Macbook Microphone has no dynamic range

Or maybe chooses not to, I'm not sure... But from looking at the waveform it feels like it should be clipping all the time and it's compressed to all hell...

For instance, this waveform is from my budget AudioTechnica AT2035 going to (not so budget at the time) Motu 828MKII Firewire Audio Interface:

The mic would definitely perform better if it was closer to my face, but I don't like having it in the frame, so it's just outside of visible area when I crop my video.

Here's what I observe from my counterpart's macbook microphone at a further distance.

Kinda yikes, not going to lie. I wonder if it's a setting on his side, or Apple in their infinite wisdom think they know better and just put the compressor/limiter knobs at eleven and call it a day.

I'm not doing that much post-production on the audio, the reverb/noise removal tool is doing most of the heavy lifting here, but there's not much you can do here.

Make of it what you will... Until the next time.