Apple's T2 chip in the new MacBooks ensure that no one is eavesdropping on you

At a recent event in New York, Apple finally refreshed its MacBook Air lineup, and the new laptops come with a refreshing new capability — warding off hackers or spies from eavesdropping on your microphone. According to Apple’s new T2 security guide , both, the new MacBook Air, and the MacBook Pro use the new T2 chip, which helps protect the device’s encryption keys, storage, fingerprint data, and secure boot features. [caption id=“attachment_5474801” align=“alignnone” width=“1024”] The 2018 Apple MacBook Air starts at $1,199 for the base variant. Image: Apple[/caption] Per the guide, the T2 chip comes with a hardware microphone disconnect feature, which physically cuts the device’s microphone from the rest of the hardware whenever the lid is closed. “This disconnect is implemented in hardware alone, and therefore prevents any software, even with root or kernel privileges in macOS, and even the software on the T2 chip, from engaging the microphone when the lid is closed,” the support guide reads. However, the camera isn’t similarly disconnected, because its “field of view is completely obstructed with the lid closed” anyway. The common man first grasped the threat of hackers tapping into webcams and microphones, when a picture of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg went viral on social media, where he had taped the webcam and the microphone port on his MacBook.

Before that, Edward Snowden had also warned multiple times of hackers using similar sly ways to creep into user’s personal space without their knowledge