In 2021, I purchased an Opal C1 webcam. It was the new hotness at the time for anyone picking up a brand new M1 device from Apple. And for a while, it was pretty nice to have.

Fast forward to 2026 and it's one of the last remnants that I still use from my time spent deep in Apple's ecosystem (along with my CalDigit TS4 dock). I was having issues with the webcam, and so I figured I'd check for firmware updates.

What a mistake. Checking for firmware updates required downloading a full webcam software suite, giving it a bunch of additional permissions, rebooting my Mac twice when asked, and then finally updating the firmware for the camera. If I was still using that Mac for anything, I probably wouldn't have been super comfortable with the level of access that it was requesting.

Anyway, it functions like a normal webcam on Linux, so we'll see how it goes now.