The recently released 2020 iPad Pro has a feature that would make it very difficult for someone from government or otherwise, to use your tablet in order to listen to your conversations while the device is not being used.
The new iPad Pros are designed to cut off all 5 of their new ‘studio quality’ microphones when the user closes the case, covering the iPad Pro’s screen. The feature will work with any iPad cover that complies with Apple’s ‘Made for iPad’ certification.
This is not the first time Apple has offered this kind of anti-snooping protection on its products. Macs have had this feature since 2018 while on MacBooks the microphone is cut-off as soon as user closes the device’s lid even though the computer is still on.
While this feature was not featured on any of iPad Pro’s marketing pages, 9to5Mac was able to find out about this information in Apple’s platform security guide. The guide says no software will be able to use the device’s microphone when the lid is closed, even if the device’s operating system has been compromised. This is achieved by disabling the microphones at an hardware level. This is probably the reason why Apple didn’t add this feature to other iPads via a software update.
