and I am in the crowd of mac users who tape over their camera. when it comes to video conferences at most I have ever seen the desktop shared. what type of work do you do that uses the video for portions other than the presentation?
In my business -- project management software -- I'm in online meetings a LOT (say, 20 hours a week?) because everyone in my company is remote. We have never, ever used video. It just doesn't come up. Nobody wants it internally, and none of our customers ask for it in external meetings. I don't think any of them use it internally, either (and many of our customers are large, distributed organizations with offices all over the place).
This seems normal to me.
My neighbor is an IT VP for a health care concern. She travels a lot (30-40%), and when she's home she's in online meetings pretty much all the time. And in her company, video is ALWAYS included. I have no idea why, and neither does she; it's a cultural thing.
The upshot, though, is that I work in t-shirts and cargo shorts, and she has to be "office ready" even though she works at home. However, I will note that, if I run into her outside when she's walking the dog, it's not unusual to see her in a nice blouse, hair and makeup done, but wearing yoga pants or whatever. Which is its own kind of hilarious.
Often the most important parts of meetings are nonverbal.
My department (of 400 people) is split between two cities. I am regularly in meetings with people from the other city.
Google Meet is a big part of our culture. It helps with team cohesion and collaboration to actually see each other's faces when we meet.
It is of course not _required_ but I really believe it is better than just audio.
Certain teams at my workplace use webcams all the time, others never. My team leverages them quite a bit, as our team is all over the world. It helped solidify our team members not just as random voices on a phone line, but as actual people who we will likely never meet in person.