Apple to move aggressively on FaceTime, camera-equipped iPads - Page 3

Thanks for the response. The reason I asked, is because even though Facetime makes the best video-phone
possible. The smaller iPods could also be used as the best communication tool. Especially for groups or families. Not everyone
needs a camera to see who they are talking with. Heck, I am sure
a good portion of the Facetime calls will be Faceless. But it will still be the best possible phone (FREE).
We all know that the day of available WiFi, or Wimax, will become
more common. It would not be hard for Apple to put a WiFi chip in
those Small iPods. Parents could keep in touch with their kids. All they would need are those microphone headphones.

Don't worry, video chats have been around long enough and the Intertubes have not exploded yet...


Largely due to the requirement for eyes and light instead.

Seriously, too many posters here sound as if they've been living under a rock for the last 5 years... \

I agree, albeit from the other side of the fence. I didn't buy v1 because I knew at least some of the features I was looking for would be in v2.

I am awaiting v2 with pockets ablaze. I'm actually hoping for a smaller size (unlikely given v1 popularity, I know) along with front/rear cameras. Two inches smaller in both directions and I would have bought v1.

i vote they release a 7" version with facetime in november (starting at $479), then update both versions in april with sleeker liquid-metal construction with the same camera setup as the iphone4.

My prediction is Verizon will be the first network with FaceTime running over LTE. 3G is not fast enough and LTE will make FaceTime come alive over a wirless network.

And although Apple's historical product cycles would beg to differ, that person familiar with the company's plans claims that as of last month, there was an ambitious push inside Apple to verify the refresh for a possible launch ahead of this year's holiday shopping season.

Say Oct-Nov? Just about the time Verizon is supposed to launch LTE Nation wide for Data devices and Yes FaceTime is a data service. Ipad could be the first device to run on Verizon LTE with Video (FaceTime). This would make the Ipad Fly off the shelves just in time for Christmas. Thats my prediction and Im sticking to it.

To me it would be useless, unless I wanted to show the person on the other end my ceiling. I'd rather have support for transferring data to usb devices than a camera. But I can understand how some people may want it.

I think both machines should be identical except the front-facing camera for the "iPad Facetime Edition".

- iPad 16Gb without camera: $429 (could be a missile to penetrate the business market)
- iPad 16Gb with camera: $499 (targeting the mass market)

And the same price model for the 3G version.


Chilli

.. and a floppy disc.

As to the camera: When was the last time you used the camera on your MacBook (whatever)?

Apple knows what it's doing. A camera will only be a significant asset when it becomes compelling and common to use one. Otherwise it's just bloat, another tick on the salesman's feature list.

Okay, but that's an argument for never buying any technology product, because the next version is always going to be better. Except maybe for Windows.

I would not buy one of the current ipads,the screen quality is very very poor. I am waiting for one has front back camera, retina display, usb support, be able to use it as a phone and cheaper. They have too many versions, 3g none 3g this and that, it is just sickness. all should have 3g or 4g and that is it.

This is my view today. I still have a good idea as to what I paid for my first Mac Plus HD. Expensive and hardly enough storage.

As I've said before there is nothing wrong with being an early adopter. It does not however give you the right to complain about Apple updates. Especially when some of those updates are obvious.

The time to buy is when you need it. Done this way what Apple does or anybody else for that matter, isn't of concern to you.

This is garbage! USB ports draw little if any power when nothing is plugged in. Besides who are you to say a particular usage is a fail. I for one would live to be able to plug in standard USB to RS 232 converters. It would allow for connection to anything I need to access with a terminal emulator. The power impact is trivial because I'd unplug it after use. The same rational would apply to card readers, USB memory sticks and ither hardware. Whatever the item it only hangs there long enough to do the job.

This arguement doesn't fly either. I'd pay the same price for a 7 inch iPad as I would the current one - given equivalent Internals. Bigger only costs more in porno.

You say another one like it would sever the same market. It doesn't. Even Amazon has seen the light and sells two different readers. Yeah they throw people a bone and carge different prices but they don't have to. The cost to manufacture between the two is trivial, so the pricing differential is more about consumer expectations than anything. Besides there is nothing to keep a low end 7" ipad from overlapping the high end Touch prices, they could sell at the same price and nobody would care.

For all the many people that will be ticked off with Apple if they do come up with the new iPad with a camera.
Could Apple just not make a connector with front and rear camera that could perhaps swivel. Sell it at $25.00-$35.00. They already have the camera connector kit.

I see no future at all for Apple TV. Dumping storage was not very smart at alll. What do you expect people to do, download all their apps, games and data from the cloud everytime they want to use the device. It might work for Tic-Tac-Toe but not for modern games.

Personally I think Apple killed what could have been a good concept here.

As to iPad, I suspect Factime support will be a very high priority at Apple. Because of the need to reach a certain saturation point quickly you will see some rapid releases from Apple.

Besides it is obvious that iPad is a very very rev one device from Apple. It is short on RAM, has provisions for a gyroscope, and also cameras. These are all signs that this model falls short of what even the designers at Apple envisioned. Plus an uodate of the CPU to Cortex A9 would be marketable against the coming ATOM and ARM based tablets.

The report may be bogus but if Apple isn't thinking about doing this they should be.

ThieciecWpplecwecare talking about. They will milk every penny only to turn around and do it again to sel them to the same people instanty making the Vaule of the Apple product, last generation, not worth much. It's the one thing that gets on my nerves. The way they devauke their product line so quickly these days but never lowering the price as CPU prices hit Rock bottom. It's not passed in to the consumer. Hmmfft!!

They will milk every penny only to turn around and do it again to sel them to the same people instanty making the Vaule of the Apple product, last generation, not worth much. It's the one thing that gets on my nerves. The way they devaule their product line so quickly these days but never lowering the price as CPU prices hit Rock bottom. It's not passed on to the consumer. Hmmfft!!

SSquirrel talked about this too, but a "retina" display isn't happening.

If Apple were to try to add a higher res display, they would probably go the pixel-quadrupling route like they did with the iPhone 4 (e.g. doubling the horizontal and vertical pixel count), which would preserve compatibility with existing iPad applications (as the resolution of a legacy iPad app would be a neat factor of a hypothetical iPad retina's resolution). Any other new resolution would break old iPad apps to varying extents (pixel sharp lines would be dithered and made fuzzy, etc.)

Currently, iPad has an output of 1024x768, for ~0.79 MP. A "retina" iPad would do 2048x1536, or 3.15 MP.
For comparison, my 13" MBP puts out 1280x800 on one display and 1920x1080 on the other, for a grand total of 3.10 MP, which is less than a retina iPad. My MBP, with substantially more powerful hardware than an ARM-based iPad, currently drops frames and stutters when doing Exposé animations

Unless you get a massive leap in ARM processing power / power consumption ratio in a few months, there's no way an iPad will be doing a retina display. Sorry to keep beating the dead horse



As for the forward camera, no surprise that was coming (though it'd be uncharacteristic for Apple to announce revise their product so quickly, and besides, the iPad already sells extraordinarily well).
I just want to know whether the iPhone 4 gained the forward camera because of the HTC Supersonic, which was announced before that whole Gizmodo leak.


I also would like to echo the sentiments of a few other posters here when it comes to the iPad's connectivity. I don't have one, but the iPad would be a far more compelling product if it used more industry-standard connections.
For instance, you can't expand the nonvolatile memory. Very frustrating if you don't buy a big enough device the first time around (as happened to me with my most recent 32 GB Touch). It's especially infuriating as essentially all non-Apple products on the market have a mini/micro SD card slot; to me it feels like Apple leaves off SD expansion because it knows smart consumers will pick up the 16 GB iPad and buy much cheaper SDcard memory (you can easily get an 8GB microSD card for $15) rather than spring for Apple's heavily marked-up internal memory.
And SD expansion hardly threatens usabilityconsumers who don't want / need SD expansion can ignore it (much as consumers who don't want external monitors / firewire / ethernet on Apple's OS X hardware can ignore those ports).

Likewise with the microSIM slot on both iPhone 4 and iPadagain, a standard miniSIM slot doesn't threaten usability (no one seemed to suffer from miniSIM on the first three iPhones), but a miniSIM slot would allow smart consumers to abandon AT&T's nose-bleed expensive overseas roaming plans.

AND THEN there's the dock connector.....I don't understand why Apple doesn't adopt the mobile industry's chosen charging interfacemicroUSB. It means that I (hypothetically) need to go buy expensive licensed dongles with Apple's patented dock connector rather than using the car adapters / wall adapters / dongles / etc I've used for years.
I don't care if they keep the dock connector, but for Pete's sake, at least give us the option to charge our iDevices with the same microUSB cables we use for everything else (though I'm willing to make an exception for the iPad and its higher power draw whilst charging).


Apple's negligence with hardware standards in its mobile sector is a shame, really. The Macs that were produced after Jobs returned to Apple were very good about pushing industrywide standardsthe first iMacs abandoned all of Apple's crappy proprietary ports in favor of USB, and Apple was early at pushing Airport into its computers, which was 100% compatible with 802.11b WiFi.

There are two versions. Nothing complicated there.

Everything else in your post is nonsense. The screen is great.

Yeah! That's exactly why the resell value of used Apple hardware is so low... oh, wait...

Especially when you have limited funds. The first version was compelling, but not enough to make me part with the cash.

The only question is how well will it scale. Do retina displays have the same resolution as iPad, and will they all have the same quality camera. It would suck if iPad users had to look into a tiny square or have things be blown up and pixelated.

Yup. There are only 2 versions and the rest is capacity. I guess they could do it so that you click on one or the other and THEN select the capacity you want, but that would just be an extra screen and extra clicks.

Nearly everybody has limited funds. I'm not saying you should have made a different decision (it's entirely up to you of course), only that waiting for the better/cheaper product is an exercise in futility, as a rule. We hear a lot of fretting about how any given tech product is "obsolete" now that something better is on the market. The fact is, it still performs whatever tasks you originally bought it to do, and you've been doing it for longer than someone who decided to wait for the next big thing.

How would you be using these two ports?

Thompson

Only the new iPod and iPhone hardware have front facing cameras.

Thompson

As much as I find the resolution of my iPad is not all that I would like it to be, I doubt the next revision will change that. The only changes I'm expecting in the next revision are:
- the addition of a video camera facing the user,
- the addition of a laser gyroscope for gamers, and
- doubling of the RAM to match the 512MB of the iPhone 4.

I'm hoping that the following revision (iPad rev. C) will boast at least 1280x960 resolution. All this talk of a retina display in the iPad anytime soon is nonsense. It would more than double the cost of the iPad, battery life would be about one hour, and it wouldn't be possible to keep it running for an hour unless it were resting on a block of dry ice. We're at least five years away from having the processing power per watt to achieve that.


It seems unlikely that your son could have become pregnant -- even in the navy. Very early in World War I, when Winston Churchill was First Lord of the Admiralty (equivalent to Secretary of the Navy in the US), he said "The traditions of the navy are rum, sodomy, and the lash."

So, yea, an iPad update would be cool. As per some other comments...

It really does need a camera (at least front facing) as FaceTime would be a killer app - I'm waiting on this one feature before buying an iPad for mom.

It doesn't really need the hi-res camera from the iPhone 4; the 'HD' cam from the iPod Touch would be sufficient as people aren't really going to be carrying around an iPad with the intent to take pictures with it. That would be awkward and goofy.

A retina display for iPad would be cool, but that would require significant GPU resources. While nice, it's not really necessary to quadruple the res of the iPad screen. Simply doubling the res would be more than good enough for this device. A 1600x1200 res is a bit more than double, and would be eye-popping good at the current 9.7" size. Personally I'd like to see them move closer to the aspect ratio of other iDevices and make the iPad res be 1680x1050.

In any case, Apple has got to get off of this glossy kick. All glossy displays are practically useless in bright light. Get over it already please.

I do think a USB port is wishful thinking... Here's the problem... What are you going to do with it? There's no support for one in the OS, so what are you going to plug in? The most they've done so far is build in support for digital cameras with the dock connector via the USB camera connection kit. Without device drivers and file system support, you can't install and manage USB devices. At that point, you're pushing desktop computer territory and may as well get a Mac.

Also, are you going to be holding an iPad with wires hanging off of it? I don't think so. It's contrary to the idea of the iPad, and definitely not an aesthetic Apple is interested in. The forthcoming wireless printing support is a huge step forward in addressing some of the requests and needs of users. I think you'll be seeing more wireless connectivity solutions coming down the pike. Forget the USB thing, it won't happen.

If there is any one hardware feature (besides a camera) that would be welcomed in the iPad, it would be an SD card slot, and the iPad is big enough for this to be practical. An SD card slot is far more elegant than breaking out a bunch of cables and adapters to plug in a digital camera just to get pics off of it.

K, where to start...

You're right about the retina display thing - the hardware in an iPad couldn't push around 3.15 million pixels. It might be able to push 1.2 million pixies around though (1280x960 as one reader suggests). I'd like to see 1600x1200 (or better yet, 1680x1050) but I'm sure that would have to wait for improvements in the PowerVR SGX graphic core.

I don't think it would require pixel quadrupling to avoid fuzzy images. You don't have to exactly double, or quad the res to get the OS to render text or buttons correctly, and things like pictures don't care what the res is if they're higher res than the display. You get fuzzy when you set a res that is not the same as the native res of the LCD panel. To look the best though, Apps would have to be updated again, just like for the iPhone 4.

It is kind of annoying to be limited to the internal storage of your chosen capacity iDevice. However, a couple of things... If you've seen the tear down of iPhones & iPods, you'll notice there's no physical space inside to fit an SD card slot. Apple eschews bulk, slots, ports, hinges, latches, etc. for sleekness and simplicity. Another thing is that flash memory is not all created equal. Unless you're going fork over the cash for a class 10 SDHC card ($200 for 16GB) it's not going to perform up to par, and accessing your apps and media on the device is going to be dog slow. And what if you left an app on a card you removed? Apple isn't going to jeopardize the user experience for the clumsiness of SD cards as a primary storage medium.

Now, an SD card slot on the iPad for the purpose of reading cards from a digital camera or the like, is appealing, and I believe practical. There is also enough physical space to accommodate one in an iPad.

This 'proprietary port' stuff is nonsensical really. The dock connector itself is a specialized 30-pin plug, yea, but did you happen to notice what's on the other end of that iDevice cable? That's right, a USB plug! What's non-standard about that? iDevices do connect via USB. But why should they have a micro-usb connector instead of the dock connector? You'd need an adapter cable to plug it into a computer anyway.

And here is where things become different - that dock connector serves as a connection to a vast eco-system of devices where no other product can compare:

* the dock connector includes industry standard USB
* the dock connector includes industry standard analog audio out
* the dock connector includes industry standard composite video out
* the dock connector includes industry standard component video out
* the dock connector includes control signal lines
* older implementations also included FireWire

...and because of it's design, it mates the iDevice both mechanically and electrically to the peripheral device, such as direct control in-car integration systems, clock radios, handheld point-of-sale devices, entertainment systems, etc. - all things that other iWannaBe devices can't do. And with it all coming out a single port, you don't end up with a device that looks like Medusa with snakes coming out all sides to the device. The dock connector was very forward-looking, and Apple has done well to use it and keep using it.

[QUOTE=mytdave;1713083]So, yea, an iPad update would be cool. As per some other comments...

It really does need a camera (at least front facing) as FaceTime would be a killer app - I'm waiting on this one feature before buying an iPad for mom.

In any case, Apple has got to get off of this glossy kick. All glossy displays are practically useless in bright light. Get over it already please.

There is a chance that the Glossy Displays cost less, and we all know that Apple likes making the most money they can.

Heck, we sell bottles water, and 16.9 bottles sell for less then 12 oz go figure?

Facetime with folks in offices all around the world, talking and discussing issues, will be great.

Can you imagine folks buying these for their kids in school, and away. 2, 3,4 6 way Skype or whatever will make the iPad a bigger hit then just about anything Apple has come out yet.

Families talking to their loved ones over-seas


Skip

Apple Special Event, September 2010

Keynote podcast at 00:15:17:
"Now I've got a little surprise for you today. It's a sneak peak at the next iOS release. 4.2.
4.2 is going to come a little later this year and it's all about iPad.
It's bringing everything to iPad: iOS 4.1 with its multitasking, its folders, game center, HDR photos, everything you saw here, all of it to iPad."

Keynote podcast at 00:19:14:
"So when is 4.2 coming out? It's coming out in November and it is going to be a free update for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch with all those new features in it."

Yes Facetime will be huge. It is a perfectly good reason to put iPad purchases on hold.

Exactly! At least in the case of a rear facing cell phone quality sensor it would be both awkward and goof as you say. If instead the camera focused out of an edge, like the old twin lens reflex cameras of the past it might be usable. If the sensor and optics are better than cell camera tech all the better. In fact putting a cell phone camera, for stills, into the iPad could result in more jokes than Apple wants to hear.

Something totally underestimated by many asking for such a display. It is just the GPU either as the backlight will take more power. However GPU performance is really marching ahead, Samsungs newly announced A9 solution apparently has a GPU updat offering 4x the 3D performance. Not to bad and I'm sure Apple could do better with an iPad tailored GPU.

I think people are spoiled with respect to displays as iPad looks pretty darn good to me now. More pixels would help of course but I don't see it as a sales killer.

Like you the aspect ratio is frustrating. It is an obvious trade off but for many of us a wider screen would be far more usefull.

The glossy screen is fine. Besides a matte screen just muddies the higher resolution everybody is asking for. Maybe an anti reflective coating would help but anything you put on the glass impacts the image you see in the end.

In the end I really don't think you or many others understand just how big a negative going back to matte screens will be. All the sharpness of these new high resolution displays would go out the window. Nothings perfect but the glass screens are the best bet at the moment.

1.
Hook up mass storage devices that aren't SD. For example many cameras still use compact flash.
2.
RS232 serial port adapters. Very important for field use of the iPad.
3.
HID devices. Mostly keyboards in this case.
4.
Ethernet adapters. Like it or not I still find myself in hoteks where the WiFi sucks. Being able to fall back to ethernet would be a big win. Oh please don't mention WiFi bridges, they are much bigger than an ethernet adapter and in some hotels you are luck to find more than one free outlet.
5.
Web cams. Lets face it the iPad will not be an optimal device for video conferencing, mainly due to the hand held nature of the device and camera alignment. Support for generic web cams takes care of this.

This is a fairly stupid comment isn't it. For one there is support for many of these devices via the USB port built into the dock connector. A real USB port just makes connecting generic products like keyboards far easier. More importantly eliminates one more thing to loose.

Some device profiles aren't currently supported, that is true, but that also isn't written in stone. Careful selection of what should be supported by Apple is the best way to strengthen the iPads usability.

The thing here is that USB support isn't all that bad now. The infrastructure is there and pretty solid.

Actually I think it is more than that but don't have a list in front of me. Even if that was the case though, the camera kit implies support for mass storage devices and cameras already in the USB system. So in theory they should be able to support a multi card reader for those odd cameras. Other support should be easy to add.

First off iPad does have a filesystem. Drivers are an issue but some profiles are very well defined thus generic drivers work fine. HID is an example, keyboards should not be an issue.

Beyond that Apple doesnt have to support every device ever made. For example they could supply drivers for specific Ethernet or RS 232 bridges and ignore the rest. As long as the adapters are accurately identified there is no issue.

In other words Apple should maintain a detailed list of compatible hardware and driver support for the generic USB port. This would temper expectations that anything can be plugged into the port. There is no reason for behaviour mimicing a desktops capability in fact that is the opposite of what you would want.

Besides what do people think the dock connector is using if not USB?

This really rubs me the wrong way and strikes me as being out of touch. Of course wires will hang from the USB device while it is in use. That is the whole point of having a USB port in the first place, to provide a bit of connectivity where the device may be added or removed at random.

Frankly it is no different than holding a laptop in one hand while making a connection to xyz device to transfer data or otherwise work with the device. It is obvious you don't see iPad as a tool, but for many of us it could become just that. All it needs is the right support.

Again I think you have a very narrow view of what people want. I suspect very few care one way or the other about USB printing though support is always useful in a pinch. Rather we care about easy low cost connectivity to commonly used USB hardware. Simply put dock port adapters are not the answer.

Why would I want wireless connectivity to a flash stick or a multi card reader? For that matter any of a number of other devices. I really don't think you position is well thought out.

Yes an SD slot is an excellent idea. It is not however a suitable replacement for a built in USB port. Like it or not there are cameras that don't use SD cards. Further your personal grudge against wires is immature and out of touch. Direct USB connections are reliable and trouble free and most importantly REMOVABLE. You started off really well and then went mental about cables at the end here, why I don't know. They reality is Apple could stick a full size USB port in an iPad that most user wouldn't even notice.

Dave