Comment by reorder9695
15 hours ago
I would love it is my phone and laptop had hardware switches that were on the power or data lines for the camera and microphone, it's all well and good the software telling me the things aren't on but unless it's open source I can't verify that. With hardware switches someone could at least disassemble the device to ensure they were actually effective, and a software bug couldn't get around the fact that the microphone doesn't have power if the switch is open.
Being open source is technically not required to verify this. It’s possible to prove or disprove security claims by reverse engineering, and iOS specifically is already a popular target for professional/academic RE.
Of course, a hardware switch is always more secure.