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Why webcams aren’t good enough

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Re: Why webcams aren’t good enough

#251

Post by bootlooped »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #40

How big is the market for "good webcams"? If 99% of the people just need a "good enough" (to recognise your face) webcam, that they turn off after the initial "hello!" (so noone notices they have no pants on if they have to stand up), does that really make it worth it to develop new tech for the 1%? ...compared to phone cameras, where people actually want (and are willing to pay more) for a good camera, especially fo…

Since there are many webcams available for over $150, I'd say the market for "good webcams" is big enough. If people spend $150 on a webcam I think they expect it to be good.

Re: Why webcams aren’t good enough

#252

Post by jbellis »

u678u wrote: post #198
tibbon wrote: post #142

Here's what really bugs me. It's clear Apple has good cameras, excellent even. And small. Yet, the camera in my $2000 Macbook Pro? Remarkably worse than even the worse external webcam. If they can throw an amazing camera in a phone, why can't they put a decent one in a laptop?

The other part is if you have a quality HD or better camera its a huge load to GPU and network which will chew your battery. Lower resolution is actually probably preferred if you could see the alternative.

This doesn't pass the smell test. Laptop batteries are effectively infinite compared to a phone.

Re: Why webcams aren’t good enough

#253

Post by chrisweekly »

ravenstine wrote: post #200
chrisweekly wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh. OBS has worked well for me, incl on a 2012 mbp.

OBS is awesome software, but it drains the battery on my 2015 Macbook like nothing else.

ah; I'm always plugged in so wouldn't have noticed

Re: Why webcams aren’t good enough

#254

Post by __turbobrew__ »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #91
josephg wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> even Apple would seemingly rather shave 50 cents off the BOM by speccing a 720p Facetime camera in their $3000 Macbook Pros The reason I've heard is that the macbook display assembly simply doesn't have the depth to house a decent camera. The camera bump in phones exists for a reason - and phones are already way fatter than macbook displays. I have no idea if thats true though.

Apple: Thinnest laptop evar! Also Apple: We can't give you a better camera because we gave you the thinnest laptop evar! "We think you're gonna love it!"

Also Apple: We can’t give you better battery life because we gave you the thinnest laptop evar!

Re: Why webcams aren’t good enough

#255

Post by kelchm »

floatingatoll wrote: post #246
tibbon wrote: post #142

Here's what really bugs me. It's clear Apple has good cameras, excellent even. And small. Yet, the camera in my $2000 Macbook Pro? Remarkably worse than even the worse external webcam. If they can throw an amazing camera in a phone, why can't they put a decent one in a laptop?

The camera in your MBP isn't the Apple Silicon camera that's used in their mobile devices. In the near future, when Apple drops Intel from their entire laptop product line, it is very likely that they'll bring their Apple Silicon cameras from their mobile products to their laptop products. (Yes, there's a 'version zero' MBP with the M1, and a teardown showed that it's literally a drop-and-swap of the motherboard with…

Apple aren’t actually designing its own sensors, are they? I expected they would be using an off the shelf Sony sensor just like (most) everyone else.

I generally disagree with your premise here. Yes, you can do some pretty amazing things with image processing in software, but you have to have a decent starting point. A good example of this is just how minimal the image processing improvements are in the M1 MacBooks compared to their Intel counterparts — marginally better, but nothing to write home about.

I’m not at all an expert in optics, but I would expect the biggest constraint is the available depth for the lens and camera sensor within the upper clamshell of a laptop vs a phone. It doesn’t seem like it would be a huge difference but an extra millimeter or so makes a huge difference in the size of the sensor that can be used.

Re: Why webcams aren’t good enough

#256

Post by u678u »

jbellis wrote: post #252
u678u wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other part is if you have a quality HD or better camera its a huge load to GPU and network which will chew your battery. Lower resolution is actually probably preferred if you could see the alternative.

This doesn't pass the smell test. Laptop batteries are effectively infinite compared to a phone.

Good point. Maybe ARM chips are different and M1 will change things.

Re: Why webcams aren’t good enough

#257

Post by JoeyBananas »

tibbon wrote: post #142

Here's what really bugs me. It's clear Apple has good cameras, excellent even. And small. Yet, the camera in my $2000 Macbook Pro? Remarkably worse than even the worse external webcam. If they can throw an amazing camera in a phone, why can't they put a decent one in a laptop?

In a laptop, the camera is a much less important feature. Nobody takes pictures of their daughter's recital using a laptop.

Re: Why webcams aren’t good enough

#258

Post by josephg »

__turbobrew__ wrote: post #254
JustSomeNobody wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple: Thinnest laptop evar! Also Apple: We can't give you a better camera because we gave you the thinnest laptop evar! "We think you're gonna love it!"

Also Apple: We can’t give you better battery life because we gave you the thinnest laptop evar!

Huh? Their "thinnest laptop ever" (the air) isn't the only laptop they sell. The macbook pro is almost all battery and its quoted at 17 hrs web browsing / 20hrs of video playback. thats massive.

I think apple deserves criticism for a lot of things they do, but their battery life is fantastic. (Well, unless you've got half a dozen electron apps running. But thats not apple's problem to solve.)

Re: Why webcams aren’t good enough

#259

Post by ska »

clairity wrote: post #135
ska wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but they still have little utility beyond a simple phone call We've collectively been running a huge experiment for the last year that has pretty conclusively proven this hypothesis false.

an unsupported assertion is not conclusive proof. we’ve seen that people have been trying to substitute in-person meetings with video calls, but that doesn’t prove any additional utility beyond a conference call. even in educational or therapy/coaching situations, a recorded instructional video accompanied by a phone checkin likely has better outcomes than video chats.

You miss my point, I think.

Everyone who has access to video calls could trivially turn them into conference calls instead. The fact that they continue to prefer video for at least some situation demonstrates that, regardless of what else is going on, they find the video calls to have some additional utility.

If your hypothesis were true, we would not observer this behavior.

Re: Why webcams aren’t good enough

#260

Post by RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u »

totalZero wrote: post #215
acdha wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Johnny Ives was obsessed with thinness - it’s the same problem which lead to the bad keyboards. Now they’ve been putting people who haven’t forgotten about usability in charge I would not be surprised if the next case design included a non-terrible webcam since it’s unlikely that anyone is going to stop video conferencing even if we do go back to the office.

Jony Ive* Fair point, but Apple isn't the only company selling laptops with ho-hum webcams.

Like it or not, Apple's often the benchmark the rest of the industry measure themselves against. So if / when Apple improves the MBP cam, the rest will follow. Until then, there's no point in cutting into the razor-thin margin.
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