Wireless Continuity Camera on a Mac Studio

Following a lot of web searching that provided not explanation or guidance, I spent a great deal of time on the phone with Apple Support about why my Mac Studio would not use my iPhone 13 Pro Max as a wireless continuity camera. I had expectations that it should as it works well with several MacBook's.

What I learned after a lot of troubleshooting and being passed to a higher level of support once is this:

Assuming all of the troubleshooting steps, like same icloud account and bluetooth and wifi being on, etc.

Wireless continuity camera works without trouble on any Mac with a built in camera.

That seems to explain my experience of no trouble with any MacBook. I also assume that this would be true of an iMac, but I don't have access to one to verify.

To use wireless continuity camera, with a Mac lacking a built in camera, like a Mac Studio or Mac mini, the iphone must be connected via a cable to initiate continuity camera. After it is running with the app that uses the camera like Zoom, Facetime or Photobooth, it can be removed from the cable and used wirelessly.

This seemed very strange to me, but ultimately support told me that this requirement to use the wire first was by design in the interest of privacy. I really don't understand why this is relevant to privacy since continuity camera will start without a wired connection for a MacBook, even when it is in clamshell mode and thus the MacBook can't see anything, but the continuity camera can.

Finally, for those looking for a workaround, like I was, I think I have found one that works in Sequoia 15.3.2 (whether in the future they will take away the ridiculous restriction or decide the privacy rule is so important as to close the workaround I can't guess). The workaround is plug a usb webcam into the Mac Studio. I used a cheap no name camera. When this is the case, then the iPhone as a wireless continuity camera appears amongst the selectable cameras without other intervention. Unfortunately, it does always default to the USB camera requiring you to select the iPhone, but at least that is all doable via the GUI. This stops me from having to plug and unplug my iPhone before mounting it. Additional FYI, I have just hidden the USB webcam with the lens cover closed so it never shows anything.

Since the wired first requirement seems to be documented nowhere on the internet, I hope this question gets indexed by the search engines and this info helps others.

If there is an actual fix, I would love to see a reply with that fix, but I doubt it exists.