The lid angle sensor is also serialized to the motherboard: you cannot replace it, or the motherboard, without performing calibration, which can be performed by an apple authorized service provider, or alternatively, in Europe (and elsewhere where Apple offers parts for self-service repair), you can purchase the sensor from Apple, connect the machine to the internet after replacing it, to then perform the calibration, only if the sensor was purchased from Apple.
So the hardware is capable of performing the calibration, Apple just does not graciously grant you the right to install a recycled or third party sensor in your machine.
Okay so here's the argument I've heard: if arbitrary replacements of the lid sensor were possible, it would be feasible to create a tampered sensor that failed to detect the MacBook closing, thus preventing it from entering sleep mode.
This could then be combined with some software on the machine to turn a MacBook into a difficult to detect recording device, bypassing protections such as the microphone and camera privacy alerts, since the MacBook would be closed but not sleeping.
Additionally, since the auto-locking is also tied to triggering sleep mode, it would be possible to gain access to a powered off device, switch the sensors, wait for the user to attempt to sleep mode the device, and then steal it back, completely unlocked with full access to the drive.
Are these absolutely ridiculous, James Bond-tier threat assessments? Yes, absolutely. But they're both totally feasible (and not too far off from exploits I've heard about in real life), and both are completely negated by simply serializing the lid sensor.
Should Apple include an option, buried in recoveryOS behind authentication and disk unlock steps like the option to allow downgrades and allow kernel extensions, that enables arbitrary and "unauthorized" hardware replacements like this? Yes, they really should. If implemented correctly, it would not harm the security profile of the system while still preventing the aforementioned exploits.
There are good security reasons for a lot of what Apple does. They just tend to push a little too far beyond mitigating those security issues into doing things which start to qualify as vendor lock-in.
I really wish people would start to recognize where the line should be drawn, rather than organizing into "security of the walled garden" versus "freedom of choice" groups whenever these things get brought up. You can have both! The dichotomy itself is a fiction perpetuated to defend the status quo.
ryandrake · 49m ago
The line should be drawn by the owner of the device.
As the user and owner of the product, I should be the sole decider about my own security posture, not some company who doesn’t know my use case or needs.
It’s crazy how we’ve managed to normalize the manufacturer making these kinds of blanket decisions on our behalf.
vlovich123 · 40m ago
How does Apple know the owner of the product has authorized the HW change?
There’s a secondary argument you could make here whereby because the replacements must be valid Apple parts that have uniform behavior and tolerances, the strength of the secondary market is stronger and Apple products have a stronger resale value as a result, because you’re not going to encounter a MacBook with an arbitrary part replaced that you as the second-hand buyer know nothing about (this is why the secondary market for cars doesn’t work without the ability to lookup the car history by VIN).
userbinator · 2m ago
Apple doesn't need to know. Once it's sold Apple is no longer the owner.
bri3d · 36m ago
Keeping a victim device unlocked when the lock state is responsible for encryption key state is a totally legitimate risk.
With that being said, I don’t think Apple see this specific part as a security critical component, because the calibration is not cryptographic and just sets some end point data. Apple are usually pretty good about using cryptography where they see real security boundaries.
echelon · 4m ago
Don't invent reasons for Apple to continue to have a stranglehold over their monopoly of critical computing infrastructure.
Companies as big as Apple and Google that provide such immensely important platforms and devices should have their hands tied by every major government's regulatory bodies to keep the hardware open for innovation without taxation and control.
We've gone from open computing to serfdom in the last 20 years, and it's only getting worse as these companies pile on trillions after trillions of nation state equivalent market cap.
oxguy3 · 42m ago
If repair shops can buy the $130 calibration machine, presumably the super spy in this story (who for some reason couldn't steal the data while they were replacing the lid sensor, nor can they steal the data when the laptop's in use, but somehow can steal the data when it's idle with the lid down) can also get a calibration machine, and then deliberately set the zero point incorrectly.
throwaway314155 · 54m ago
Isn't there software that does exactly this? Called caffeine, I believe?
vlovich123 · 43m ago
Installing software generally requires user permission. Replacing Hw can be done surreptitiously. At least that’s the strongman variant of the security argument.
Lammy · 36m ago
If we're talking Bond-tier assessments then Apple already sell a covert microphone: AirTags. They “have no microphone” according to product specs, but they do have a huge speaker, and a speaker and microphone are the same thing like a generator and motor are the same thing: https://in.bgu.ac.il/en/Pages/news/eaves_dropping.aspx
userbinator · 3h ago
They call it "calibration" when it's presumably nothing more than writing a serial number to an EEPROM somewhere. See also the related story of sabotaging iPad screens to work but subtly degrade when the serials don't match, and cameras that only semi-work when swapped (with genuine original Apple parts). This type of pathological lying that Apple loves to do is why I'll never buy or recommend to others any of their products.
Interesting but that proves the point even more --- it's hardly "calibration" when it effectively does nothing more than write constants to the EEPROM. They certainly have enough processing power in the machine to do that automatically too without needing anything more, but instead they make everyone go through a whole song-and-dance to do this trivial process; which doesn't even require Apple's involvement.
"Set the angle to 0 (closed) and press Enter. Open 10 degrees and press Enter. Repeat for every 10 degrees from 0 to 170" would be an example of actual calibration.
Cthulhu_ · 5h ago
Negative take: Vendor lock-in
Positive take: discourage theft; not only is the device locked down / encrypted and you can't just wipe / reinstall it, you can't even break it down for parts.
When the iphones etc first came out, they were a very attractive target for theft. Come to think of it, that's one reason why I was hesitant to get an iphone back then.
dwood_dev · 5h ago
I used to have an extremely negative view on all this serial number pairing that Apple does, then I found out why.
Within mainland China, Apple was facing fraud of having their devices purchased, stripped for genuine parts, and then rebuilt with knockoffs and sold as new to unsuspecting victims within China or returned. This whole thing that we hate in the west was in response to that fraud.
I don't like it at all, but it's not all Apple being assholes.
josephcsible · 4h ago
That would be a good argument for Apple showing a warning every time it's powered on or something, but not for it refusing to work altogether.
leoh · 4h ago
Yeah, but then you could just flash with a different ROM or something and prevent that warning from being displayed?
areoform · 3h ago
Then what stops this "counter-measure" from "working?" Could they not just "flash with a different ROM or something" to allow the part to work normally?
I genuinely doubt that the level of theft ever rose to a large enough margin, if it did, Apple would have pulled out of China.
For reference, Apple employs ex-NSA, CIA, TLA professionals to solve this exact problem with a near endless budget and 0 oversight and accountability.
> I genuinely doubt that the level of theft ever rose to a large enough margin, if it did, Apple would have pulled out of China.
There was a point where the black market in China was making more on Apple products than Apple itself. They initially tried to have stricter warranty conditions in China as a fix, but state media decided this was an affront to the country: https://www.infoworld.com/article/2271627/apple-clarifies-wa...
Hence, the technical fix.
Why pull out when you can apply a technical fix and retain both access to the biggest consumer electronics market in the world and maintain the good graces of the country that manufactures almost all your products?
shakna · 3h ago
If you could do that, you could just flash a new ROM to ignore serial errors, too.
The checks are not entirely in software, and would not be in showing the error, either.
No comments yet
zdw · 4h ago
A lot of "new" products in the "bargain" category can have remanufactured parts, even without telling the end users.
For example, in this DankPods video he pulls apart two cube speakers, and while they look mostly the same on the outside, one has a Nokia-sized lithium battery that is directly soldered to, and the other has a swollen pouch pack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfnabYBtJ2I&t=325s
Unfortunately end users can't tell whether they got a "race to the bottom" item, so as much as I'd like cheap repairs, it seems like those also come with a huge amount of buyer beware that they may not know about.
AuthAuth · 4h ago
Sounds like more of an excuse than a reason.
userbinator · 3h ago
More like plausible deniability.
specialist · 3h ago
Yes and: Requiring genuine parts reduces risk of silent hardware pwnage. Which is a no-negotiable requirement these days.
That said...
I demand that Apple makes genuine parts available to end users and 3rd repair shops.
And being 100% pro Right to Repair, I support repairs with non-genuine parts.
For peace of mind, have your gear repaired by Apple. For the cost sensitive and tinkerers, you have options.
LtWorf · 3h ago
Problem with doing repairs by apple is that they always go with "let's replace the motherboard"
SoftTalker · 1h ago
Because the time spent on diagnosing the specific problem and replacing just the faulty component would cost more.
serf · 1h ago
that's charitable.
I would presume that the world's third largest company by market cap would be attracted to that option because it's the most profitable thing to do.
Yes -- there is a nuance between 'most profitable' and 'most thrifty'.
arcane23 · 5h ago
>discourage theft
Does it though? Are there statistics that clearly show devices aren't being stolen anymore because they cannot monetize them anymore?
The way I see it the only thing this does is make you feel better the thief cannot monetize it, or use it, but it does nothing to prevent the theft which is really a moot point in the grand scheme of things. We end up paying in this way, of not having the freedom to easily and cheaply replace parts, while being comforted that even though they still are getting stolen from us, whoever steals them cannot use/monetize them. Which is quite primitive in a sense, and I do not think it's worth it. But that's just me.
jajuuka · 4h ago
According to the GSMA last year phone theft (which arguably has much more part serialization and anti-theft measures implemented) has been a steady 1% of smart phone users worldwide. It does not seem these attempts to lock down systems are successful in reducing theft. https://www.gsma.com/solutions-and-impact/industry-services/...
However I wonder if they have had an impact on data and financial theft. Which things like part serialization wouldn't affect but system security measures would.
mr_toad · 3h ago
Alternatively, without these measures phone theft might be a lot more than 1% of users. People get killed for less than a smartphone costs.
shuckles · 3h ago
It’s a dynamic system. The number staying the same doesn’t tell you anything about causality or the counterfactual.
userbinator · 3h ago
I suspect the majority of phone thieves don't care about the previous owner's data, they just want it wiped so it can be sold to someone else.
phoronixrly · 5h ago
Yeah, imagine a world where people who are forced to steal are competent enough not only to know which phones they can sell, but to be able to guess the make and model in the middle of a mugging
seventhtiger · 4h ago
They actually do though. First thing to learn when swiping is what's worth swiping, and if no one will buy an iphone paper weight then it's not worth the risk.
jajuuka · 4h ago
Yeah it's like saying "home invaders don't know if there is anything good inside they just choose houses at random." The point of the theft is to get something out of it.
nwallin · 4h ago
I've thankfully never had my house robbed, or a cell phone or laptop stolen. I have had my car broken into. The thieves chucked a paving stone through the window, grabbed a backpack sitting on the passenger's seat, and ran off with it. Left the paving stone in the driver's seat. The backpack had my gym clothes in it. A T-shirt I was rather fond of, a pair of shorts, a few extra pairs of socks, and a shitty pair of sneakers, all were well worn.
Replacing the backpack and gym clothes was probably $100, market value was maybe $10, and it was $507 to fix the window. (my deductible was $500.)
fluoridation · 3h ago
I thought you were going to say "but they ignored the $100 textbook on the dashboard" or something. The anecdote doesn't demonstrate anything. How much of an inconvenience the theft was for you is not a factor for the thief. They got $10 by chucking a rock through a window, and they only lost the opportunity cost of choosing a different victim.
seabass-labrax · 2h ago
They had to take the cumulative risk of getting caught though - one well-targeted burglary to take a designer handbag or diamond necklace would earn that thief as much as the indiscriminate 'stealing nwallin's gym clothes' thief would make in a year, as long as they had the network to sell the contraband on without incriminating themselves.
fluoridation · 1h ago
That risk is there regardless of what they steal. The kind of thieves who break into cars are low-effort-random-reward. They have neither the patience nor the skill nor the resources for the kind of planning you're referring to. Yes, the bag didn't contain much valuable. A different bag might have. Had the thief known that for a fact beforehand they probably wouldn't have bothered.
Outside nwallin's car: no valuables
Inside nwallin's car: maybe valuables?
mensetmanusman · 1h ago
There is no risk in may states like California:
arcane23 · 4h ago
That might account for a small set of scenarios, most times they just go for whatever sticks to their hand, in pockets/purses, without knowing what they'll get. As long as there's devices that can be monetized they will attempt to steal them if they cannot make sure it's not worth it.
And this would account for pros, let alone newbs in stealing, or just irrational behavior, or people who just enjoy creating harm with no gain.
I think this is a case where the justification is weak and in reality it's more about greed and control on Apple's side rather than some potential benefit that is actually seriously diluted by a lot of other not mentioned factors.
reaperducer · 4h ago
imagine a world where people who are forced to steal are competent enough not only to know which phones they can sell, but to be able to guess the make and model in the middle of a mugging
No need to imagine. This actually happens with watches.
In Hong Kong (and likely other cities), you can pick a watch from a "catalog" that is a binder of photos of watches on people's wrists in public, and the middleman will have the watch custom-stolen for you.
niklassheth · 3h ago
The majority of phones in the US are iPhones, especially in big cities where phone theft is most common.
londons_explore · 3h ago
Anti-theft isn't the reason.
Apple could easily have a dialogue that pops up saying:
"The XYZ sensor in this device is still registered to a device attached to robert8 @icloud.com. Please log into that account now to authorize the component swap".
Whilst the swap isn't authorised, firmware would power the system off after 10 mins, making any stolen laptop parts useless.
deepsun · 5h ago
Theft of what, sorry not clear. Thieves keep stealing macbooks no prob.
commandersaki · 1h ago
I read somewhere the angle sensor also has a privacy feature of cutting off microphone at hardware level. This is probably the main reason for parts pairing.
serf · 1h ago
... and this can't done with the myriad of other ways a lid can know it's closed.. why?
Presumably MacBooks still have a big un-shuttered camera on the screen? Presumably there is still a light sensor?
I get the idea of parts pairing as a theft/parts-out deterrent -- I don't get it as a method of cutting features on existing machines. "We need the lid angle sensor to be valuable, so let's cut out our eyes and seal our ears."
commandersaki · 24m ago
<shrug> I don't work for Apple and design these things, but for some privacy things they do go to the extreme. I can imagine the scenario where a TLA tries to replace the angle sensor so they can keep the mic open for surveillence reasons, hence why they do parts pairing.
> More recently London has become known as the “phone-snatching capital of Europe”. If the victims manage to track their devices, the goods are most likely to turn up in China.
> Globalisation created the supply chain that allows each iPhone—assembled from nearly 3,000 components—to reach the hands of a consumer. The same forces inverted see that phone yanked out of it, re-exported and broken apart again.
seabass-labrax · 2h ago
I wouldn't personally trust the Economist with this kind of thing, at least not compared to publications by technically-minded experts that have been shared elsewhere on this thread, such as the Register. The phone-snatching is real, but the effectiveness of this theft in creating usable spare parts, or of the efficacy Apple's software in reducing said theft, is much harder to determine.
> Stolen iPhone is in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China; what can I do?
debesyla · 5h ago
As the saying goes, is it even theft if you don't own the device? (If you can't do whatever you wish.)
mr_toad · 3h ago
If we want to split hairs, technically it’s robbery, which is more serious than theft. In the UK for example, the maximum sentence for robbery is life imprisonment.
BoorishBears · 5h ago
Yes, Apple rents me some very powerful hardware that allows me to make a living.
Someone depriving me of it is theft.
jen20 · 3h ago
That is a particularly idiotic saying.
moralestapia · 3h ago
Weird to be mad at this when you didn't know it was a thing 10 minutes ago ...
kulahan · 3h ago
You can dislike something in general and simply point out when a scenario matches what you dislike, as is happening here.
moralestapia · 3h ago
You can't repair what doesn't exist, though.
kulahan · 3h ago
Completely unrelated to the point I’m explaining
moralestapia · 3h ago
Give it some thought, I'm sure you will grasp it eventually.
nazgul17 · 1h ago
What a condescending and arrogant answer.
I think you should also think more about this.
One can believe that Apple (or any company) should let you do whatever you want with your hardware - in general - and point out any instance when they don't; even if that specific instance is not something that touches you!
This is true of everything. Another example: if you believe in freedom of speech, you should vocally defend anyone who is deprived of it, even when that is not you. Otherwise, you lose by divide and conquer.
Apes together strong.
postalcoder · 8h ago
To those wondering why the MacBook would have a sensor for this, it’s likely there to support Desk View[0]. It shows the items on your desk in a geometrically correct, top-down view. Knowing the angle of the display is very helpful when applying keystone correction.
Simpler than that I think - when do you turn off the screen or sleep? Because it isn't fully closed, but you want to be able to 'privacy-duck' the screen a bit before that, and having a sensor rather than just a fixed angle switch makes it software defined and something they can update.
hamandcheese · 6h ago
I'm pretty sure the sensor for that is a simple reed switch.
OJFord · 6h ago
A reed switch (plus magnet and choice of location) would be an implementation of a 'fixed angle switch' per my comment above.
tesseract · 5h ago
More likely a hall effect sensor, which is solid state and a lot smaller. And yes, older MacBooks had something like that, as evidenced by the fact you could put them to sleep by holding a magnet in the right place (just to the left of the trackpad IIRC in the models I'm familiar with)
0_____0 · 2h ago
I pranked a coworker once by sticking a magnet to his desk somehow to get his macbook to sleep when his computer was in a certain spot.
rzzzt · 6h ago
When I ran a MacBook Pro in closed clamshell mode and put another laptop on top of it, it went to sleep. Must be a weight sensor in there as well. (/s)
reaperducer · 4h ago
They weren't sleeping. That's how Mac Minis are made.
kelnos · 5h ago
Why though? That seems unnecessarily complex? It seems fine to me to just use a reed switch and sleep when it's closed or very close to closed.
missinglugnut · 5h ago
It's one sensor in both cases, and in the latter case you can do so much more: change the thresholds in an update, detect when the lid is in the process of closing, apply hysteresis (on a simple switch, there's an angle where vibration could cause it to bounce between reading open and closed, but with an angle sensor you can use different thresholds for detecting and open and closing state change).
But most of all...you don't have to commit to a behavior early in the design process by molding the switch in exactly the right spot. If the threshold you initially pick isn't perfect, it's much easier to change a line of code than the tooling at the manufacturing plant.
Reason077 · 5h ago
Why use two sensors when one will do? If you already have an angle sensor, it makes sense to get rid of the reed switch and reduce your production costs.
Reason077 · 6h ago
It can’t be exclusively for Desk View. Desk View only works on Macs with wide-angle cameras, which were introduced in 2024 and 2025 models.
But this sensor has been in MacBooks since the 2019 models.
appellations · 5h ago
Apple has a history of adding sensors, security chips, etc. a few revisions before the feature they support launches. It’s a really good idea because it helps them sort out the supply chain, reliability, drivers, etc. without any customer impact. It decouples the risks of the hardware project from the risks of the software project.
If things go particularly well you get to launch the feature on multiple hardware revisions at once because the first deployment of the component worked great, which is a neat trick.
wklauss · 5h ago
At Apple Stores, laptops screens have to be opened exactly at 76 degrees. I wonder if they use this sensor and specific software for adjustment (I'm not implying this is the only reason it's there)
simonbw · 3h ago
It seems like it would be much quicker and easier to just have a piece of plastic or something cut at a 76 degree angle that they can place on the laptop and fold the screen up to.
wklauss · 2h ago
I've heard employees use the measurements app in their iPhones sometimes to adjust in the mornings, but having a sensor in the laptop lid seems like a much easier way to do it and you don't need to carry anything with you.
stevage · 3h ago
76 degrees is just an aesthetic choice?
wklauss · 2h ago
I'm assuming so. Apparently it's an angle that "invites" people to use the computers, but I don't think there's anything specific about 76 degrees that makes it better than, say, 73 or 82. As long as you can see the content from an average height, it should work. Most likely they just settle on that angle because it looked good to the store team that was staging the first store, measured it, turned out to be 76 and kept it the same across stores since then for consistency.
bnj · 2h ago
Yep this seems like it makes a lot of sense— and adding on, picking a measurement means that all of them can be the same (consistency, as you said)- having variation in the same row would look bad from a distance
DSingularity · 5h ago
Shows you how good they are at planning and decomposing features into well scoped hardware and software features which can ship earlier, provide some value, while enabling richer future features. You have to respect them for this because this is how they have always operated.
KeplerBoy · 4h ago
Fascinating feature! Is it known how they do it?
Is it just an image transformation or a full blown AI model using Gaussian Splats or something along those lines?
anal_reactor · 8h ago
You could calculate the angle from the camera view as long as at least some piece of the MacBook is in view.
antennafirepla · 8h ago
You could, for orders of magnitude more compute than reading a magnetic encoder (my assumption at how they estimate it)
estimator7292 · 8h ago
Sure, but not more than what you're already spending on transforming the image. And it's not like these devices are exactly lacking in horsepower.
3eb7988a1663 · 7h ago
This is trivially broken by people who affix some type of cover over the camera. I do this on the off chance some errant application thinks it deserves to take pictures of my environment.
yonatan8070 · 7h ago
If someone covers the camera, the feature isn't relevant since it requires the camera to see your desk
kazinator · 6h ago
Isn't the desktop view is produced from the iPhone camera capture, not from from the MacBook's camera?
empressplay · 4h ago
If you have a new Macbook the built-in camera does it
Cthulhu_ · 5h ago
But compute is cheaper for the manufacturer than adding a sensor (parts & labor, and it adds up over millions). Someone must've done the math.
gcanyon · 1h ago
The Mac camera light is wired inline. If the camera is on, so is the light. Since we're not seeing the camera light flashing on periodically, this isn't how it's being done.
That sounds like an excuse to enable turning on the camera without turning on the light for it just because no user-software is using it. No thanks.
Plenty of users put stickers on their cameras. One simple user trick would break your whole workflow.
gcanyon · 1h ago
The Mac camera light is wired inline so as to make this impossible. The only way for the camera to be on and the light not is if the light itself is broken.
But is there actually an API for that? Last I checked the big providers Video Intelligence APIs even distinguishing cats and dogs was still unreliable.
junon · 2h ago
Just to see if a bird is in the picture (like the comic states) using chatgpt et al can probably do a sufficient job.
Not condoning people make this app, just thinking about how fast things have moved in just a few short years.
SAI_Peregrinus · 4h ago
BirdNET from the Cornell lab of ornithology provides that api.
filoleg · 4h ago
Unless I am missing something massive, BirdNET[0] is for identifying birds by sound, not by images.
Merlin[1] (also from Cornell Lab of Ornithology), on the other hand, has both image and sound ID. I haven't used either, so I cannot compare the quality of results from Merlin vs. BirdNET for sound ID, but afaik only Merlin has image ID.
The sensor angle would be in a file like `/sys/bus/iio/devices/iio:device*/in_angl0_raw` (device number can vary). At least I have this in a config file and remember it working (maybe on a different computer?). I cannot get it to work anymore on my laptop.
matsemann · 8h ago
A fun entry to the trend "stupid volume controller" a while back I guess would be to use this to control the volume, heh.
mattbee · 3h ago
If you have an external monitor and don't mind killing your hinge within an hour it's perfect for Trombone Champ
The only thing "Apple" here is that it's not exposed as a public API.
unglaublich · 8h ago
> Motion is tracked using the laptop camera via optical flow and mapped to continuous control over dynamics, while the sound is generated in real-time.
No, it's a different method.
1ceaham · 8h ago
Author here. We checked for APIs like this at the time, but since approximately every laptop has a webcam, the cv approach is much more accessible. It would be a fun rewrite though; I’m sure polling this would be a few orders of magnitude more efficient. There was definitely lag if you ran the app on a very underpowered machine which did impact the “playability” of the velocity parameter.
I wonder if Apple uses this internally at Apple stores to set the screen angle at 76 degrees.
mitchellh · 4h ago
This must be new, if true.
I worked at an Apple retail store during college. We were taught to put the screens at a certain angle but it was a gut feeling angle learned through practice, and not measured. More senior people would correct you if you were off.
They did mandate putting the bezel, mouse, keyboard, etc. at specific grains in the wood that were consistent across the desks though to ensure they were lined up without having to bust out a level-like device.
Overall everything was made so that retail employees would continuously clean up the displays as they walked around the store (even while helping customers without them realizing it) so that the store always felt perfect. They had a phrase for it but I forgot now, it's been almost 15 years now...
stevage · 3h ago
I'm going to really enjoy going into apple stores and messing them up now.
filchermcurr · 2h ago
Why would you enjoy making worker's lives just a little more difficult? :\
TiredOfLife · 9h ago
I like how the picture clearly shows that the screen angle is 70 degrees or rather 110 from the users point of view
jolmg · 5h ago
> In Apple Stores all screens are tilted at exactly 76° degrees, this is so you move the screen with your hand…interacting with the product more and making you feel more attached to it.
From the description, I would've thought it meant 76 degrees from the user's PoV, i.e. slightly closed so the user would feel compelled to open it more / tilt it into their view (with their hand). The pictures show ~70 degrees from the back of the devices though, so IDK what they mean about the hand moving the screen. There's no need for interacting then, since the display can be seen from afar.
0xCMP · 7h ago
I believe the initial tweets/demos have some calculation errors which were later corrected.
TiredOfLife · 4h ago
Those calculation errors are called lies
layer8 · 6h ago
The photo shows 70 degrees.
harrall · 6h ago
I wonder if the specific degree is important or rather it’s because screens tilted at different angles in a store looks ugly asf.
jayknight · 6h ago
My first job was at a video rental store. My boss was very strict about the videos being spaced evenly and all at the same angle. Every hour one of us had to walk the entire store straightening everything out. It did look very nice in there.
busymom0 · 7h ago
I am just imagining the manager get an angry email from Tim Cook every time some MacBook in the store is not at 76 degrees.
bmcahren · 9h ago
Missed a huge opportunity to play the sound of a monstrous wooden door sound when the lid closes. Looking forward to the update!
Apple is going to see an increase in MacBook Pro hinges breaking from people trying to play the Star Trek theme in theremin mode or other songs with other instrument sounds.
Apple: How did the hinge break?
Customer: I don’t know, I just opened it one day and it came off.
"I was just hitting the side of my laptop in order to go to Safari"
No longer supported because we don't use HDDs anymore.
rootbear · 6h ago
I always wanted to rig up a laptop that has an IMU to detect when it was in free fall and play the Wilhelm scream.
JKCalhoun · 8h ago
Ha ha, too bad Apple is likely logging screen angle for just such a repair dispute.
crazygringo · 9h ago
I wonder why? Presumably this information doesn't come for free, and Apple spends money to put this sensor in.
Is it a backup if the magnet for closed lid detection fails? Is it some kind of input for the brightness sensor or True Tone? Is it for warranty investigation, that if the hinge breaks they can figure out if it was physically pushed too far, or was repeatedly slammed open and shut like a toy?
avianlyric · 9h ago
The info probably does come for free. The laptops don’t use the magnets along the top edge of the screen for detecting if the screen is closed, those magnets are just there to provide the latching effect when the screen is closed, so it doesn’t open accidentally.
The sensor used for detecting if the lid is closed is an “angle” sensor, although really it’s an Hall effect sensor and a magnet in the hinge. If you have a Hall effect sensor, getting angle data from it is pretty much free, because the Hall effect produces a continuously varying signal, you need thresholding logic to turn it into a binary output.
Given Hall effect ICs are so cheap and plentiful there no reason to use anything else. Also given they mass-produced ICs it’s probably cheaper to buy a fully featured Hall Effect IC, because the manufacturing cost between a basic IC and an advanced IC is almost certainly zero these days.
In short, modern IC manufacturing has just made magnetic angle sensors as cheap, if not cheaper, than dump non-angle sensing Hall sensors. After all you can always use an angle sensing Hall sensor as binary switch if you want, but the reverse isn’t true, so if the ICs basically cost the same, you can expect the less capable ICs to be completely outcompeted by the more capable ICs.
londons_explore · 3h ago
Angle sensing IC's tend to need to be on the end of the shaft they sense, which can make some packaging and assembly headaches.
I personally am surprised they don't put an accelerometer in both halves of the laptop and use math to calculate the angle based on gravity.
ChocolateGod · 6h ago
So basically as free as the glowing Apple logo that used to be on the back of Macbooks.
macNchz · 8h ago
Once upon a time Mac laptops used reed switches to detect closed lids, and they were a common point of failure, presumably since they contained moving parts.
cosmic_cheese · 5h ago
They can be erroneously triggered or prevented from working as expected by nearby magnetic objects too, which can be annoying. No such issue with a hinge angle sensor.
userbinator · 3h ago
The cost of the software is higher for an angle sensor than a binary switch, but perhaps they consider it NRE (which is actually not true if you consider "maintenance" work.)
estimator7292 · 8h ago
We've been using Hall effect sensors for lid close detection for a long, long time. My thinkpad from 2013 has it halfway down one edge.
If you simply move the sensor (that is already a requirement) closer to the hinge, you can infer angle based on the Hall sensor for free. You can even get special sensors that specifically measure the magnetic field orientation for the same price as the simple type.
Yes, it's completely free with just a very minimal amount of thought put into the design.
postalcoder · 8h ago
It’s likely there to support Desk View[0]. Desk View presents the items on your desk in a geometrically correct, top-down view. Knowing the angle of the display is very helpful when applying keystone correction.
Wild idea: if the goal is to wake from sleep as quickly as possible when opening the lid, could receiving a signal as soon as the user starts lifting the screen save a few hundred milliseconds? I might be way off though.
anentropic · 9h ago
Pretty sure that exact feature was announced when the current generation of Macbooks were launched
seanalltogether · 9h ago
My best guess is it's related to thermal control. The vents on macbooks are right under the hinge, and the vents are blocked and opened to different degrees based on the angle of the lid.
ritcgab · 7h ago
And this little thingy makes a lot of M2 MacBook Airs fail.
emmelaich · 5h ago
I was wondering this myself. I've had three mac air/books that simply failed to turn the display on. I've heard (from a third party repairer) that it is not uncommon.
katmannthree · 7h ago
I'd like to hear more, do you have an article or something you could link?
ritcgab · 5h ago
There is no official statement about this issue but you can search for user reports like "M2 MacBook Air black screen" or something similar. It is not uncommon.
In older versions of macOS you can simply try two things:
* Press Esc in locking screen, or
* Press "Sleep" from the menu bar icon and then press Esc immediately
If the machine crashes/reboots, the sensor is bad and it needs to be replaced. Apple Store replaces the whole display assembly.
15 inch and M3/M4 models are not affected, AFAIK.
cush · 10h ago
Looks like something is off with the value. That “exact angle” makes zero sense
ghoulishly · 8h ago
Hey, developer of this experiment here. I screwed up the calculation on the demo video, but it’s patched in the latest version on the repo.
I thought it was centidegrees but it turns out the sensor was reporting the raw degrees.
socalgal2 · 8h ago
Yes, the video shoes the screen moving about 120 degrees but the number goes from ~335 to 0 (~3x too much)
nostrademons · 7h ago
A lot of foldables have a hinge angle sensor - it's actually a public API in Android, and robust enough that we use it to detect whether a device is a foldable:
> we use it to detect whether a device is a foldable
I’m curious what you do with this information. Can you share?
xdkyx · 7h ago
The first thing that comes to mind is simplifying the identification of a device type, without the necessity of looking up a device list name or updating the list with each new device that gets released.
robertoandred · 4h ago
Yeah but why do you need to know?
nostrademons · 4h ago
Foldables have a different UI which often requires different requests to the backend. They need to support both narrow-screen and large-screen formats for content, and you usually want to avoid having critical UI elements fall on the hinge for fairly obvious usability reasons.
robertoandred · 3h ago
That should all be abstracted out to the operating system, not dependent on checking for specific devices. Any app should be able to accommodate different screen/window sizes and safe areas.
danaris · 2h ago
...And does the Android OS provide this information?
'Cause if not, it makes perfect sense for nostrademons to be doing it themselves.
nostrademons · 2h ago
The Android OS does provide screen width/height information and safe areas. We use them when appropriate, which is fairly often, but not universally. Safe area support for foldables is pretty weak, though, because it's a relatively new device category that imposes fairly different constraints on devices.
The bigger issue is that there's always a long-tail of product considerations that need to be different on foldables and aren't covered by just feature-detecting the available screen resolution. Logging is one: PMs are very interested in how the category as a whole is performing, if only to direct future hardware plans, and that requires that it actually be categorized as a separate category. Backend requests are another: you can (and should) optimize your bandwidth usage on phones by not shipping to the client information that is only going to be displayed on large screens, and you can (and should) optimize your screen usage on large screens by displaying more information that is not available on phones, but foldables represent the union of the two, and you usually don't want the latency of additional backend requests when the user fold/unfolds the device.
(The irony is that the app in question is Google Play, and I personally know most of the PMs and several of the engineers on Android SysUI.)
Classic Apple overengineering. Every other laptop I know of just uses a single lid switch. It reminds me of their mouse that has capacitive buttons and a speaker to produce clicking sounds.
weebull · 1h ago
My framework 12 has a similar sensor. It tells to UI when to disable the keyboard and track pad because you've got it in tablet mode.
methyl · 5h ago
I wish more laptop producers overengineered their products the way Apple does.
xanderlewis · 4h ago
Are you talking about the MacBook trackpad, or something else?
Great! so they already know that I've been squinting at a 42deg gap trying to use my old MBP. The year with the faulty designed screen connector which was only covered for replacement on certain models, not mine. I wonder if that is why they added this, to check for 'holding the lid wrong'. If I open it any further I need a reboot to get the display back, oh and that angle decreases over time.
I wouldnt mind but I was 95% of the time clamshell, and still the keyboard made from butterflies wings lasted next to no time, and the battery put on too much weight after only 30 something cycles. After all these years I never understand how they produce such lemon models some years, just trying to save a few cents here and there. The one before was thermal paste nvidia meltdown.
floydnoel · 7h ago
I think clamshell mode was a killer of those models especially. I never ran mine closed and still use them for gaming to this day (since they still run Wintel). Not even a single key failed yet
mtz_federico · 3h ago
Does anyone know if this is used by any program to check if you are actually looking at the screen? I could imagine it being used for some blackmirror type stuff
amelius · 3h ago
Meanwhile, Samsung makes luxury devices that have foldable screens ...
Apple has a _lot_ of catching up to do.
kubatyszko · 9h ago
Reminds me of a "stable window" app gadget from mid-2000's that used the built-in accelerometer to make a window stable irrespectively of laptop's tilt.
a-dub · 4h ago
my guess: probably there to support the camera system and depth camera.
although unless there's some sort of angle measurement with respect to the ground in the base, i'm not sure what it would be useful for. maybe to provide continuity for the depth camera when the lid angle is changing (without heavy duty estimation calculations).
Despacito2019 · 8h ago
lol apple
Why does it say it's by Lisa?
I signed up for my developer account when I was a kid, used my mom's name, and now it's stuck that way forever and I can't change it. That's life.
pooper · 7h ago
I am thinking about getting a completely different apple id when I get my next iPhone. I don't have a paid developer account. Or do they actively prohibit multiple accounts? I've never tried on Apple before but I have multiple goog.e accounts and it seems fine to have different accounts on different Android devices?
SXX · 5h ago
Moreover on Android you still can have 10 different Google accounts on one phone all from different countries for downloading region-locked apps on Google Play. Though recently Google started to break it by changing account region countries nilly-willy. Yet you can still register as many accounts via Chrome as you wish really without extra gmail accounts just by using own domain redirect via cloudflare or something.
On iOS installed apps are locked into specific Apple ID they been downloaded with, so you might have issues with e.g WhatsApp. Still possible to download region-locked apps with non-primary AppleID, but it will sometimes ask to re-authenticate with said AppleID to keep it updated so it's cant be just throwaway.
Confused why it says that 'this API is not exposed' while it's a simple HID device.
Author can submit this to the AppStore.
latexr · 6h ago
> Confused why it says that 'this API is not exposed'
What it says is (emphasis mine) “it’s not exposed as a public API”. In other words, Apple doesn’t provide official documentation and hooks for you to interact with the feature, like they do e.g. with Bluetooth. Even then, while they provide public APIs to interact with paired devices, interacting with the Bluetooth controller itself (e.g. turning it completely off or on) requires private APIs.
WhyNotHugo · 8h ago
If it’s a simple HID device, can we likewise have support for this on Linux?
simne · 3h ago
Looks like opportunity for gymnastics app!
chipsrafferty · 6h ago
Someone should make a video game where you have to jerk the hinge back and forth for basic movement
ramon156 · 10h ago
And also it has a magnet to detect the lid being closed. People think this is over engineered, but I've yet to see another brand that has a working closed lid detection
gruez · 10h ago
>but I've yet to see another brand that has a working closed lid detection
With both Windows and Linux, it's always a luck-of-the-draw thing. Sometimes closing the lid works perfectly, sometimes you get a doofus manufacturer with lousy drivers, so 1 in 20 times you pull your laptop out of your bag and it's red hot with a drained battery.
It's maddening that only Apple gets this right 100% of the time, and it's among the things keeping me on Apple's platform for the moment. I can't fathom why this isn't a bigger priority for everyone else: much like "trackpads that don't suck", it's a huge quality-of-life thing which keeps tons of people on Macs because they want it to Just Work without ever thinking about it.
gruez · 9h ago
>sometimes you get a doofus manufacturer with lousy drivers, so 1 in 20 times you pull your laptop out of your bag and it's red hot with a drained battery.
That's due to "connected standby"[1], which is to have laptops behave more like a phone when in sleep. This is in contrast to S3 sleep, which basically halts all activity. Sounds all good in theory, but as soon as you allow code to be run while in sleep, it's easy for some runaway app (OS or third party) to eat through your battery even while your laptop is "sleeping". Worse is that there's no way to force sleep, so your only choice is hibernate, which is even worse than S3 sleep before.
“Modern standby” is indeed the culprit in many cases, maybe even the primary one these days, but to my understanding it can still be a crapshoot on laptops that support S3 sleep since it’s up to the OS to detect that the lid has been closed and put the machine to sleep. This has been a problem for a very long time, since well before it became cool to pretend to be a smartphone and not actually sleep the machine.
There’s also wake on LAN which if enabled can rouse the machine from sleep after it’s successfully entered a sleep state.
dontlaugh · 8h ago
That feature also works just fine on macs, though.
adrianmonk · 5h ago
Macs have a completely different operating system managing what happens when the laptop is doing its standby stuff, though.
ufmace · 7h ago
It works fine, except for when it doesn't.
Source: My macbook has drained its battery flat while closed in my bag dozens of times. Then it just stopped doing that on an OS update. I still have no idea why.
AuthAuth · 4h ago
On mac it works slightly more reliably than windows. I've had both devices drain in standby.
monsieurbanana · 9h ago
Ah, I wish. You're just lucky if you never had a MacBook burning your hand when pulling it out of a backpack.
cosmic_cheese · 8h ago
The old Intel models were hit or miss, but with the M-series models I’ve never had problems with MacBooks not going to sleep when the lid is shut and staying that way so long as wake on LAN is disabled (or disabled on battery). That setting does need to be off though, with it on I did observe occasional misbehavior.
For a long time (years) there was a bug in Firefox that'd prevent a Windows machine from going to sleep if webgl content was loaded in any FF tab.
So anyway that killed one of my laptop's batteries. So much for supporting Internet freedoms...
Windows comes with a utility that'll tell you what process denied a sleep request, super useful.
I've actually ran into MacBooks not sleeping a few times, but it is much rarer.
It is unfortunate because back on the mid 2000s windows had the best functioning sleep code, but then they tried to catch up with iPad's # instant on and chasing perfection led to the current mess.
toxik · 8h ago
Macs these days wake up regularly as I understand it. My MacBook's battery discharges decently fast even when the lid is shut
modeless · 9h ago
This is not a sensor problem, it's a Windows problem.
bakje · 9h ago
To be fair, I’ve had this issue with MacBooks as well in the past, although not yet with my M3 pro
mort96 · 8h ago
What makes you think that these issues you describe (which I've experienced too, FWIW) are problems related to the sensor rather than the OS or drivers?
bigyabai · 9h ago
Ironically, I had this issue with my Macbook more than my Windows and Linux machines combined.
CamouflagedKiwi · 8h ago
I don't think this is about the hardware driver detection of the lid closing. Lid events are a first-class thing in ACPI and I've never seen a laptop that didn't have one, or any real evidence that one didn't do the thing.
Much more likely is that the OS was prevented from going to sleep by some badly behaved process, or got woken up by another thing like allowing USB to wake it from sleep, where even touching the mouse can wake it - with some laptop equivalent like a ghost touchpad touch or whatever.
egypturnash · 10h ago
The magnets also work great as a way to attach a sunshade.
BuildTheRobots · 8h ago
The magnets work too well. Having one Thinkpad Yoga sat on top of another closed Yoga tricks the sensor into thinking it's in tablet mode and it disables the keyboard. I only lost 30min or so trying to work out what was happening...
There's decent reasons to over-engineer some of these sensors so they can't be unduly tricked by external influences.
mouse_ · 10h ago
Only ever had a Thinkpad lid close sensor fail once. Found my T60 heating up my backpack. Other than that, never been a problem.
I've never once had a Dell/HP/Acer/Asus with a reliable lid close sensor. You can't trust those things.
trenchpilgrim · 10h ago
If you're talking about laptops waking up inside backpacks- that's due to the terrible implementation of "Windows Modern Standby" that has ruined every laptop except Macbooks and Framework. (Framework still implements legacy S3 standby to improve compatibility with Linux.)
craftkiller · 9h ago
> Framework still implements legacy S3 standby to improve compatibility with Linux.
Just want to warn other readers: Not all framework models have S3 sleep. I've got the 7040 AMD framework laptop and it only does s2idle.
3eb7988a1663 · 7h ago
This has been an issue for so long - who is at fault? Is it hardware vendors or software? The spec itself is so bad that all implementations will disagree?
Halting power until an external physical event seems like a simple enough idea. I have never wanted to close my laptop and let it keep number crunching.
numpad0 · 7h ago
Microsoft. There's ~nothing to be gained by checking in with the Internet while laptop is closed, they implemented it anyway.
cubefox · 9h ago
> If you're talking about laptops waking up inside backups
Presumably he meant the laptop didn't go into standby when closed or woke up from standby while still closed.
zargon · 9h ago
That’s what Modern Standby does.
geoffeg · 9h ago
I've also found my work MacBook Pro heating up my backpack sleeve a number of times because it didn't properly go to sleep. Likely culprit is some "security" spyware the company installs.
justin66 · 10h ago
It's not generally the lid sensor that causes a Windows laptop to fail to go to sleep, is it?
leephillips · 9h ago
The reality distortion field is immortal.
hyperhello · 9h ago
Is there a downloadable source for this? I’d love to add it.
> trombone/piano/violin glissando
> falling and crash sound
> ratcheting ring spanner
> passing train/helicopter/car
> heavy door (safe/cave)
> theremin
anotherhue · 9h ago
Creaky dungeon door surely?
oh_fiddlesticks · 9h ago
That's what the OP demonstrates....
comrade1234 · 10h ago
Is it the angle of the hinge or the angle of the screen? I assume the latter... my laptop is rarely on a level surface.
Sharlin · 10h ago
At first I wondered why you'd assume the latter – certainly something like a tiny rotary encoder is a simpler lower-tech solution than a MEMS inclinometer. But these days I'm not actually so sure.
jeffbee · 8h ago
Without checking the catalog, I would assume that a MEMS inclinometer is much cheaper in 2025 than an absolute position encoder.
Edit: catalog confirms.
chmod775 · 7h ago
Chances are there's an accelerometer in the screen and one in the base.
danielbln · 9h ago
As someone who recently wrecked their MacBook's screen by leaving something hard and pointy in between keyboard and screen when closing the lid, I wonder if one can turn on the webcam briefly before the lid closes and sound an alarm if it detects anything in the way.
wslh · 8h ago
Is this part of telemetry?
Finnucane · 10h ago
this just makes me miss the old Mac OS that let you add sound effects to anything.
I_dream_of_Geni · 9h ago
IKR? The good old days...
ModernMech · 6h ago
Microsoft has had this in their Surface Book. It has a screen that could detach and be used as a table, which had an accelerometer in it that could measure the angle.
fwip · 7h ago
My understanding is that this sensor is used to help adjust speaker behavior for better sound, but I can't find a link to support that.
gjsman-1000 · 9h ago
The Nintendo Switch 2 according to Welcome Tour can also detect hinge angle. Unclear if this is a sensor or clever math though.
danielbln · 9h ago
I bet it's just the built-in gyro.
jama211 · 6h ago
Hahaha that’s awesome
deathanatos · 9h ago
This post was also made (by the same person, it seems) on Mastodon: https://hachyderm.io/@samhenrigold/115159295473019599 — which has the added benefit of not being X, not requiring cookies, and has more information than the tweet, including a follow-up "theremin" hinge.
Since people can't agree on which URL is better, I'll put these other links in the top text. Thanks to you both.
1oooqooq · 7h ago
why avoid Xitter today for the Xitter of tomorrow? don't distract people from mastodon for this trojan horse.
akk0 · 7h ago
Fediverse will never be useful because balkanization isn't a desirable feature. The question of "which server should I sign up for" is an irredeemable anchor around anyone's neck before they can even start using it. I'm all for decentralized social media but the whole federated model is so bad.
patrickdavey · 7h ago
Have you actually tried using it? I love mastodon now! You can just follow people as normal, a number of pretty interesting folks hang out on there (Brian Krebs etc).
No ads, a timeline which isn't endless and you can actually just read. It's actually really nice! I also think the decentralized non proprietary model brings us closer to something which is becoming ever more important in this world we find ourselves in.
franga2000 · 6h ago
Using it isn't the problem, joining it is. Finding a server that has the right combination of
- isn't The Big One (defeats the point)
- has a nice domain (that's your name forever)
- is stable (major downtime or data loss is unacceptable these days)
- is guaranteed to stick around forever (no, migration isn't solved and it will never not suck)
- has rules you agree with and can guarantee you'll follow
- is running the right software (no, "fedi" isn't compatible, you either run Mastodon or things will always be ever so slightly broken)
seabass-labrax · 1h ago
Some of the points you make are still true, but I think you're a little out of date.
Migration is not solved, but it also doesn't suck - unless you're doing it every week nothing will break, and several people I follow have already done it and it's been just fine.
Stability is also fine - if your server is down for a couple of hours, your timeline will catch up when it comes back online, and likewise your sent posts will stay in a local outbox until they can be sent. That's absolutely no different from email or Jabber or anything else.
"Fedi" is compatible enough that I run my own GoToSocial server, which is technically still beta software, and I haven't experienced any issues following and interacting with anyone on Mastodon, Pixelfed, Pleroma and quite a few other platforms.
Would I recommend it to a non-technical user, someone who wasn't really interested in 'servers' and 'clients' and 'protocols'? Yes, although I'd suggest they just go for The Big One, as you put it. What I would say though is that this is no longer just a technology for Web nerds any longer; it's a very viable alternative to centralized platforms.
akk0 · 6h ago
I made a serious effort to look into it, but without already knowing where I want to be it was impossible to decide which server to sign onto and it's an expensive choice to make upfront since they don't all federate with each other and even the ones that do federate are not guaranteed to not start beef with each other. That's before even getting to the fact that I can name at least 4 different protocols off the top of my head (Mastodon, Pleroma, Akkoma, Misskey) at various levels of not-entirely-incompatible with each other. I remember there being work on between-server account moving mechanisms in some state of almost-partially-working, too. Maybe things have changed now but I doubt it, everything I saw in the ecosystem just seemed to promote balkanization as a feature.
I'd love a truly decentralized model for this but fediverse isn't it, fediverse is a Hellenic League of city states where your ability to interact outside your bubble is beholden to your and their local leadership and shifting realities of protocol war jank.
If you do think my opinion is uninformed or mistaken at least know that I know many times more people who bounced off the idea for these reasons than people who actually managed to make heads or tails of this. Fwiw I don't use xitter/bsky either.
epistasis · 7h ago
Why click on a link that works versus one that doesn't? Is that the question? It's a weird form of evangelism to say that one shouldn't use the working link because it may not work in the future. That's the nature of web, most links decay.
EA-3167 · 7h ago
This is exactly why I avoid things like Mastodon as well, because the problem isn't who controls the format, it's the format itself. Who controls the format sure doesn't help, but if you imagine Mastodon becoming as universally adopted as Twitter and seriously don't think it would be a massive mess, then I envy your optimism.
opan · 7h ago
Fedi is different because it isn't proprietary or centralized. A new proprietary and/or centralized alternative is never the answer. That's just buying time.
Personally I am not a fan of the Mastodon software or side of fedi, but I have had good times on the Pleroma/Akkoma side, and it all works together.
OJFord · 7h ago
It will never be 'it', because I - despite being technically capable of running server on bare metal or something - have no idea what you're talking about. Fedi, Mastodon, Pleroma, Akkoma, there's too much to know or read about before you can just use it. People go to Facebook, to twitter.com, and just sign up and use it and know what it is.
setr · 7h ago
I don’t think that matters that much; it’s still just a popularity contest, and if something manages to break through that threshold, it’ll be trivial enough to make the default.
No one knew Reddit boards and 4chan boards either; you just knew to go to /b/ or /r/funny. The other boards, the other fediverse servers, are just details that enable other subcommunities to survive. The major community will just route to a single server, and most will probably never use a second
jama211 · 6h ago
Not who you were speaking to, but you just tried to trivialise the power of friction in a signup process, which goes _strongly_ against all known research on the topic.
Jyaif · 7h ago
A social network does not have to be universally adopted to be interesting because the vast majority of the folks do not do or think anything interesting.
A social network with just the top 1% of the geeks would be absolutely amazing.
jama211 · 6h ago
They called it a “Trojan horse” they shouldn’t be distracted from. They were stating that it was more likely to fail, which isn’t true. You can challenge that without challenging the idea that mastodon can still be a cool place, no one said they couldn’t.
pmarreck · 7h ago
Another awful epistemic echo chamber.
EDIT after downvotes: Look, I have evidence to back the claim (and I have every right to reject echo chambers), so if you want to downvote a potentially true statement, that's your prerogative, but I'm telling you, it's just going to radicalize you: https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.03443
I just want a twitter without fascists and white nationalists. Hardly need to be debating them tbh.
altairprime · 9h ago
Good catch! You can email the mods to ask the link be changed; use the footer contact link.
josephcsible · 9h ago
The follow-up theremin hinge is on X too.
wlesieutre · 8h ago
I can't see it, and if I click on @samhenrigold's profile I get a random selection of things from this July and last October instead of recent posts .
It's really not a useful platform for publicly sharing information anymore. Drives me nuts that government agencies use it for announcements like "Here's an amber alert with a twitter link, but you can't have any of the followup information because that's only for people who are logged in."
But you can only see replies to tweets if you're logged in; so thank you for providing that link, but currently, that's the only way that those of us who aren't logged into Twitter can find it.
Wowfunhappy · 9h ago
If a mod sees this, can we please get TFA changed? Both sources are equally authoritative in this case so we may as well use the nicer one.
altairprime · 9h ago
You can ensure a mod sees this by emailing them. :)
alt227 · 8h ago
What does 'nicer' mean?
estimator7292 · 8h ago
You can see the thread and its replies, there's no ads, trackers, popovers, spam bots, AI ads.
You simply see what the author posted and people's reactions.
It also doesn't load 400MB of JavaScript or whatever.
josephcsible · 9h ago
"nicer" is too subjective IMO. Both being equally authoritative is an argument to keep the one the original submitter used.
freehorse · 8h ago
Mastodon is more accessible though. And I do not even use mastodon.
JumpCrisscross · 7h ago
> Mastodon is more accessible
This is a semantic punt from nicer to accessible.
leephillips · 9h ago
I would change it if I could.
fouronnes3 · 10h ago
Ok but why?
latexr · 9h ago
For fun and whimsy in a world populated by too many exploitative apps. And because the author has a lot of free time (their words).
I mean why does the laptop need to have that sensor?
zitterbewegung · 7h ago
Yea this is how the new Apple silicon devices will start if they are off. The fingerprint sensor is just used to manually do it or override the current state / put it into recovery mode.
So the hardware is capable of performing the calibration, Apple just does not graciously grant you the right to install a recycled or third party sensor in your machine.
https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/759262/Torn+Lid+angle+se...
This could then be combined with some software on the machine to turn a MacBook into a difficult to detect recording device, bypassing protections such as the microphone and camera privacy alerts, since the MacBook would be closed but not sleeping.
Additionally, since the auto-locking is also tied to triggering sleep mode, it would be possible to gain access to a powered off device, switch the sensors, wait for the user to attempt to sleep mode the device, and then steal it back, completely unlocked with full access to the drive.
Are these absolutely ridiculous, James Bond-tier threat assessments? Yes, absolutely. But they're both totally feasible (and not too far off from exploits I've heard about in real life), and both are completely negated by simply serializing the lid sensor.
Should Apple include an option, buried in recoveryOS behind authentication and disk unlock steps like the option to allow downgrades and allow kernel extensions, that enables arbitrary and "unauthorized" hardware replacements like this? Yes, they really should. If implemented correctly, it would not harm the security profile of the system while still preventing the aforementioned exploits.
There are good security reasons for a lot of what Apple does. They just tend to push a little too far beyond mitigating those security issues into doing things which start to qualify as vendor lock-in.
I really wish people would start to recognize where the line should be drawn, rather than organizing into "security of the walled garden" versus "freedom of choice" groups whenever these things get brought up. You can have both! The dichotomy itself is a fiction perpetuated to defend the status quo.
As the user and owner of the product, I should be the sole decider about my own security posture, not some company who doesn’t know my use case or needs.
It’s crazy how we’ve managed to normalize the manufacturer making these kinds of blanket decisions on our behalf.
There’s a secondary argument you could make here whereby because the replacements must be valid Apple parts that have uniform behavior and tolerances, the strength of the secondary market is stronger and Apple products have a stronger resale value as a result, because you’re not going to encounter a MacBook with an arbitrary part replaced that you as the second-hand buyer know nothing about (this is why the secondary market for cars doesn’t work without the ability to lookup the car history by VIN).
With that being said, I don’t think Apple see this specific part as a security critical component, because the calibration is not cryptographic and just sets some end point data. Apple are usually pretty good about using cryptography where they see real security boundaries.
Companies as big as Apple and Google that provide such immensely important platforms and devices should have their hands tied by every major government's regulatory bodies to keep the hardware open for innovation without taxation and control.
We've gone from open computing to serfdom in the last 20 years, and it's only getting worse as these companies pile on trillions after trillions of nation state equivalent market cap.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24955071
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36926276
No, it actually does set the zero point.
"Set the angle to 0 (closed) and press Enter. Open 10 degrees and press Enter. Repeat for every 10 degrees from 0 to 170" would be an example of actual calibration.
Positive take: discourage theft; not only is the device locked down / encrypted and you can't just wipe / reinstall it, you can't even break it down for parts.
When the iphones etc first came out, they were a very attractive target for theft. Come to think of it, that's one reason why I was hesitant to get an iphone back then.
Within mainland China, Apple was facing fraud of having their devices purchased, stripped for genuine parts, and then rebuilt with knockoffs and sold as new to unsuspecting victims within China or returned. This whole thing that we hate in the west was in response to that fraud.
I don't like it at all, but it's not all Apple being assholes.
I genuinely doubt that the level of theft ever rose to a large enough margin, if it did, Apple would have pulled out of China.
For reference, Apple employs ex-NSA, CIA, TLA professionals to solve this exact problem with a near endless budget and 0 oversight and accountability.
Most notably, one of the organisational leaders was caught bribing the sheriff's office for concealed carry permits, https://www.ft.com/content/e73676d7-c6bc-4b07-b9bf-9bd702f1f... / https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/29/apples_chief_security...
There was a point where the black market in China was making more on Apple products than Apple itself. They initially tried to have stricter warranty conditions in China as a fix, but state media decided this was an affront to the country: https://www.infoworld.com/article/2271627/apple-clarifies-wa...
Hence, the technical fix.
Why pull out when you can apply a technical fix and retain both access to the biggest consumer electronics market in the world and maintain the good graces of the country that manufactures almost all your products?
The checks are not entirely in software, and would not be in showing the error, either.
No comments yet
For example, in this DankPods video he pulls apart two cube speakers, and while they look mostly the same on the outside, one has a Nokia-sized lithium battery that is directly soldered to, and the other has a swollen pouch pack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfnabYBtJ2I&t=325s
Unfortunately end users can't tell whether they got a "race to the bottom" item, so as much as I'd like cheap repairs, it seems like those also come with a huge amount of buyer beware that they may not know about.
That said...
I demand that Apple makes genuine parts available to end users and 3rd repair shops.
And being 100% pro Right to Repair, I support repairs with non-genuine parts.
For peace of mind, have your gear repaired by Apple. For the cost sensitive and tinkerers, you have options.
I would presume that the world's third largest company by market cap would be attracted to that option because it's the most profitable thing to do.
Yes -- there is a nuance between 'most profitable' and 'most thrifty'.
Does it though? Are there statistics that clearly show devices aren't being stolen anymore because they cannot monetize them anymore?
The way I see it the only thing this does is make you feel better the thief cannot monetize it, or use it, but it does nothing to prevent the theft which is really a moot point in the grand scheme of things. We end up paying in this way, of not having the freedom to easily and cheaply replace parts, while being comforted that even though they still are getting stolen from us, whoever steals them cannot use/monetize them. Which is quite primitive in a sense, and I do not think it's worth it. But that's just me.
However I wonder if they have had an impact on data and financial theft. Which things like part serialization wouldn't affect but system security measures would.
Replacing the backpack and gym clothes was probably $100, market value was maybe $10, and it was $507 to fix the window. (my deductible was $500.)
Outside nwallin's car: no valuables
Inside nwallin's car: maybe valuables?
And this would account for pros, let alone newbs in stealing, or just irrational behavior, or people who just enjoy creating harm with no gain. I think this is a case where the justification is weak and in reality it's more about greed and control on Apple's side rather than some potential benefit that is actually seriously diluted by a lot of other not mentioned factors.
No need to imagine. This actually happens with watches.
In Hong Kong (and likely other cities), you can pick a watch from a "catalog" that is a binder of photos of watches on people's wrists in public, and the middleman will have the watch custom-stolen for you.
Apple could easily have a dialogue that pops up saying:
"The XYZ sensor in this device is still registered to a device attached to robert8 @icloud.com. Please log into that account now to authorize the component swap".
Whilst the swap isn't authorised, firmware would power the system off after 10 mins, making any stolen laptop parts useless.
Presumably MacBooks still have a big un-shuttered camera on the screen? Presumably there is still a light sensor?
I get the idea of parts pairing as a theft/parts-out deterrent -- I don't get it as a method of cutting features on existing machines. "We need the lid angle sensor to be valuable, so let's cut out our eyes and seal our ears."
https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/security/secbbd20b00b/...
https://www.economist.com/interactive/britain/2025/08/17/the...
> More recently London has become known as the “phone-snatching capital of Europe”. If the victims manage to track their devices, the goods are most likely to turn up in China.
> Globalisation created the supply chain that allows each iPhone—assembled from nearly 3,000 components—to reach the hands of a consumer. The same forces inverted see that phone yanked out of it, re-exported and broken apart again.
> Stolen iPhone is in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China; what can I do?
Someone depriving me of it is theft.
I think you should also think more about this.
One can believe that Apple (or any company) should let you do whatever you want with your hardware - in general - and point out any instance when they don't; even if that specific instance is not something that touches you!
This is true of everything. Another example: if you believe in freedom of speech, you should vocally defend anyone who is deprived of it, even when that is not you. Otherwise, you lose by divide and conquer.
Apes together strong.
0: https://support.apple.com/en-us/121541
But most of all...you don't have to commit to a behavior early in the design process by molding the switch in exactly the right spot. If the threshold you initially pick isn't perfect, it's much easier to change a line of code than the tooling at the manufacturing plant.
But this sensor has been in MacBooks since the 2019 models.
If things go particularly well you get to launch the feature on multiple hardware revisions at once because the first deployment of the component worked great, which is a neat trick.
Is it just an image transformation or a full blown AI model using Gaussian Splats or something along those lines?
not only for mac users.
Plenty of users put stickers on their cameras. One simple user trick would break your whole workflow.
https://code.flickr.net/2014/10/20/introducing-flickr-park-o...
Not condoning people make this app, just thinking about how fast things have moved in just a few short years.
Merlin[1] (also from Cornell Lab of Ornithology), on the other hand, has both image and sound ID. I haven't used either, so I cannot compare the quality of results from Merlin vs. BirdNET for sound ID, but afaik only Merlin has image ID.
0. https://birdnet.cornell.edu/
1. https://merlin.allaboutbirds.org/
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-Hinge-Driver-Linux-5.12
The sensor angle would be in a file like `/sys/bus/iio/devices/iio:device*/in_angl0_raw` (device number can vary). At least I have this in a config file and remember it working (maybe on a different computer?). I cannot get it to work anymore on my laptop.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1059990/Trombone_Champ/
Is 802.11 signal strength consistent/detailed enough that it could be used as another kind of input, as someone cradles the laptop in different ways?
https://nime.org/proc/meacham2016/index.html
The only thing "Apple" here is that it's not exposed as a public API.
No, it's a different method.
I wonder if Apple uses this internally at Apple stores to set the screen angle at 76 degrees.
I worked at an Apple retail store during college. We were taught to put the screens at a certain angle but it was a gut feeling angle learned through practice, and not measured. More senior people would correct you if you were off.
They did mandate putting the bezel, mouse, keyboard, etc. at specific grains in the wood that were consistent across the desks though to ensure they were lined up without having to bust out a level-like device.
Overall everything was made so that retail employees would continuously clean up the displays as they walked around the store (even while helping customers without them realizing it) so that the store always felt perfect. They had a phrase for it but I forgot now, it's been almost 15 years now...
From the description, I would've thought it meant 76 degrees from the user's PoV, i.e. slightly closed so the user would feel compelled to open it more / tilt it into their view (with their hand). The pictures show ~70 degrees from the back of the devices though, so IDK what they mean about the hand moving the screen. There's no need for interacting then, since the display can be seen from afar.
https://youtube.com/shorts/sgqTEjN5_vQ
https://youtu.be/Uivp-hvk-nk
Edit: not forgetting the classic Miles Davis door: https://youtu.be/wwOipTXvNNo
("It’s such a fine line between stupid and clever.")
https://sound-effects.bbcrewind.co.uk/
There must be a door or two in there.
Apple: How did the hinge break?
Customer: I don’t know, I just opened it one day and it came off.
"I was just hitting the side of my laptop in order to go to Safari"
No longer supported because we don't use HDDs anymore.
Is it a backup if the magnet for closed lid detection fails? Is it some kind of input for the brightness sensor or True Tone? Is it for warranty investigation, that if the hinge breaks they can figure out if it was physically pushed too far, or was repeatedly slammed open and shut like a toy?
The sensor used for detecting if the lid is closed is an “angle” sensor, although really it’s an Hall effect sensor and a magnet in the hinge. If you have a Hall effect sensor, getting angle data from it is pretty much free, because the Hall effect produces a continuously varying signal, you need thresholding logic to turn it into a binary output.
Given Hall effect ICs are so cheap and plentiful there no reason to use anything else. Also given they mass-produced ICs it’s probably cheaper to buy a fully featured Hall Effect IC, because the manufacturing cost between a basic IC and an advanced IC is almost certainly zero these days.
In short, modern IC manufacturing has just made magnetic angle sensors as cheap, if not cheaper, than dump non-angle sensing Hall sensors. After all you can always use an angle sensing Hall sensor as binary switch if you want, but the reverse isn’t true, so if the ICs basically cost the same, you can expect the less capable ICs to be completely outcompeted by the more capable ICs.
I personally am surprised they don't put an accelerometer in both halves of the laptop and use math to calculate the angle based on gravity.
If you simply move the sensor (that is already a requirement) closer to the hinge, you can infer angle based on the Hall sensor for free. You can even get special sensors that specifically measure the magnetic field orientation for the same price as the simple type.
Yes, it's completely free with just a very minimal amount of thought put into the design.
0: https://support.apple.com/en-us/121541
In older versions of macOS you can simply try two things:
* Press Esc in locking screen, or * Press "Sleep" from the menu bar icon and then press Esc immediately
If the machine crashes/reboots, the sensor is bad and it needs to be replaced. Apple Store replaces the whole display assembly.
15 inch and M3/M4 models are not affected, AFAIK.
I thought it was centidegrees but it turns out the sensor was reporting the raw degrees.
https://source.android.com/docs/core/interaction/sensors/sen...
I’m curious what you do with this information. Can you share?
'Cause if not, it makes perfect sense for nostrademons to be doing it themselves.
The bigger issue is that there's always a long-tail of product considerations that need to be different on foldables and aren't covered by just feature-detecting the available screen resolution. Logging is one: PMs are very interested in how the category as a whole is performing, if only to direct future hardware plans, and that requires that it actually be categorized as a separate category. Backend requests are another: you can (and should) optimize your bandwidth usage on phones by not shipping to the client information that is only going to be displayed on large screens, and you can (and should) optimize your screen usage on large screens by displaying more information that is not available on phones, but foldables represent the union of the two, and you usually don't want the latency of additional backend requests when the user fold/unfolds the device.
(The irony is that the app in question is Google Play, and I personally know most of the PMs and several of the engineers on Android SysUI.)
Probably a nicer interface for anyone who wants to play with this :)
0: https://github.com/samhenrigold/LidAngleSensor
I wouldnt mind but I was 95% of the time clamshell, and still the keyboard made from butterflies wings lasted next to no time, and the battery put on too much weight after only 30 something cycles. After all these years I never understand how they produce such lemon models some years, just trying to save a few cents here and there. The one before was thermal paste nvidia meltdown.
Apple has a _lot_ of catching up to do.
although unless there's some sort of angle measurement with respect to the ground in the base, i'm not sure what it would be useful for. maybe to provide continuity for the depth camera when the lid angle is changing (without heavy duty estimation calculations).
Why does it say it's by Lisa?
I signed up for my developer account when I was a kid, used my mom's name, and now it's stuck that way forever and I can't change it. That's life.
On iOS installed apps are locked into specific Apple ID they been downloaded with, so you might have issues with e.g WhatsApp. Still possible to download region-locked apps with non-primary AppleID, but it will sometimes ask to re-authenticate with said AppleID to keep it updated so it's cant be just throwaway.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/101661
Author can submit this to the AppStore.
What it says is (emphasis mine) “it’s not exposed as a public API”. In other words, Apple doesn’t provide official documentation and hooks for you to interact with the feature, like they do e.g. with Bluetooth. Even then, while they provide public APIs to interact with paired devices, interacting with the Bluetooth controller itself (e.g. turning it completely off or on) requires private APIs.
???
I don't think I've seen a laptop that doesn't have closed lid detection. At the very least it's common enough that windows has a setting specifically for it: https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/69762-how-change-default...
It's maddening that only Apple gets this right 100% of the time, and it's among the things keeping me on Apple's platform for the moment. I can't fathom why this isn't a bigger priority for everyone else: much like "trackpads that don't suck", it's a huge quality-of-life thing which keeps tons of people on Macs because they want it to Just Work without ever thinking about it.
That's due to "connected standby"[1], which is to have laptops behave more like a phone when in sleep. This is in contrast to S3 sleep, which basically halts all activity. Sounds all good in theory, but as soon as you allow code to be run while in sleep, it's easy for some runaway app (OS or third party) to eat through your battery even while your laptop is "sleeping". Worse is that there's no way to force sleep, so your only choice is hibernate, which is even worse than S3 sleep before.
[1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/de...
There’s also wake on LAN which if enabled can rouse the machine from sleep after it’s successfully entered a sleep state.
Source: My macbook has drained its battery flat while closed in my bag dozens of times. Then it just stopped doing that on an OS update. I still have no idea why.
So anyway that killed one of my laptop's batteries. So much for supporting Internet freedoms...
Windows comes with a utility that'll tell you what process denied a sleep request, super useful.
I've actually ran into MacBooks not sleeping a few times, but it is much rarer.
It is unfortunate because back on the mid 2000s windows had the best functioning sleep code, but then they tried to catch up with iPad's # instant on and chasing perfection led to the current mess.
Much more likely is that the OS was prevented from going to sleep by some badly behaved process, or got woken up by another thing like allowing USB to wake it from sleep, where even touching the mouse can wake it - with some laptop equivalent like a ghost touchpad touch or whatever.
There's decent reasons to over-engineer some of these sensors so they can't be unduly tricked by external influences.
I've never once had a Dell/HP/Acer/Asus with a reliable lid close sensor. You can't trust those things.
Just want to warn other readers: Not all framework models have S3 sleep. I've got the 7040 AMD framework laptop and it only does s2idle.
Halting power until an external physical event seems like a simple enough idea. I have never wanted to close my laptop and let it keep number crunching.
Presumably he meant the laptop didn't go into standby when closed or woke up from standby while still closed.
> Jacket zipper
> C Major scale
> Slide whistle
> Washboard
> Airlock
> Vinyl record scratch
Edit: catalog confirms.
Just call it Twitter.
No ads, a timeline which isn't endless and you can actually just read. It's actually really nice! I also think the decentralized non proprietary model brings us closer to something which is becoming ever more important in this world we find ourselves in.
- isn't The Big One (defeats the point) - has a nice domain (that's your name forever) - is stable (major downtime or data loss is unacceptable these days) - is guaranteed to stick around forever (no, migration isn't solved and it will never not suck) - has rules you agree with and can guarantee you'll follow - is running the right software (no, "fedi" isn't compatible, you either run Mastodon or things will always be ever so slightly broken)
Migration is not solved, but it also doesn't suck - unless you're doing it every week nothing will break, and several people I follow have already done it and it's been just fine.
Stability is also fine - if your server is down for a couple of hours, your timeline will catch up when it comes back online, and likewise your sent posts will stay in a local outbox until they can be sent. That's absolutely no different from email or Jabber or anything else.
"Fedi" is compatible enough that I run my own GoToSocial server, which is technically still beta software, and I haven't experienced any issues following and interacting with anyone on Mastodon, Pixelfed, Pleroma and quite a few other platforms.
Would I recommend it to a non-technical user, someone who wasn't really interested in 'servers' and 'clients' and 'protocols'? Yes, although I'd suggest they just go for The Big One, as you put it. What I would say though is that this is no longer just a technology for Web nerds any longer; it's a very viable alternative to centralized platforms.
I'd love a truly decentralized model for this but fediverse isn't it, fediverse is a Hellenic League of city states where your ability to interact outside your bubble is beholden to your and their local leadership and shifting realities of protocol war jank.
If you do think my opinion is uninformed or mistaken at least know that I know many times more people who bounced off the idea for these reasons than people who actually managed to make heads or tails of this. Fwiw I don't use xitter/bsky either.
Personally I am not a fan of the Mastodon software or side of fedi, but I have had good times on the Pleroma/Akkoma side, and it all works together.
No one knew Reddit boards and 4chan boards either; you just knew to go to /b/ or /r/funny. The other boards, the other fediverse servers, are just details that enable other subcommunities to survive. The major community will just route to a single server, and most will probably never use a second
A social network with just the top 1% of the geeks would be absolutely amazing.
EDIT after downvotes: Look, I have evidence to back the claim (and I have every right to reject echo chambers), so if you want to downvote a potentially true statement, that's your prerogative, but I'm telling you, it's just going to radicalize you: https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.03443
A WaPo op-ed even bluntly stated: “The Bluesky bubble hurts liberals and their causes,” suggesting that trying to recreate Twitter only trapped them in ideological comfort zones: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/06/08/blue-sky-...
“Decamping to a progressive echo chamber on Bluesky does more to help that propaganda than hinder it.” https://www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/against-bluesky
It's really not a useful platform for publicly sharing information anymore. Drives me nuts that government agencies use it for announcements like "Here's an amber alert with a twitter link, but you can't have any of the followup information because that's only for people who are logged in."
You simply see what the author posted and people's reactions.
It also doesn't load 400MB of JavaScript or whatever.
This is a semantic punt from nicer to accessible.
https://hachyderm.io/@samhenrigold/115159306734992780