iLounge’s New iPad Buyers’ Guide is now available and Editor-in-Chief Jeremy Horwitz drops a nice little rumor while announcing it:
Take special note of pages 152 and 153— “Making the case for a standalone iSight Camera.” I’ll share more on this topic shortly, but for now, I’ll say that this two-page spread very nearly had a different title. We were tipped that this project is actually happening at Apple right now, but we didn’t feel confident enough in our source to call it a certainty; it’s therefore billed as speculation. Still, there’s enough smoke to make us think there’s a fire.
More info and download links for iLounge’s New iPad Buyers’ Guide here.
So a smaller version of this??? Meh…
Sounds like another attempt by Apple to flush out the loose lips.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Unemployed?
Hmmm… Kinect competitor? Turn any tv into a FaceTime camera? Gesture based computing done well?
I have an Isight with firewire connector, I use it to see who is coming up behind me at work.
Isn’t there enough crappy pocketable cell phone cameras in existence without making a crappy stand alone pocketable camera.
Hell, every major and minor camera maker makes a crappy pocket camera.
Of course, none of them have a decent OS, but even a crappy pocketable camera with a good OS is still a crappy pocketable camera.
It should be Bluetooth for wireless use with iPad (or iPhone). You can place it on the table, so that you don’t have to awkwardly hold up and aim an iPad for the duration of a FaceTime session.
It should also work with Macs, giving Mac mini and Mac Pro users (who don’t use a Cinema Display) a webcam that’s made by Apple, plus as secondary camera that can be picked up and aimed easily for iMac and MacBook users.
Extra cool… Add a built-in iPod nano. I could be the true replacement for the older pre-touchscreen iPad nano, that had a video camera and video playback. Except make the camera MUCH better (like on iPhone), so that it can also take great still photos. It would be a slightly larger rectangle-screen iPod nano that is also a high-quality still/video camera, using the same touch interface as the current iPod nano. Bring back the “iPod mini” name!
Just place your iDevice in a slick iDevice Stand.
No need to hold it up and get all awkward.
Hence no need for a micro-portable-top-secret-bluetooth-camera; plain retarded for Apple to make this product.
This sounds like a “fix” for the current Apple TV owners, this will bring them up to spec with the iTV owners.
Surely iTV will hav a iSught cam.
Ding Ding Ding! There is your solution for the new AppleTV motion 3D UI all those patents have been for.
Google Lytro… Think different.
I’ve been saying for some time that the next killer Apple product will be Siri. Standalone Siri. A Siri button with a mini-mic and mini-speakers that connects to the internet and into your iCloud. Put it anywhere — the shower, the kitchen, the garage, the car… press it, ask it, tell it. Could be cheap, too. And… might look in production a lot like a standalone iSight camera.
In other words BIG BROTHER
the camera that apple might be thinking of might be plenoptic camera tech (Steve Jobs was looking into it) which uses multiple micro lenses to build an image – something like a 3d process. You can selectively focus AFTER you take the shot!
what this means is that you can (probably) forget about f-stops, shutter speed, depth of field etc issues. After shooting when you download it you can arrange the shot however you want with software (make the tree in background to fade off to isolate the foreground figure etc).
Steve Jobs actually had an interview with the CEO of Lytro to discuss it.
http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/24/2730459/apple-lytro-steve-jobs-light-field-camera
(I’m not fully conversant with camera tech or apple’s interest but it was just interesting to me as layman. Perhaps more expert readers can weigh in.
But if the camera works like I think it might be game changer and replace many point and shoots, even SLRs . Canon, Nikon, Panasonic still sell quite a lot of cameras . Not to mention the use of the – patented ? – tech for industrial cameras like surveillance, medical etc. )