Instead of a secure, dedicated indicator light, MacBook Neo just shows a green icon when the camera is in use. Yet years of software engineering effort means the camera "exclave" still can't be hacked.
For the right audience, the MacBook Neo is a superb buy, plus you can repair it, you can even modify it a little. But reportedly, what you can't do is hijack the camera even though the MacBook Neo lacks the usual hardware indicator light.
John Gruber reports in his Daring Fireball blog that the MacBook Neo's on-screen green icon indicator turns out to be pretty much as secure. He quotes developer Guilherme Rambo saying that "the software-based camera indicator light... runs in the secure exclave part" of the processor.
You read that right. Exclave. This is not a typo.
It's more than ten years since Apple unveiled its Secure Enclave technology, but this is different.
"Exclaves run on a completely isolated realtime operating system," continued Rambo, "that communicates with the kernel and userspace using a very limited API surface."
So a bad actor cannot get sufficient access to the secure exclave to bypass the real user's password or biometric security in the Touch ID model.
This is not new with the MacBook Neo. It's the same reason that the iPhone camera is secure — from most attacks, even though it doesn't have a separate hardware indicator light.
Separately, there have been issues before with, for instance, the similar orange microphone light staying on after a Zoom call ended. That was Zoom's bug, and at least it had Apple erring on the side of caution.
Although that same orange on-screen light has annoyed performers who've used Macs at live events.
