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

spijdar 6y ago
Just an anecdote, but I've always felt the webcams on macs I've used the past few years are worse than much cheaper Wintel PC webcams. Could just be cognitive bias though, since everyone complains about mac webcams all the time.
- yborg 6y ago
  Company outfitted us with Dell Alienware m17 R3 laptops, an expensive gaming model that has built-in head tracking. The camera is a 720p with terrible image quality, worse than any Macbook. So no, I don't think Apple is below standard here.
- acdha 6y ago
  I think it’d be interesting to compare with equivalent price points. Does a $2500 PC have a better camera than a MacBook Pro or is it really more like everyone is skimping and Mac owners are just more vocal about expecting something closer to a mid-2010s iPhone?
  - totalZero 6y ago
    > Does a $2500 PC have a better camera than a MacBook Pro Even the cheapest Galaxy S phones have a better front-facing camera than a 2020 MacBook Pro. 720p is less than one megapixel. Other PC makers have the same problem. https://www.wsj.com/video/series/joanna-stern-personal-technology/laptop-webcam-showdown-macbook-air-dell-xps-theyre-pretty-bad/415D393C-4320-442B-974D-1887E20C057F https://www.wsj.com/video/series/joanna-stern-personal-techn... The only justification I can think of for having such a cheap webcam is that it takes less battery power to process low-res streaming video at lower frame rates.
    - acdha 6y ago
      How thick is the MacBook Pro lid compared to that phone — especially when you factor in curvature & the screen hardware? I think the discrepancy is mostly explained by cameras being a feature which phone buyers pay a LOT of attention to, whereas it was an afterthought for most laptop users prior to 2020 while thinness was a marketing goal, and don't forget that laptop buyers pay the full price up front while a LOT of people pay for their “free” phones monthly. I'm not in any way excusing the crappy hardware — my iPhone 6S should not be a better webcam than anything built-in or on the normal market now — but I think this is a pretty expected outcome of market forces reflecting buyers' priorities.
acdha 6y ago
Thanks for the correction - there’s an iOS autocomplete joke in there somewhere. I think what we see is basically showing the difference between the phone and laptop markets: people buy new phones to get better cameras because that’s one of the most common activities for a phone but the same is not true for laptops (or at least wasn’t previously), and there’s a much lower threshold where a mediocre camera prevents a sale. That lack of pressure means there isn’t much of a check on either cost cutting or pursuit of thinner/lighter designs.
RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u 6y ago
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.

Just an anecdote, but I've always felt the webcams on macs I've used the past few years are worse than much cheaper Wintel PC webcams. Could just be cognitive bias though, since everyone complains about mac webcams all the time.

yborg 6y ago
Company outfitted us with Dell Alienware m17 R3 laptops, an expensive gaming model that has built-in head tracking. The camera is a 720p with terrible image quality, worse than any Macbook. So no, I don't think Apple is below standard here.
acdha 6y ago
I think it’d be interesting to compare with equivalent price points. Does a $2500 PC have a better camera than a MacBook Pro or is it really more like everyone is skimping and Mac owners are just more vocal about expecting something closer to a mid-2010s iPhone?
- totalZero 6y ago
  > Does a $2500 PC have a better camera than a MacBook Pro Even the cheapest Galaxy S phones have a better front-facing camera than a 2020 MacBook Pro. 720p is less than one megapixel. Other PC makers have the same problem. https://www.wsj.com/video/series/joanna-stern-personal-technology/laptop-webcam-showdown-macbook-air-dell-xps-theyre-pretty-bad/415D393C-4320-442B-974D-1887E20C057F https://www.wsj.com/video/series/joanna-stern-personal-techn... The only justification I can think of for having such a cheap webcam is that it takes less battery power to process low-res streaming video at lower frame rates.
  - acdha 6y ago
    How thick is the MacBook Pro lid compared to that phone — especially when you factor in curvature & the screen hardware? I think the discrepancy is mostly explained by cameras being a feature which phone buyers pay a LOT of attention to, whereas it was an afterthought for most laptop users prior to 2020 while thinness was a marketing goal, and don't forget that laptop buyers pay the full price up front while a LOT of people pay for their “free” phones monthly. I'm not in any way excusing the crappy hardware — my iPhone 6S should not be a better webcam than anything built-in or on the normal market now — but I think this is a pretty expected outcome of market forces reflecting buyers' priorities.

acdha 6y ago

Thanks for the correction - there’s an iOS autocomplete joke in there somewhere. I think what we see is basically showing the difference between the phone and laptop markets: people buy new phones to get better cameras because that’s one of the most common activities for a phone but the same is not true for laptops (or at least wasn’t previously), and there’s a much lower threshold where a mediocre camera prevents a sale. That lack of pressure means there isn’t much of a check on either cost cutting or pursuit of thinner/lighter designs.

RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u 6y ago

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.