumination sensor would be used (due to power consumption impact), and with overall lower accuracy (lower dynamic range, reduced FoV, very bad accuracy in low-light/bright conditions,...).
This pretty much matches the described experience in the article that Gruber had, as he mentions he had to adjust brightness up and down at least twice every day...
Re: The MacBook Neo
#883IMO the consumer PC industry is near an existential crisis. The big players are just awful at marketing; too many SKUs and models - it takes a paragraph to figure out how 2 Dell laptops from the same release year differ. The exact same specs will be in two different chassis designs. Additionally, you can’t count on the basic being correct. It takes a hour of research to know if the trackpad is not-awful, keyboard doe…
The base model of the MacBook Air is $1099 now. That has 16GB ram and 512gb disk. And it’s a hell of a computer.
The crazy thing is we often cite an Apple Tax, but in this case, I think they actually have a cheaper product.
Re: The MacBook Neo
#884Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every time I've considered an alternative to my Mac laptop I'm confronted by this much choice (and that of other manufacturers) and I also have to deal with unknown and varying performance of keyboard, display and trackpad. One thing PC manufacturers seem to prioritise and focus on is tech specs + performance and interface is tacked on (or at least the interface designers departments in their companies aren't leading…
The choice is really simple: it's a Thinkpad series T, with an AMD APU, the most powerful configuration you can afford :)
Intel is fine too, for some uses.
Re: The MacBook Neo
#885> "I’d consider paying double the price of the Neo for a MacBook with similar specs (but more RAM and better I/O) that weighed 2.0 pounds or less. I’d buy such a MacBook not to replace my 14-inch MacBook Pro, but to replace my 2018 11-inch iPad Pro as my “carry around the house” secondary computer."
> "As it stands, I might buy a Neo for that same purpose, 2.7-pound weight be damned."
The wonders of the closed ecosystem / walled-garden, where you don't have to face competition on equal terms, because you already locked-in your customers...
Re: The MacBook Neo
#886Earlier quoted context omitted.
Minus an intentionally bad hardware design, I struggle to imagine how a software version of the idea could ever be more secure than a power line hard-wired to an LED.
You build it directly into the GPU firmware and don't give the operating system any access to it.
I still don’t see how this could be more secure than connecting the LED to the camera’s power lines.
Re: The MacBook Neo
#887Earlier quoted context omitted.
You build it directly into the GPU firmware and don't give the operating system any access to it.
That is still a blackbox code implementation which could be updated at any time. I trust wires, not programmers.
I mean, we don't really have any indication that the MacBook camera light is hard wired into anything.
Re: The MacBook Neo
#888Earlier quoted context omitted.
Arguably with SIP a hardware indicator light is not strictly necessary, the OS could force the indicator pixels to be lit.
Isn't the argument that a hardware indicator light is (more) immune to bugs? If its just software, you're a software exploit/bug away from finding a way to access the sensor without tripping the software light.
I might be mis-remembering but wasn't Pegasus spyware able to bypass the camera indicator? Or was the issue that journalists were constantly seeing the light appear for no reason. I believe it was one of those.
Re: The MacBook Neo
#889I was watching this video and it’s pretty impressive what can be done on this spec machine. https://youtu.be/d-VOt9559Gk?si=tYlDstnaxtQWoJ88 He opens 50+ apps at once while working in Final Cut and Lightroom. Obviously anyone doing those full time would benefit from more resources but I think this is going to be enough for a big chunk of the population, and will be more appealing than the windows alternatives.
I wonder how long those flash chips can survive with the OS swapping 24/7.
Very long. It was already a concern when the 8GB M1s came out.
Re: The MacBook Neo
#890[flagged]