I always wondered why the microphone on my MacBook Pro would stop working whenever I closed the lid when using my external monitor. Glad to hear the "bug" exists for good reasons.
Deal with it, frankly. A cheap USB mic attached to the external screen, or for that matter some screens (including fairly high end ones like that LG 5k display Apple was featuring for a while) have built-in mics themselves these days.
But this is one case where there really is a pretty fundamental trade off if the goal is a really simple core "when the lid is shut I'm guaranteed audio privacy from that vector". Anything that allows getting around that in turn is a potential bypass. Anything in software, even if it requires a special boot to access, leaves some room for bugs. And for both software or even a physical hardware switch there would be room for someone to accidentally or maliciously leave it on, and it would be very hard to notice. Given how cheap microphones are and that if someone is using the system with the lid closed they're already committing to a certain amount of much more expensive external hardware, I think it's quite reasonable to stick a straightforward visual heuristic that "if the system is closed and thus the camera cannot see the microphone cannot work either". Easy to verify at a glance for anyone, not just the owner, easy to remember. Like security, good privacy design requires not just a solid technical foundation, but considerations for human UX.
I remember years ago visiting a customer shortly after many of their engineering staff had just upgraded to whatever macbook was popular at a time.
Within the week that they had them, two people in the department had broken their screens/hinges from accidents walking in and out of meetings with the lids open because there was no way provided in the software to disable suspend on lid closed which was killing people's SSH sessions. Within the month someone in my office also managed to do the same, and most of us weren't even using macs.
(I understand that this was eventually workaroundable with some power users tools; and I imagine mosh makes the suspends a little less of an issue now).
I'm sad that the popular linux desktops later decided to emulate the bad software culture that brought anti-features like that mandatory suspend.
So I expect that mic off on hinge close will have similar results. Though, ... at least this seems a lot more legitimate to me than a refusal to not suspend.
It's a trade-off. The behavior is pretty easy to grasp for the average user (closed laptop: stop doing everything, enter low-power mode), and there's ways around it for users that want something different (caffeinate command, ssh to tmux/screen sessions, etc).
A macbook works perfectly in clamshell mode. Just provide power and have a display connected. (not sure if you have to have a display connected, but it's how I'm typing this comment right now)
Also, using tmux (or screen) on the other end of the ssh connection helps. And not only for when you close the lid, but also if the connection gets interrupted (power failure, internet failure, routing failure, whatever)
> A macbook works perfectly in clamshell mode. Just provide power and have a display connected.
I can't imagine how much more equipment would be damaged if the people described were carrying around a power source and a monitor with them so they could close their laptop and bring it to a meeting without dropping their sessions.
The vast majority of users expect the microphone and camera to be "off" when they close their laptops while it is sitting on their bedside table. Other users can go buy a product that doesn't take that function very seriously.
I had to resort to a VM (Parallels) because the external mic I bought does not get recognized by PyCharm - I think it's a permissions issue of some sort. Either way, it's very annoying.
The microphone would probably sound pretty bad when obstructed...
I've heard that complaint from a few ThinkPad-owners since everybody is doing homeoffice.
Thinkpad microphones are bad regardless of being obstructed. Almost all (I'm sure there's an exception somewhere) microphones built into laptops are pretty bad, and at least half of that is due to "inside the laptop" is not a good location for a microphone.
I'm digressing but I've always been curious why people want to use the closed-lid mode. All it does seems to be saving a some desktop space. I place my laptop beneath an external monitor, this way I get a very good second display, a nice keyboard, and a very nice extra touchpad for scrolling and all kinds of multitouch gestures. Probably has benefits cooling the machine as well.
In my office I run lid closed because I have 3 nice large monitors and I don't really have room for a fourth. It's nicer to have three displays that match in size and resolution than 2+1 that doesn't.
