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My understanding is that the webcam issue has been essentially (not officially) confirmed as being a software bug. Which makes this kind of vitriol pretty unnec

My understanding is that the webcam issue has been essentially (not officially) confirmed as being a software bug. Which makes this kind of vitriol pretty unnecessary: > There is a product manager at Apple who, for some reason, hates webcam users with a burning passion. It also makes perfect sense, since the actual specs of the camera should be giving a much better picture.

Tepix 5y ago
The author has a point though, it's highly mysterious how this slipped past QA
ibero 5y ago
I think the "vitriol" is perfectly valid. Vague statements of "it will get better in the future" are non-binding and leave lots of wiggle room. Let's be honest, the monitor does like two things that Apple claims justify the inclusion of the A13 (and the whopping 64 internal memory): the camera and sound. Everyone who has used the product turns on the camera and instantly knows its garbage. Either Apple somehow got caught unaware or they thought it was good enough.
chrisshroba 5y ago
I took that more as poking fun than as true vitriol against a real-life product manager.
sharms 5y ago
On a technical level the webcam resolution is low, and center stage adds additional cropping. This problem may not have a software fix unfortunately
coder543 5y ago
Since it supports Center Stage, the camera is actually seeing an extremely wide field of view, and then cropping in to show a more normal view. This naturally means the resolution is going to suffer, and gone are any hopes of the optics being good enough to provide even the tiniest background separation. Even if they fix some ISP issue, the webcam quality seems unlikely to ever be good, but it might become acceptable. It's trivial to find people complaining about the quality of center stage online[0], although it seems like reviewers were mostly wowed by the novelty of the feature, and not how it looks in day to day usage. Apple doesn't want to talk about the resolution of Center Stage, but when zoomed all the way out... you're limited to 1080p30. It crops significantly into that 1080p image during normal use, so I wouldn't be surprised if we're looking at an effective resolution of 480p or worse. Given how much space they have on the monitor, and how much they're charging for the monitor, I wish they would have done something cool like having the Center Stage camera and a better quality normal camera. Center Stage is only useful when there are multiple people, or you can't stay still for some reason... and neither of those apply to 99% of Zoom calls I've seen in the past several years. [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/ipad/comments/nypvug/m1_ipad_pros_front_camera_is_grainy_and_pixelated/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ipad/comments/nypvug/m1_ipad_pros_f...

Tepix 5y ago

The author has a point though, it's highly mysterious how this slipped past QA

ibero 5y ago

I think the "vitriol" is perfectly valid. Vague statements of "it will get better in the future" are non-binding and leave lots of wiggle room. Let's be honest, the monitor does like two things that Apple claims justify the inclusion of the A13 (and the whopping 64 internal memory): the camera and sound. Everyone who has used the product turns on the camera and instantly knows its garbage. Either Apple somehow got caught unaware or they thought it was good enough.

chrisshroba 5y ago

I took that more as poking fun than as true vitriol against a real-life product manager.

sharms 5y ago

On a technical level the webcam resolution is low, and center stage adds additional cropping. This problem may not have a software fix unfortunately

coder543 5y ago

Since it supports Center Stage, the camera is actually seeing an extremely wide field of view, and then cropping in to show a more normal view. This naturally means the resolution is going to suffer, and gone are any hopes of the optics being good enough to provide even the tiniest background separation. Even if they fix some ISP issue, the webcam quality seems unlikely to ever be good, but it might become acceptable. It's trivial to find people complaining about the quality of center stage online[0], although it seems like reviewers were mostly wowed by the novelty of the feature, and not how it looks in day to day usage. Apple doesn't want to talk about the resolution of Center Stage, but when zoomed all the way out... you're limited to 1080p30. It crops significantly into that 1080p image during normal use, so I wouldn't be surprised if we're looking at an effective resolution of 480p or worse. Given how much space they have on the monitor, and how much they're charging for the monitor, I wish they would have done something cool like having the Center Stage camera and a better quality normal camera. Center Stage is only useful when there are multiple people, or you can't stay still for some reason... and neither of those apply to 99% of Zoom calls I've seen in the past several years. [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/ipad/comments/nypvug/m1_ipad_pros_front_camera_is_grainy_and_pixelated/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ipad/comments/nypvug/m1_ipad_pros_f...