More likely a hall effect sensor, which is solid state and a lot smaller. And yes, older MacBooks had something like that, as evidenced by the fact you could put them to sleep by holding a magnet in the right place (just to the left of the trackpad IIRC in the models I'm familiar with)

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0_____0 6 days ago | parent [-]

I pranked a coworker once by sticking a magnet to his desk somehow to get his macbook to sleep when his computer was in a certain spot.

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rafaelmn 6 days ago | parent [-]

Nice one ! Curious since I know almost nothing about HW - do magnets screw with computer HW otherwise ? I would guess no since we don't use HDD anymore but not sure.

	▲	Johnbot 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		As far as I know, even HDDs were pretty resilient to magnets when in their enclosures. I once took a large magnet meant for holding together concrete forms, one strong enough that it stuck to a ferrous surface it could probably support my weight, and stuck it to a hard drive for a full year to see if it'd break. The drive, as well as all of the data on it, were fine.