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Can someone explain the need for a camera??

J

jlblodgett

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 18, 2008
567
0
Why is there such a fascination with the iPad having a rear-facing camera?

I understand having a front facing camera, with the whole FaceTime thing - that only makes sense.

But why a rear-facing camera? Is anyone actually going to use the iPad as a camera??
 
The company I work for definitely would

They would use it to compliment an auditing app and to take an accompanying picture to support the audit

While I personally would probably never use it, there are a number of very real implementations for it
But I have no idea if Apple will deem them enough of a priority to actually include it
 
jlblodgett said:
Why is there such a fascination with the iPad having a rear-facing camera?

I understand having a front facing camera, with the whole FaceTime thing - that only makes sense.

But why a rear-facing camera? Is anyone actually going to use the iPad as a camera??
Click to expand...

The rationale is that, as with the iPhone, Facetime allows you to share images of what you're looking at, not just your own face. So if you want to show the grandparents the baby or just share a view of something you can still see the screen while you view the image of what's being shared.

As a non-Facetime user (the idea is just abhorrent to me) I don't understand the appeal.
 
Office automation. Think of it as a document scanner, photocopier, viewer, markup device and emailer all in one. The fact that it's as portable as a small stack of paper brings the "paperless office" closer to reality.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)

1) For Video Calling.
2) For the occasional video at home - but the best bit will be editing it on the device - if Apple can make a decent iMovie for the iPad.
3) Scanning bar codes and taking a picture of a printed page and it "magically" appearing on your iPad - then *I* can edit it.
4) AR apps, like the translation one. It has so much potential and I would be more inclined to use it because typing a Spanish email is easier on the iPad than iPhone.
5) Editing pictures, again we NEED *Photoshop* for iPad. If we get an SD Card slot for iPad 2 then we can import out photos from our "real" camera.
 
Using an iPad camera for document scanning and copying? Really?

Doesn't seem very practical, but ok.

I think it would work better to make the iPad able to work with a wireless printer/scanner, which could do the whole OCR thing with much greater quality than an iPad.

I love the camera on my iPhone 4 - but I don't think even it would be remotely capable of being a scanner.
 
jlblodgett said:
Why is there such a fascination with the iPad having a rear-facing camera?

I understand having a front facing camera, with the whole FaceTime thing - that only makes sense.

But why a rear-facing camera? Is anyone actually going to use the iPad as a camera??
Click to expand...

to be honest i really don't see the point of having a camera on an iPad...
 
jlblodgett said:
I love the camera on my iPhone 4 - but I don't think even it would be remotely capable of being a scanner.
Click to expand...

It's eminently capable. I use mine all the time. Try it.

OTOH, for the past 10 or so years i've had various scanners in my office and hated them all. Either the paper feed jams, the software on the pc doesn't work reliably, the thing takes too long, produces a nonstandard file format or one of dozen other things. I've used them all, collectively, maybe a dozen times.

On my iPhone, I just snap and email to my work address. Done. I also just bought an iPhone app that cleans the scans up automatically and files them separately (outwith my main photo library). Very nice.
 
A rear facing camera does seem to cumbersome and impractical on the iPad, a front facing one would work for Facetime though.
 
Arran said:
On my iPhone, I just snap and email to my work address. Done. I also just bought an iPhone app that cleans the scans up automatically and files them separately (outwith my main photo library). Very nice.
Click to expand...

What APP did you get. Love to try it myself.
 
poloponies said:
The rationale is that, as with the iPhone, Facetime allows you to share images of what you're looking at, not just your own face. So if you want to show the grandparents the baby or just share a view of something you can still see the screen while you view the image of what's being shared.

As a non-Facetime user (the idea is just abhorrent to me) I don't understand the appeal.
Click to expand...

This

This is the real reason why the iPad will have a rear camera. As for why people want one on it to take pictures....Don't have a good answer for you, other than people are dumb :)
 
As has been stated, there are many other reasons beyond Face Time or just taking casual pictures, document scanning and management being one, and photo documentation of audits I mentioned before. I am sure companies (and individuals) will come up with many others IF there is a rear facing camera.

I personally don't care one way or the other, but just because some users won't make use of it, doesn't mean there is no use for it.
 
jlblodgett said:
Why is there such a fascination with the iPad having a rear-facing camera?

I understand having a front facing camera, with the whole FaceTime thing - that only makes sense.

But why a rear-facing camera? Is anyone actually going to use the iPad as a camera??
Click to expand...

To take pictures ;):D
 
I suspect people who say they want a camera are feature nerds who can't afford an iPhone or a camera with video capabilities, and probably can't afford an iPad either.
 
jlblodgett said:
Why is there such a fascination with the iPad having a rear-facing camera?

I understand having a front facing camera, with the whole FaceTime thing - that only makes sense.

But why a rear-facing camera? Is anyone actually going to use the iPad as a camera??
Click to expand...

SO you can see the look on the others persons face while sexting!:eek:
 
Arran said:
Why would they even waste time on the discussion?
Click to expand...

They got nothing else to do. It's the same people who said iPad will fail without XYZ.

Seriously. If they own a modern phone, they would own a video camera already.
 
I agree, I wouldn't take pictures with it, but the front camera would come in handy for those who like video calling.
 
One of face time's selling points is being able to use the rear camera to show something to the person you're calling while still seeing them on the screen.

In my own opinion, I expect one, and will use it.
 
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