Probably a nicer interface for anyone who wants to play with this :)
postalcoder · 2h 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.
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.
OJFord · 1h ago
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 · 16m ago
I'm pretty sure the sensor for that is a simple reed switch.
anal_reactor · 2h ago
You could calculate the angle from the camera view as long as at least some piece of the MacBook is in view.
antennafirepla · 2h ago
You could, for orders of magnitude more compute than reading a magnetic encoder (my assumption at how they estimate it)
estimator7292 · 2h 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 · 1h 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 · 1h ago
If someone covers the camera, the feature isn't relevant since it requires the camera to see your desk
kazinator · 10m ago
[delayed]
Biganon · 6m ago
Wow, anal_reactor figured it out when the designers at Apple couldn't ! Truly impressive.
The only thing "Apple" here is that it's not exposed as a public API.
unglaublich · 2h 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 · 2h 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.
harrall · 15m 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 · 2m 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.
TiredOfLife · 3h ago
I like how the picture clearly shows that the screen angle is 70 degrees or rather 110 from the users point of view
0xCMP · 1h ago
I believe the initial tweets/demos have some calculation errors which were later corrected.
layer8 · 52m ago
The photo shows 70 degrees.
busymom0 · 1h 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.
hk1337 · 3h ago
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 · 10m 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 · 2h ago
Ha ha, too bad Apple is likely logging screen angle for just such a repair dispute.
crazygringo · 3h 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 · 3h 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.
ChocolateGod · 27m ago
So basically as free as the glowing Apple logo that used to be on the back of Macbooks.
macNchz · 2h 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.
postalcoder · 2h 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.
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.
rossant · 3h ago
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 · 3h ago
Pretty sure that exact feature was announced when the current generation of Macbooks were launched
seanalltogether · 2h 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.
bmcahren · 3h ago
Missed a huge opportunity to play the sound of a monstrous wooden door sound when the lid closes. Looking forward to the update!
("It’s such a fine line between stupid and clever.")
bapak · 3h ago
The audio stops abruptly when the lid clicks
cush · 4h ago
Looks like something is off with the value. That “exact angle” makes zero sense
ghoulishly · 2h 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 · 2h ago
Yes, the video shoes the screen moving about 120 degrees but the number goes from ~335 to 0 (~3x too much)
chipsrafferty · 24m ago
Someone should make a video game where you have to jerk the hinge back and forth for basic movement
ritcgab · 1h ago
And this little thingy makes a lot of M2 MacBook Airs fail.
katmannthree · 1h ago
I'd like to hear more, do you have an article or something you could link?
whitehexagon · 2h ago
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 · 1h 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
ramon156 · 4h 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 · 3h 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 · 3h 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 · 1h ago
That feature also works just fine on macs, though.
ufmace · 1h 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.
monsieurbanana · 3h 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 · 2h 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 · 2h 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 · 3h ago
This is not a sensor problem, it's a Windows problem.
bakje · 3h ago
To be fair, I’ve had this issue with MacBooks as well in the past, although not yet with my M3 pro
mort96 · 2h 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 · 3h ago
Ironically, I had this issue with my Macbook more than my Windows and Linux machines combined.
CamouflagedKiwi · 2h 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 · 4h ago
The magnets also work great as a way to attach a sunshade.
BuildTheRobots · 2h 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.
leephillips · 3h ago
The reality distortion field is immortal.
mouse_ · 4h 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 · 3h 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 · 3h 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 · 1h 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 · 1h ago
Microsoft. There's ~nothing to be gained by checking in with the Internet while laptop is closed, they implemented it anyway.
cubefox · 3h 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 · 3h ago
That’s what Modern Standby does.
geoffeg · 3h 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 · 4h ago
It's not generally the lid sensor that causes a Windows laptop to fail to go to sleep, is it?
nostrademons · 1h 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 · 1h 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.
ModernMech · 15m 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.
chmod775 · 1h ago
Chances are there's an accelerometer in the screen and one in the base.
kubatyszko · 3h 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.
Despacito2019 · 2h 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 · 1h 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?
hyperhello · 3h ago
Is there a downloadable source for this? I’d love to add it.
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 · 15m 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 · 2h ago
If it’s a simple HID device, can we likewise have support for this on Linux?
nickdothutton · 4h ago
MacBook Protractor
mouse_ · 4h ago
Close/open sound font ideas
> Jacket zipper
> C Major scale
> Slide whistle
> Washboard
> Airlock
> Vinyl record scratch
oever · 3h ago
> trombone/piano/violin glissando
> falling and crash sound
> ratcheting ring spanner
> passing train/helicopter/car
> heavy door (safe/cave)
> theremin
anotherhue · 3h ago
Creaky dungeon door surely?
oh_fiddlesticks · 3h ago
That's what the OP demonstrates....
comrade1234 · 4h 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 · 4h 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 · 2h 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.
danielbln · 3h 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.
jama211 · 36m ago
Hahaha that’s awesome
wslh · 2h ago
Is this part of telemetry?
fwip · 1h 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 · 3h 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 · 3h ago
I bet it's just the built-in gyro.
Finnucane · 4h ago
this just makes me miss the old Mac OS that let you add sound effects to anything.
I_dream_of_Geni · 3h ago
IKR? The good old days...
fouronnes3 · 4h ago
Ok but why?
latexr · 3h 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?
deathanatos · 3h 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 · 1h ago
why avoid Xitter today for the Xitter of tomorrow? don't distract people from mastodon for this trojan horse.
akk0 · 1h 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 · 57m 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 · 51m 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)
akk0 · 33m 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 · 1h 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 · 1h 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 · 1h 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 · 1h 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 · 57m 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 · 41m 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 · 1h 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 · 39m 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 · 1h 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 · 3h ago
Good catch! You can email the mods to ask the link be changed; use the footer contact link.
josephcsible · 3h ago
The follow-up theremin hinge is on X too.
wlesieutre · 2h 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 · 3h 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 · 2h ago
You can ensure a mod sees this by emailing them. :)
alt227 · 2h ago
What does 'nicer' mean?
estimator7292 · 2h 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 · 3h ago
"nicer" is too subjective IMO. Both being equally authoritative is an argument to keep the one the original submitter used.
freehorse · 2h ago
Mastodon is more accessible though. And I do not even use mastodon.
JumpCrisscross · 1h ago
> Mastodon is more accessible
This is a semantic punt from nicer to accessible.
leephillips · 3h ago
I would change it if I could.
zitterbewegung · 1h 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.
Probably a nicer interface for anyone who wants to play with this :)
0: https://support.apple.com/en-us/121541
But this sensor has been in MacBooks since the 2019 models.
not only for mac users.
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.
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.
0: https://support.apple.com/en-us/121541
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.
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.")
I thought it was centidegrees but it turns out the sensor was reporting the raw degrees.
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.
???
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.
https://source.android.com/docs/core/interaction/sensors/sen...
I’m curious what you do with this information. Can you share?
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.
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.
> Jacket zipper
> C Major scale
> Slide whistle
> Washboard
> Airlock
> Vinyl record scratch
Edit: catalog confirms.
https://hachyderm.io/@samhenrigold/115159306734992780
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)
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.