Apple's latest system sensor hidden application

According to the latest report, OSX has long been able to slow down the hard drive, turn off the display, or enter sleep mode when the device is idle for a long time, but this has been based on mouse and keyboard input. But Moshen Chen, developer of Living at Earth for clock weather applications, recently discovered that Mavericks can also use ambient light sensors to detect if a user is sitting at a computer.

An independent application developer recently discovered that Apple's latest version of the Mavericks operating system uses MacBook Pro and iMac's ambient light sensors to enhance the detection of users. Moshen Chen initially thought it was the computer's iSight camera to perform this work, but other developers subsequently tested and found that this is not the case. According to the experiment of technology site The Verge, after covering the camera instead of the light sensor, they can still delay the sleep mode by changing the ambient light conditions.

Apple has added ambient light sensors to each generation of MacBook Pro, recent iMacs and stand-alone displays to dynamically adjust the brightness and backlight of the keyboard and display. Until then, Apple has not added any other features to this sensor. The discovery of Moshen Chen provides a big clue for smart phones in the future. What we can expect is the application of more functions of the sensor.