No amount of microphones will ever be a bigger problem than a single compromising photo or video.

If an attacker is at the point where they can turn on your microphone, or video, it doesn't really matter anymore, it's been game over for a long time.

This never really registered to me, before a former colleague commented on the nonsense with people putting tape over their camera. If an attacker has access to your camera, or microphone, then they have access to pretty much very thing else. The difference in damage is negligible, it's already total for most.

If people are truly concerned about the camera in their laptop, then keep the computer in a dedicate room, shut it down when your done (or close the lid, if it's a laptop).

Sure it's kinda dumb that the LED is software controlled and that there's not a physical switch for turning off the microphone, but even having those things done correct doesn't negate the amount of damage someone could do with they have that kind of access to your devices.

Then you're lacking fantasy.

For example, I'd not be happy having my voice auto-transcribed by some malware as I authenticate to my bank providing my SSN etc (which as an authentication method is of course horribly insecure, but that's a different discussion).

Of course, this will vary from person to person, but as mentioned above, just being able to mechanically cover a camera when required makes it less of an issue for me.

I can’t think of much if anything which would be a compromising photo or video from my laptop, but conversations certainly are.

In most business environments it's the opposite.

A photo may be merely embarrassing. You could get a lot of immediately useful information hearing my phone calls though.

I am dying for a compromising photo/video leak - I’ll finally be able to convince my wife to start OF channel :)