What motivates an inventor to invent something not yet invented or accomplished anywhere else? A handful of old sayings tell the tale.
For example, ‘Where there’s a will, there’s a way.’ Fair enough. How about, ‘Necessity is the mother of invention.’ Another of my favorites is, ‘The road less traveled is often less traveled for a reason.’ That may explain why there are so few sound alarms for the Mac. Here’s one that works.
Detecting Sound
Your Mac comes with a built-in microphone, and all but the lowly Mac mini and the high end Mac Pro have a built-in camera, too. The inexpensive Noise Detective app is halfway to an inexpensive and useful security system on a Mac.
What it does is simple. First, you let Noise Detective listen to the ambient sound in a room of the house (kids room, basement, upstairs bedroom, living room, even a classroom or office) and set an alarm noise level.
Second, any noise beyond the appropriate level sets off an alarm. Eight different alarms are included in Noise Detective.
Controls are self explanatory. Select the Alarm Sound from a pull-down menu in Settings. Adjust the alarm length in seconds by using a simple slider bar. Another slider bar adjusts the alarm volume.
Other controls include the option to set the acceptable noise level in decibels, also using a slider bar. And microphone sensitivity can be adjust, yet again, using a slider bar. Noise Detective resides in the Mac’s Menubar so it’s easily accessible.
The objective is clear.
Noise Detective listens to ambient sound in a room, and when some sound or noise goes beyond the set level, an alarm is sounded. It’s not bad for 99-cents but I can see a few options that would be useful to justify a slightly higher price tag. For example, use the iSight camera to snap a photo or video of the room when the sound or motion triggers. Another option would be to send an email or message when the alarm sounds.
Otherwise, Noise Detective works well, costs less.
This type of very inexpensive and rather useful security option leads me to believe that Apple is missing the boat on a multi-level, multi-faceted security system for Mac, iPhone, and iPad.
For example, there’s no Touch ID on the Mac at all; instead, Apple relies on iPhone or iPad, and third party apps such as MacID to bring Touch ID fingerprint sensor to the Mac. Why doesn’t Apple add a few more security layers which could work individually or in concert. I’m thinking Voice ID for voice recognition, and Face ID for facial recognition.
Multiple layers of security would benefit Mac users as well as those of us who own iPhones and iPads. The data– derived from a photo and a voice recording– could be saved on iCloud and used between devices with ease.
