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by thinkling 5257 days ago
When you plug a microphone device (e.g. a headphones/mic combo that comes with the iPhone) into the single audio port on a recent Macbook, it will be detected and the control panel will switch to giving you settings for "External microphone".

The internal microphone no longer shows up, suggesting it is disabled as before.

Thus, the simple plug hack should still work.

(I'm running Lion on a MBP8,1.)
1 comments
Tyrannosaurs 5257 days ago
Suggesting it is disabled isn't the same as it being disabled.

Reducing the input level to zero suggests it's disabled but evidently this isn't the case.

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thinkling 5257 days ago
That's why I phrased it exactly like that. :)

I would imagine (yes, I'm speculating) that the control panel uses a standard OS interface to enumerate audio devices, and when the internal microphone drops off the list in the dialog, that reflects the fact the OS isn't offering it anymore. So an app asking the OS to enumerate audio devices would not find the internal microphone.

It's always possible that there's a lower-level hack to get around that, but then that's always been a concern.

By the way, I forgot to mention that when I turn my input level down to zero, the little blue bars stop showing any signal. The blog post is about 10.6 (Snow Leopard), as mentioned below the Control Panel snapshot. Maybe this is all fixed in 10.7 (Lion)?

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