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Rather than a faster M1, I would take a better webcam thanks.

M

Modernape

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 21, 2010
232
42
My Air i5 2020 is fast enough for my needs. After initially thinking "Oh no, I need to upgrade already", I realised I've never felt this machine to be slow. I don't edit video or do any gaming, so it's blazingly quick as far as I'm concerned.

However, I do use the webcam several times a day as part of my work, so I would appreciate a decent 1080p webcam far more than a chip that launches a Safari webpage 0.1 seconds quicker.

They were actually trying to flog 'instant-on' as a feature of the new machines the other day. My air is ready for me to login immediately upon opening the screen, I don't see how that's not 'instant-on' already?
 
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I think we should wait for the reviews to be honest. The Neural Engine is in play here so the camera quality is going to go up. Personally I think it makes sense to stay with the larger pixels of the 720p because that means more light and less grain, which likely translates to better data for the NE to play with.
 
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I think there's a limit to how good the webcam can be when your MacBook lid is as thin as it is. I know that webcams are becoming more important in the era of zoom conferencing, unless Apple makes the MacBook thicker, or redesigns it to more closely resemble the iPad + magic keyboard form factor, I guess this is as good as it gets.
 
Abazigal said:
I think there's a limit to how good the webcam can be when your MacBook lid is as thin as it is. I know that webcams are becoming more important in the era of zoom conferencing, unless Apple makes the MacBook thicker, or redesigns it to more closely resemble the iPad + magic keyboard form factor, I guess this is as good as it gets.
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My guess is the next gen macbooks will get a similar flat edge design to the iPad/iPhone line. The top lid will not have the current rounding, which will allow for a larger camera module. We don’t need 4k camera modules, but a 1080P one should fit just fine.
 
Reviews are out - ML did very little beyond make the image look "weird"

What a tremendous shame that they did everything else so right but totally missed on the webcam - especially given what's going on in the world in terms of all the remote work/work from home, social distancing, etc.
 
It was unrealistic to expect M1 to enhance the webcam by any appreciable amount. The T2 chip in existing MacBooks already handles image signal processing. The only thing that will make a difference is a larger sensor.
 
turbineseaplane said:
Reviews are out - ML did very little beyond make the image look "weird"

What a tremendous shame that they did everything else so right but totally missed on the webcam - especially given what's going on in the world in terms of all the remote work/work from home, social distancing, etc.
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LOL what time scale do you think these companies work with? They source the parts many months in advance, sometimes up to a year.

When you sell millions and millions of something, you can’t just go “oh we need to have a better camera” in May and then ship the machine in November.
 
I cover my camera on my Mac. if i needed to do a higher quality zoom or skype call i'd use my iphone.
 
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M1 and future AS variants are probably necessary to enable 1080p+ videoconferencing, which I assume we will see with the next form factor. I honestly don't know if the Intel MacBook Airs could handle 1080p videoconferencing. That is a LOT of heat for a notebook that did not dissipate heat all that well.
 
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Honestly, to some degree I do agree with OP as weird as it all sounds. Say what you will but for MBA that CPU is really an overkill. MBA by definition was not meant to be a computing monster. Of course having performance doesn't hurt, that goes without saying. But looking at competition and desktop CPUs it's like Apple released this CPU some 5 years early lol.
 
I am surprised that the new M1's, do not have higher grade cameras. Weird one Apple.
Hmm, wondering if their survey's showed said camera did not warranty an upgrade. Those details would be interesting...
 
teecuptech said:
I am surprised that the new M1's, do not have higher grade cameras. Weird one Apple.
Hmm, wondering if their survey's showed said camera did not warranty an upgrade. Those details would be interesting...
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That's likely due to the current design/chassis not having enough space to accommodate better webcam.
 
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If you look at the progression of sensor quality over the past few years they really haven't advanced much. What has advanced, and is literally the only reason cameras in phones have gotten so good, is computational techniques to squeeze everything they can out of the data it does get.

The lid in these things is just too thin, something like a phone or a tablet has double or triple the amount of depth to accommodate a sensor of a larger size and resolution.

Look at literally any other laptop in this class and you will see garbage 720p cams across the board. Look at reviews of the new XPS 13, arguably the best windows competitor for the air and MacBook pro 13, and its cam looks marketdly worse than the new M1 laptops.

Maybe they can stuff a 1080p sensor in there, but more megapixels doesn't mean better. How many times have we seen companies shoving 20/30/40 MP sensors in phones and they all might as well not have bothered. You need a larger sensor along with more resolution to get extra meaningful detail.

At the end of the day there is no getting around physics.
 
If webcam quality is the issue get a dedicated webcam from Logitech or another vendor. I almost never use webcams on my laptops.
 
What are you people needing such high quality web cams for, Only Fans? As I mentioned in another thread, I work for a ~250 count software dev shop, with everyone using a MacBook Air or Pro and sit on Zoom or Teams video calls all day and not once has anyone ever complained about quality or did someone say boy a higher quality camera would really help this conversation
 
CheesePuff said:
What are you people needing such high quality web cams for, Only Fans? As I mentioned in another thread, I work for a ~250 count software dev shop, with everyone using a MacBook Air or Pro and sit on Zoom or Teams video calls all day and not once has anyone ever complained about quality or did someone say boy a higher quality camera would really help this conversation
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We use Zoom and Teams at my company. We’ve stuck to zoom for larger meetings (mostly full company meetings). I was tasked with looking at Team’s new “large meeting” feature (whatever they call it) and my director said the quality is too low...

If it’s a 40+ person meeting why does it matter at all what the quality is? Every person’s box is like 2 inch wide?!?
 
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