Talk:iSight

Merge with "FaceTime" page

Apple killed the iSight at today's Back to the Mac conference. It is now known as "Facetime camera". Jobs kept referring to a feature of the Macbook Air as "Facetime Camera" - http://www.macstories.net/news/things-apple-killed-today/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 123.243.141.222 (talk) 10:41, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Hostile/Suspicious language

Does anyone else find the tone of this article to be vaguely hostile/suspicious? Examples:

• "Apple calls iSight's three-part F/2.8 lens with two aspherical elements custom-designed"
• "All iSights include internal microphones, which, Apple advertises, feature dual-element noise-suppression"
• "Apple claims that it only increases audio performance"

Just seemed odd to me. Might be nothing (hence me not changing it). -shinyplasticbag

that's true. I came to the discussion page to search for sources of the criticizing of the isight (ok, wikipedia is not a consumer forum). it's just over-correctly-wikipedians i guess--82.124.42.72 15:13, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

I suppose the author intends more of a scientific detachment and precision in language. (e.g. "Lego bricks, not Legos.") Also, using action-verbs avoids using the linking verb is, for those of us using E-prime to clarify our linguistic communications. Afterall, none of us have cited proof that the lens was custom-designed, that the internal microphone uses dual-element noise suppression, nor that the firmware upgrade only increases audio performance. -zuzu

Also, the original reason I came to this page was to see if anyone has already included images of the new iMac or MacBook Pro built-in iSight cameras.

New iSight Camera

This article needs to be reformatted and edited to account for the different resolutions and types of iSight cameras (ie: External iSight, Internal PPC iSight, Internal Intel iSight). The new Intel based Macs have 4x the resolution as previous models (www.apple.com/imac/isight.html  :: The righthand column under "Multi-way chat" states this).

This article needs a new picture of the old iSight camera. The current picture shows the camera attached incorrectly, with the plastic mount blocking part of the screen. If should be reversed, with the smaller part of the plastic mount over the aluminum border around the screen, the larger part hangs over the outside of the LCD, with the thumbscrew allowing the user to tighten it down onto the aluminum laptop casing -- not tightening onto the delicate LCD screen as shown in the current picture. Several pictures on the Apple product page show the correct installation: http://www.apple.com/isight/

• I belive that pic is showing an iSight camera on a flat panel iMac G4. That mounting hardware required you to use it backwards in order to get to stay on. That being said, I agree that a different picture should be used. The article also needs to be updated to account for the built-in iSight camera utilizing USB 2.0, not Firewire. Also, the Intel iMacs have 4x the resolutoins of all previous iSight models while the MacBook Pros have 2x the resolution. I won't be able t get to it until later this week so anyone who wants to get on it please knock yourself out. :-) Pattersonc 21:24, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
• For the 4x (and 2x) resolution claims for the built-in iSight cameras, would mean that the 4x resolution would be 1280x960. Because a square 4 times the size of another sqaure has double the length and double the width, not 4x the length/width. The 2x resoultion would be approx 1.41 times the length & width (about 905x678). The Wiki claims horizontal resoultions in excess of 2000 pixels.
  • Good catch. My math was certainly off. Pattersonc(Talk) 9:04 AM, Tuesday; February 7 2006

(EST)

• Where is the source for the information regarding LED-display MacBook Pros having 1280x960 resolution iSight cameras? Discerptor(Talk) 20:51, Friday; 11 April, 2008

(PST)

Optimization part added

I believe that the last paragraph about optimization should be moved to a different wiki page, and that we might make a disambiguation page. However, I don't know how to do that (any special rule ?).

Camera mount is backwards in photo

Would someone please change the iSight photo to one in which the camera mount is not backwards? The mount, and wire, are supposed to go behind the display, not in front of it. - Brian Kendig 05:00, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Interoperability?

Not the right place to ask this, perhaps, but I'm wondering whether a Mac user with an iSight can video/audio chat with a Windows user using some other kind of camera. Is iChat AV the only Mac chat software that works with iSight? If it makes a difference, I'm referring to the external FireWire iSight. LeoO3 17:27, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Just for the record, I'll answer my own question; it seems several programs, including Skype, can be used for this purpose. LeoO3 19:46, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

A Mac with an iSight can also videoconference with a PC using a USB webcam over Sightspeed. I've been doing this for several years. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.234.12.14 (talk) 19:50, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Europe

iSight was withdrawn from sale in europe early beacause of EU regulations on hazardous chemicals (lead I think). If anyone knows a source for this it should probably be mentioned on this page.

retail iSight?

"As of December 16, 2006, the iSight was no longer for sale in the Apple online store or in retail locations." Found this wiki trying to look up this: http://agent.liquiddigital.com.au/ Looks similar to, but not exactly the same as, the wiki iSight picture. They call it one, though. Anyone who knows whether this should (under Wikipedia rules) be mentioned on the main article, please update accordingly. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.215.102.63 (talk) 03:04, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Rumors removed

I removed two rumors: one that the iSight was discontinued due to environmentalist pressure from Greenpeace, and one that future Apple displays will include a built-in cam. Unless reliable, verifiable sources point to this, those statements don't belong here. White 720 (talk) 20:24, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Article tense?

The iSight is not a past-tense thing. Therefore when the article starts off with "iSight was a webcam developed and marketed by Apple Inc.", it's factually incorrect. Agree? Brianreading (talk) 15:45, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Can someone please fix the picture? It's on backwards. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.180.170.142 (talk) 12:55, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

iSight Hack

There are rumors of people being able to hack into MacBooks and gain access to the iSight camera, to use it as a surveillance camera, more or less. Any truth to this? --Kebman (talk) 05:34, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

LED MacBook Pros, and access to the HD iSight stream

Quote from the article:

“With the LED-Backlit MacBook Pros, Apple has moved to using a sensor capable of 1280x1024 pixels, but when accessed using provided APIs, the image is re-sampled to 640x480 pixels. However, Quartz Composer allows access to the 1280x1024 pixel video stream. The built-in iSight can also be used in the Photo Booth application.”

I can find no other references to the Quartz hack; can anybody else? Also, with a short period of playing in Quartz Composer.app, I was unable to access any sort of HD stream from my iSight. I’m on a newest-model MacBookPro 15″. ELLIOTTCABLE (talk) 06:27, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Typo error in third paragraph

It says ""[[MacBook]" instead of "MacBook". Article link is not created. Sorry for my bad english.

Tx. Feel free to fix those yourself as well!--Epeefleche (talk) 18:34, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

NEW iSight usage: March 2012?

I added the paragraph "iSight vs. FaceTime" on announcement of the release of the iPad 3rd gen, where it was clearly mentioned in the March 2012 keynote as the "iSight Camera". The question is, was this the FIRST time Apple first talked about the back camera now being called the "iSight"?

I notice here that the current specs page on their website for both the iPhone 4 & 4S (4: http://www.apple.com/iphone/iphone-4/specs.html / 4S: http://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html ) have the term used on them — but was this done retrospectively near the release of the third gen iPad? Note here also, that the iPad Touch specs page does NOT refer to the back camera being an iSight Camera (http://www.apple.com/ipodtouch/specs.html ), so I'm pretty certain this is a retrospective naming by Apple on the other iPhone/iPad iDevices.

I checked the Apple keynote videos (available on iTunes), and they do NOT refer to the camera on either iPhone releases (4/4S) as being an "iSight Camera", so I am presuming this re-naming has been done recently. Thoughts welcomed. --Jimthing (talk) 11:26, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 2 external links on ISight. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20081010192847/http://developer.apple.com/documentation/HardwareDrivers/Conceptual/MacBookPro_0601/Articles/MacBookPro_0601.html to http://developer.apple.com/documentation/HardwareDrivers/Conceptual/MacBookPro_0601/Articles/MacBookPro_0601.html
• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080518070830/http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Hardware/Conceptual/iSightProgGuide/index.html to http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Hardware/Conceptual/iSightProgGuide/index.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

• If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
• If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 03:12, 8 April 2017 (UTC)