The new iPad Pro went on sale last month and won praise from many quarters—you can read my review here. But there was a secret extra that passed reviewers by, because Apple hasn’t mentioned it, and which has now been discovered: the indicators which show when the microphone or camera are in use are now better than ever.
Apple iPad Pro with M4 processor.
You’ll know those indicators: a yellow light which gleams from the display when the microphone is active, and a green one to tell you your camera is on. They’re useful as reminders and the idea is that if you see them appear when you’re not using the microphone or camera, that something’s gone wrong, perhaps meaning your device has been hacked. Now, they’ve been improved.
According to that software sleuth Guilherme Rambo, the way these lights are activated has now changed. Rambo, writing on Mastodon, says: “Fun fact about the M4 iPad Pro: it’s the first device to support and use Apple’s new Secure Indicator Light (SIL) mechanism. When using the microphone or camera, the corresponding indicator dot is effectively rendered in hardware (using the display), making it a lot less likely that any malware or user space app would be able to access those sensors without the user’s knowledge.”
The key words here are “rendered in hardware,” and this is all down to the M4 processor, which is exclusive to the iPad Pro. Note that Rambo also points out that the lights are “using the display,” in other words, they’re not separate LEDs but images displayed on screen.
The M4 chip includes what’s called a secure enclave which was discovered a couple of weeks ago, but now we know that one of the purposes of the enclave is an extra level of protection for the user, so that malicious apps are unable to circumvent them, as reported in 9to5Mac: “Currently the new iPad Pro is the only device to contain this new security protocol, but it will almost certainly make its way to the iPhone 16 Pro’s A18 chip and to M4 Mac models later this year.”
Until those products appear, the iPad Pro with M4 processor has this extra level of consumer protection to itself.
To be clear, the way this is done on other Apple devices is still safe, but who doesn’t want even more peace of mind when it comes to a device’s camera and microphone use?