Out of curiosity - what was that legitimation? Can you tell?
I can't imagine an IRB-approved research study that requires a software solution (developed under an NDA) to a hardware problem that couldn't be solved with a one-inch square of black electrical tape.
For the price of a contracted software developer, you could simply buy a model of laptop (or smart phone), in which the bezel can be pried open without substantial damage, and behind the LED's transparent aperture (but obscuring the LED), you fix a tidbit of black tape or whichever opaque material you may prefer.
Or, better yet, for pretty much every situation that doesn't involve eye-movement tracking, simply install a hidden security camera at an opportunistic vantage point.
The issues for the IRB would only be the fact that the subjects are not consented to covert surveillance and whether the nature of the information collected presents a risk to the subject if accidentally disclosed.
It's not just that I am still bound by my NDA, but telling anyone what the application actually did, would result in bad things happening to completely innocent people.
However, it turns out that it is unlawful to do that in such countries as Japan.
Asking how to silence the iphone camera on stackoverflow resulted in 20,000 views of my post, several people saying you can't do that, and several people telling me it's against the law, that it would be a bad idea and so on.
Nevertheless, I have a completely legitimate reason to do so.
I expect Apple would reject it from the App Store. I may do it for Android, as well as for jailbroken iOS devices, but then sell it through the Cydia App Store.
It's just like Apple to be a corporate nanny.
I've done some Android Platform Development, but not yet any real Android App Development. I'll do that after I ship the iOS App I'm working on.
There's a lot of stuff that at one time would only work on jailbroken devices, only for Apple to "add support" for it as a result of some App becoming a huge hit at the Cydia App store.
At first one could not even take still photos programmatically, the user had to use Apple's own App for that. But Snapture - if I remember correctly - was able to do it on jailbroken devices, so Apple added the public API so that Snapture would be sold on the App Store, rather than through Cydia.
> Perhaps Apple added a silent mode so as to compete with
> Android.
It doesn't have to be Objective-C and Cocoa Touch. I'd be completely cool with C and system calls.
As others have mentioned, if you put your iphone in silent mode there is no click sound except in Japan. I'm not sure if a) phones sold in Japan have disabled this feature or b) the phone knows when it is located in Japan and then disables silent mode.