Apple iPad: Photos Show iPad Has Slot for Forward Facing Video Camera | Hacker News Reader

Apple iPad: Photos Show iPad Has Slot for Forward Facing Video Camera

crenk.com

10 pointsinsomniamg19 comments

It really stinks how apple leave out features on purpose in an attempt to take your money again the following year. Another reason not to be an early adopter.

I think you're making rash assumptions there. There might be a whole lot of reasons why they left it out. One of the most obvious ones would be that they had to make trade-offs to meet the release date, and there was something fundamentally not quite right about the way the camera interacted with the user experience, and so they had to cut that feature out until they could get things sorted.

iPad camera might be tricky because of many different angles you can interact with it.

Given the pixel densities of cameras, I was wondering if it would make sense to capture a very wide field of view, and then extract head and shoulder shots (possibly multiple). The distortion could be untangled with the GPU.

Face tracking is getting pretty damn good now. For bonus points call out to web service for recognition and tag each stream appropriately.

If I had to guess, I'd say in the early days of development the iPad had a camera, but later on they realised it didn't fit in with the ideology of the device, scrapped it, but didn't bother creating a new mould for something a user would never see.

An analogous point: It's very important to meet the price target. The iPad really would be a much less exciting device if it had debuted at $699 or $799 or even higher, as many pundits were predicting before the fact.

The initial production ramp is full of stress and unpredictability. So in hardware, as in software, you release the minimum possible feature set at first, iterate on that, then add features as you learn how to deliver the basic features reliably and at ever-lower cost.

Spot on.

Also when you design something, it is much cheaper to include future extensions on it so all the molds, CNC programs...are the same and you don't have to redesign your product and your production process. This redesign is not only a cost in money, it is a cost of time too.

Is not a good idea to focus in too much things at one time too, making a custom processor is too much change for Apple engineers with hardware rotation and multitouch acceleration. As far as I know, nobody has integrated them in hardware before.

We still don't know for sure why Apple pulled the camera from the last iPod Touch update. Jobs has claimed it's a combination of keeping the price low and the way the Touch is now positioned as a game system, but plenty of people don't believe that. Adding a (admittedly low-end) camera didn't seem to impact the Nano's price and the leading portable game platform, the Nintendo DSi, packs two cameras.

I think it's all about not undercutting the iPhone. The iPhone has 4 things the iPod Touch doesn't have: voice calling, 3G networking, GPS, and a camera. The iPad is adding GPS and some models will have 3G networking. If it had a camera, it'd have all the features of the iPhone except voice (and pocket size).

The cynic inside me is really looking forward to see Steve Jobs announcing a future version of iPads equipped with cameras and selling it as a "major breakthrough". (He's a great guy but the reality distortion field http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_distortion_field definitely exists.)

Or, perhaps, they will have a "one more thing" moment at launch and announce it now has a camera.

Not to be overly skeptical or anything, but I don't see any evidence that these photos are of a disassembled iPad. Where would they get one anyway?

Parts, They ordered replacement parts.

I'm surprised that Apple is distributing replacement parts before there is anything on the market to have broken parts.

I would be surprised if they distributed any before the announcement, but now that the cat is out of the bag, I am not surprised. It's useful to have fully stocked repair centers by the time you launch.

The leaked photo from Engadget (the one with a prototype iPad bolted to a table) also has space on the security bezel for a camera.

http://www.cultofmac.com/engadgets-clearest-tablet-picture-s...

Yeh im not a fan how Jobs is always thinking Version 2 first.

Now all they need is support for flash.

Suggested correction: "Now all they need is better substitutes for flash."

That would be great, but it most probably won't happen. Without flash, unfortunately, a large part of the web doesn't really work. Yes there are alternatives for video, and no everybody won't start using them within the next year or two.

The Ipad is rather flawed without flash.

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