Wristcam Bringing Video Calling Feature to Apple Watch

[PJnuckingfuts]

I will never buy an Apple Watch until they put a FaceTime camera on it. If Dick Tracy had one all that time ago, and this is going to be Apple’s eighth or ninth series watch and they still have no goddamn camera on it, they obviously are doing it intentionally because they only want you to make video calls on your iPhone, iMac, Studio Display, and iPad, forcing you to buy one of those. If Apple Watch has a cellular feature, then it should obviously have a FaceTime camera for convenience and because it’s f’in 2022! AND, you should be able to load apps on the watch with any computer or non-iPhone without having to buy an iPhone. End of story.

I have been giving them feedback for every public beta operating system update ever since my first smartphone, the iPhone 4S (or whenever they started accepting feedback). My BIGGEST complaint (that I’ve reported to Feedback at least 1000 times) which absolutely drives me crazy, is that they can’t change the orientation of the lyrics in Apple Music if you want to listen with your iPhone’s built-in “(virtual) Dolby Atmos” speakers (unlike Amazon Music Unlimited does properly with the lyrics, and I think Tidal has been starting to do it, too). And remember when you turned your phone 180° the screen and proper stereo channels would flip?? Not anymore!

When you listen to music with your AppleTV, where are the lyrics? on the right side of the album cover. When you listen to music with your iPad in the horizontal position, where are the lyrics? On the right side of the album cover. When you listen to music on your iPhone with Apple Music, where are the lyrics? Constantly in the vertical position which makes no sense because then you can’t listen in stereo unless you can read lyrics sideways. But they are doing this on purpose because they want you to buy their AirPods or AirPods Pro or AirPods Max 🎧 or Beats!

I’ve been using Macs since the Quadra 840AV (which none of the Apple techs I’ve spoken to even know what it was since it was from 1993, when Apple was about to go bankrupt) as I’m a professional graphic artist for 27 years now (and a printing and promotional products broker). I’m tied to the Apple ecosystem and absolutely hate Android. I’m still using my 27” Retina 5K iMac late-2015 model (which I got in 2017) fully loaded. I’m still using my 2017 iPad Pro (occasionally). And I have five AppleTVs. The only thing I upgrade yearly (as I’m enrolled in the Apple Upgrade Program and use it for business most of the day, take care of my finances, and listen to lossless, hi-res, 24/96 music which when downloaded takes up lots of space which I use with my portable headphone system; I have a deadly serious home system, too) is my iPhone, which is currently the 13 Pro Max 1TB. Oh, and I also have over 10,000 photos/screenshots/videos which take up lots of space. I have the 200GB iCloud+ plan which is currently enough as it doesn’t back up Apple Music’s downloads or your own uploads, and Tidal’s downloads are attached to the app size (so if you delete the Tidal app you better remember the 550GB of songs you downloaded ‘cuz you’ll have to do it again; same with Apple Music’s downloads if you get a new iPhone, so I have to do that yearly), but with the photo sizes of the 14 Pro Max I’m sure I’ll need their 2TB plan. I wish it would restore your downloaded music!

And regarding the 14 Pro Max 1TB, or 2TB if they have the option (which I will most certainly get even though they can’t figure out a way to recess the new 48MP cameras like Samsung can, but instead they’re gonna’ raise the camera bump by .57mm, or extend the screen right up to the bezel like Samsung can instead of having an 1/8” black border), I have zero issues with the small notch and find it virtually invisible. I don’t know why they would change it to a pill shape plus a dot (which will be distracting) instead of keeping them connected in a longer pill shape (which would still be distracting), and I would still prefer they keep the small notch – but they intentionally want it to look like the letter “i” when held horizontally which is truly stupid as f**k! When spending over $1800 on a phone (including AppleCare+ with Theft & Loss, even though I’ve never lost or had my phone stolen), it should not have features that are worse than previous phones, and they should listen a lot more to customers’ feedback.

End rant.

 

[CarlJ]

I will never buy an Apple Watch until they put a FaceTime camera on it. If Dick Tracy had one all that time ago, and this is going to be Apple’s eighth or ninth series watch and they still have no goddamn camera on it, they obviously are doing it intentionally because they only want you to make video calls on your iPhone, iMac, Studio Display, and iPad, forcing you to buy one of those. If Apple Watch has a cellular feature, then it should obviously have a FaceTime camera for convenience and because it’s f’in 2022!

Assigning bad/malicious intent just because you don't like their decisions is rather poor form. You wouldn't like someone doing it to you. I mean, I'm not aware of any conclusive proof that PJnuckingfuts isn't a serial killer, so you probably are a serial killer, right?

In Apple's case, they almost certainly have prototype Apple Watches in the labs that have cameras built in - they have a reputation for prototyping everything to see how it works. It would appear they've decided that either it doesn't work well enough to meet their standards, or they can't get the necessary parts in the quantities they need, or they don't think there's a sufficiently large market for it (and "you and ten of your friends" is not a sufficiently large market) - they tend to go for features they believe will appeal to millions of users (and in the case of phones, tens or hundreds of millions of users).

As far as convenience goes, I wear an Apple Watch all the time, and use FaceTime every day. I have never wanted a camera on my Apple Watch. It'd be an absolute pain to aim properly at my face for more than a 30 second conversation, and for conversations shorter than that, I rarely need video. And glance at your watch - follow the line from your watch back to your face. Odds are, the other end would be looking up your nose the whole time. With a comfortable wrist position, it's not a flattering camera angle. With a good angle, it's not a comfortable or convenient way to hold your arm.

Constantly in the vertical position which makes no sense because then you can’t listen in stereo unless you can read lyrics sideways. But they are doing this on purpose because they want you to buy their AirPods or AirPods Pro or AirPods Max 🎧 or Beats!

Again, assigning bad intent to their actions when you have no proof. It's much more likely that they simply envision the iPhone being used in a vertical format for most things. It'd be nice to have album art and lyrics display side-by-side in landscape mode on the phone. Maybe they haven't bothered because they've got thousands of other things they'd rather implement, maybe they prototyped it and quickly decided this made the lyrics too small or some such (remember it has to work on every iPhone, not just your 13 Pro Max).

... – but they intentionally want it to look like the letter “i” when held horizontally which is truly stupid as f**k!

Again, assigning malicious intent just because you don't like their decision. And this time it borders on paranoid conspiracy theories.

Also, note that it's a violation of forum rules to mess with letters to get words around the forum's profanity filter. The official language is: "The profanity filter is there for a reason. Do not circumvent it by using the language we intend to exclude or disguising those words.". If you truly need to say ****, just say it and let the filter block it out. That could arguably apply to your username as well.

 

[PJnuckingfuts]

Assigning bad/malicious intent just because you don't like their decisions is rather poor form. You wouldn't like someone doing it to you. I mean, I'm not aware of any conclusive proof that PJnuckingfuts isn't a serial killer, so you probably are a serial killer, right?

In Apple's case, they almost certainly have prototype Apple Watches in the labs that have cameras built in - they have a reputation for prototyping everything to see how it works. It would appear they've decided that either it doesn't work well enough to meet their standards, or they can't get the necessary parts in the quantities they need, or they don't think there's a sufficiently large market for it (and "you and ten of your friends" is not a sufficiently large market) - they tend to go for features they believe will appeal to millions of users (and in the case of phones, tens or hundreds of millions of users).

As far as convenience goes, I wear an Apple Watch all the time, and use FaceTime every day. I have never wanted a camera on my Apple Watch. It'd be an absolute pain to aim properly at my face for more than a 30 second conversation, and for conversations shorter than that, I rarely need video. And glance at your watch - follow the line from your watch back to your face. Odds are, the other end would be looking up your nose the whole time. With a comfortable wrist position, it's not a flattering camera angle. With a good angle, it's not a comfortable or convenient way to hold your arm.


Again, assigning bad intent to their actions when you have no proof. It's much more likely that they simply envision the iPhone being used in a vertical format for most things. It'd be nice to have album art and lyrics display side-by-side in landscape mode on the phone. Maybe they haven't bothered because they've got thousands of other things they'd rather implement, maybe they prototyped it and quickly decided this made the lyrics too small or some such (remember it has to work on every iPhone, not just your 13 Pro Max).


Again, assigning malicious intent just because you don't like their decision. And this time it borders on paranoid conspiracy theories.

Also, note that it's a violation of forum rules to mess with letters to get words around the forum's profanity filter. The official language is: "The profanity filter is there for a reason. Do not circumvent it by using the language we intend to exclude or disguising those words.". If you truly need to say ****, just say it and let the filter block it out. That could arguably apply to your username as well.

Ok, where do I even start…

I wasn’t trying to get around their filters at all with the language. I was doing it to be polite just like the news channels do. Cursing is a form of expression in any language which is why the words are in any dictionary.

And I most very well know Apple’s intent which I’m going to explain to you, and it’s one heck of a story. Just be patient and read, as I address your concerns.

I’m not an amateur to computers or building electronics. (I built my own $80K headphone amplifier as part of my whole $155K home system, which took many years of savings and buying/selling audio gear.)

I already told you the first Mac I owned was a Quadra 840AV in 1993 (which even the highest techs at Apple don’t know what it is) with a Motorola 68040 processor running at 40 MHz. I also had a PC (that I built) with an ASUS motherboard and an Intel 80486 a.k.a. 486 @ 40 MHz (the fastest at the time), with a Micropolis 1GB HD which at the time cost $890 and was the best brand. I forget how much RAM I had in either computer….

….BUT THE FIRST COMPUTER I STARTED ON was a Commodore 64 (at 5 years old in 1984, and learned how to program in BASIC, invented by Bill Gates as was DOS soon after which PC’s still sadly use) which had an 8088 processor @ a mere 2 MHz, and only 64KB of RAM hence its name. No hard drive. Just 5 1/4” floppy disks (which came after the huge 8” floppies) and only formatted to 128KB. (3 1/2” floppies 💾 weren’t even invented yet. • Hell, when I built my PC over a decade later it had a 5 1/4” floppy drive which could format up to 256KB, and a 3 1/2” floppy drive which had evolved from 512KB to 768KB to 1024KB/1MB to eventually 1.3MB at the time I built it). I think those are the correct storage amounts; it’s been so long since I’ve even held one. I had a Commodore cassette tape backup drive, and a Commodore 4-pen (black, red, green and blue ink) mini 4” wide paper plotter. I was tickled pink and even cried in joy when I got a dot-matrix printer for my 7th or 8th birthday.

So how do I most very well know Apple’s intent? I’ll tell you the story:

It all started when I won the ORIGINAL iPad 2 (my first iPad) in a SquareTrade contest by randomly clicking on someone’s promotional web link. They were running a promotion for 10 days to give out 20 iPads; 2 per day – one to the person who shared the URL and one to the person who clicked on it. They were random drawings and I think mine (and the person I didn’t know who’s link I clicked on) were drawn on the 4th day. I got a call on my cell and I almost let it go to voicemail because it was an unknown number to me, but something compelled me to answer it (and I was at work at the time). The person said they were from SquareTrade (which was a company I knew of and used back then) and told me I had won the iPad contest. I almost hung up thinking it was a prank because I have rarely won anything, let alone something that cost $500 (at the time). The person congratulated me and engaged in a conversation and soon I felt like it was for real. They asked me what color I wanted, and Apple only made black or white. So I said, “black.” They didn’t give me an option for storage (as they gave out the cheapest of the two, which was WiFi only; I don’t even know if cellular was an option yet. And I think it was either 64GB or 128GB, likely 64GB). Within 5 minutes I had received the iPad 2 receipt from Apple and the following day it was in my hand (as I lived in southern CA at that time, from the age of 6 to the age of 40) – up until Feb 27, 2020 when I moved to Western Massachusetts (to be near my family as they had moved several years prior), which was a week before the COVID news really hit. I got out of there just in time but it took the movers 5-6 weeks to get here, which was way past their timeframe of 6-21 days.

So anyway (still in CA), when the original iPad 3 came out, I bought it right away as it was going to have the first iPad Retina display (with a bit less PPI than it is now, and certainly no 120Hz ProMotion display). The first thing I noticed about it was they had repositioned the processor so when holding it vertically, the processor was right under your right hand. And it got hot. Really hot. But that wasn’t the main issue. It might have been a symptom of it, but it wasn’t what I needed to tell Apple: that they had to recall the iPad 3.

I was the first one that discovered it had a charging problem. Even if you were doing nothing on it while it was on and plugged in, the battery would drain. I confirmed this by first going to my nearest Apple store and saw that all 5 of them that they had plugged in at all times were at battery levels anywhere from 87% to 63% 🪫. I then drove to the next closest 3 stores to see if they had the same problem and sure enough all of them did, and at one of the stores (since I brought it to the attention of every store) all of the salesmen that worked there dropped every sale they were working on and hovered around the table to check the 10W power adapters (at that time) and make sure they were all plugged in properly. They were. Then all the customers gathered ‘round the table. Then more people in the mall came in to see what was going on and I found myself stuck dead center in the middle of a huge crowd. The store manager agreed that this was a major issue, so he contacted his direct Apple supervisor who wanted to speak with me and put me in touch with the actual engineers at Apple who were on the team that built the iPad. So I gave them my phone numbers.

Eventually, I wound up giving all my free time and half of my sleep time (which took 6-8 weeks, over 240 hours) to help them fix the problem. I spoke to 17 engineers in all, ranging from guys who worked on the battery/power parts, to the engineers who worked on the screen and backlighting, to the engineers who had worked on the core processor. Five to six of us at time were on conference calls. I kept telling them I only need to speak to the engineers who designed the battery and power rectification PCBs, as I know how to build, design and populate circuit boards (and have nearly $20K worth of top-of-the-line soldering stations with 8 different irons plus a total of 130+ tips, along with very high end supplies such as a ridiculously expensive, custom built, titanium helping hands with four of them that are 360° articulating 3/4” thick with multi-node bearings and 2 1/2” long claws attached to a 1 3/4” thick aluminum base topped with five layers of FEP and PTFE Teflon).

They KNEW I knew what I was talking about and even said to me (and I quote), “You should be working here!”, “You should be MY boss!”, “Fill out an application to be a lead engineer here at Apple!”, etc.

I told them exactly what the problem was, and how to fix it. But Apple refused to recall their newest iPad. Instead, they started selling them with what they called “newly-improved 12W power adapters” but not officially announcing them until the iPad 4. I had spent over 240 hours telling these engineers exactly what to do, drawing them schematics; that using a higher wattage power adapter would do absolutely nothing until and unless they modified the internal power rectification circuitry and battery charging systems! And that’s what they wind up doing? Putting 2W more output into their power adapters for the rest of the iPad 3s that hadn’t shipped?

But what pissed me off the most was after all the time I offered to (and did) help them, in the end I didn’t get so much as a thank you from the iPad engineering division team leader or the V.P. of the iPad division, and I spoke to both of them. I even asked the V.P. if he could please send me a new Lightning cable, and you know what his response was? “Sorry, you’ll have to buy one from the Apple Store.” I was absolutely furious!!! I said, “Are you screwing with me?” He said, “Nope. That’s policy.” Angrily I replied, “After all the nights I forfeited sleep spent helping your people do their jobs who get paid over 150 grand a year, you seriously won’t send me out a cable worth $1.73 worth of parts?!? You should be kissing my ass and sending me a $5,000 gift card with lipstick at the bare minimum, which I wouldn’t have ever asked you for prior to helping your team….but now? I was trying to help a company who asked for my help; a company I’ve been partial to even when you were about to file bankruptcy!!! And you won’t send me out a free Lightning cable now that your company is worth hundreds of billions?!? The cable isn’t even the point! You proved Apple is a selfish ingrate at its core! Don’t have your team EVER call me again!!!”

They took all my ideas and schematics down, and used everything I gave them to fix the problem when they released their iPad 4, which I never bought, but I saw pictures of all the circuit boards, capacitors, resistors, etc. The 2017 iPad Pro was the last iPad I ever got because it had features I wanted to use for business, but I never bought it. I traded one of my own audio cable company’s (a side business) 45-hour long hand-built, extreme-fidelity audio, (custom wires and geometry), Reference series power cords in exchange for the brand new iPad Pro (he had Apple ship me) which also came with two Apple Pencils (Gen 1, obviously, two…I dunno’ why), a regular Apple leather cover, and the Apple keyboard cover. But I swore after the iPad 3 fiasco and even worse, stealing my design and implementing it in the iPad 4, to never buy another iPad again.

I mean, what could I have done about it, seriously? In 500 years I wouldn’t have the kind of money it would take to sue them. They crush small companies in court for fun. If they want what you have (like the company that invented the tech behind Siri for example), they’ll force you into selling it to them, which they purchased for approximately $330M. And Siri still sucks. Alexa reigns supreme.

(And no, I’m not a serial killer. 😉)

 

[CarlJ]

I already told you the first Mac I owned was a Quadra 840AV in 1993 (which even the highest techs at Apple don’t know what it is) with a Motorola 68040 processor running at 40 MHz. I also had a PC (that I built) with an ASUS motherboard and an Intel 80486 a.k.a. 486 @ 40 MHz (the fastest at the time), with a Micropolis 1GB HD which at the time cost $890 and was the best brand. I forget how much RAM I had in either computer….

….BUT THE FIRST COMPUTER I STARTED ON was a Commodore 64 (at 5 years old in 1984, and learned how to program in BASIC, invented by Bill Gates as was DOS soon after which PC’s still sadly use) which had an 8088 processor @ a mere 2 MHz, and only 64KB of RAM hence its name. No hard drive. Just 5 1/4” floppy disks (which came after the huge 8” floppies) and only formatted to 128KB. (3 1/2” floppies 💾 weren’t even invented yet. • Hell, when I built my PC over a decade later it had a 5 1/4” floppy drive which could format up to 256KB, and a 3 1/2” floppy drive which had evolved from 512KB to 768KB to 1024KB/1MB to eventually 1.3MB at the time I built it). I think those are the correct storage amounts; it’s been so long since I’ve even held one.

Well, since you have chosen for us to play, "I started a long time ago so my opinion is more worthy"...

My first experiences with computer programming were on an HP-2000 timesharing system, writing in HP 2000/Access BASIC (connecting over 300 baud modems using printing terminals - mostly DECWriter II's), several years before you were born. By the time you touched your very first Commodore 64, I had been getting paid to write software in BASIC, 6502 assembly, Pascal and C, for several years already, and was disassembling machine language programs for fun and teaching others how to program. I have no need for your watered-down "history lesson" - I lived through all of that and was paying more attention than you. You're spouting off about oooh, 5¼" floppies - before floppies, I used an original Apple ][ with a cassette tape drive, and did my Fortran assignments on punch cards using an IBM 029 Key Punch, while you were crawling around wearing diapers. So I win, and you lose.

By the way, Bill Gates didn't invent either BASIC, or DOS. BASIC was invented at Dartmouth College in 1964 by Kemeny & Kurtz. Bill Gates was 9 at the time. And Microsoft bought what became MS-DOS from Seattle Computer Products. I expect the rest of your information is as full of inaccuracies.

So how do I very well know Apple’s intent? I’ll tell you the story:

[ long boring story snipped ]

You're throwing all that up as some sort of counter argument to my statement that you're assigning malicious intent that you cannot possibly prove, because you don't like Apple's decisions. You're spouting off a whole bunch of history and numbers and assertions (many of them wrong) that prove absolutely nothing about intent, despite you starting off the story by saying it shows how you know Apple's intent. At best, you can say that you have some experience talking with a handful of their engineers (you know they have orders of magnitude more engineers than the 17 you spoke with, right? and the ones you spoke with aren't the ones deciding why to release or not release something, right?). That doesn't give you any insight whatsoever into Apple's motivations behind their decisions they make about what products to release. It does, however, explain the huge chip you have on your shoulder about Apple, which likely explains why you're so quick to assume malice when you have no proof. So we got that from this interaction, I guess.

But you're certainly impassioned about your interactions with Apple - you should pitch that to maybe Lifetime or Hallmark, and they can make a TV movie out of your trials and tribulations.

(And no, I’m not a serial killer. 😉)

Which is exactly what a serial killer would say. Thus "proving" my point.

 

[PJnuckingfuts]

Well, since you have chosen for us to play, "I started a long time ago so my opinion is more worthy"...

My first experiences with computer programming were on an HP-2000 timesharing system, writing in HP 2000/Access BASIC (connecting over 300 baud modems using printing terminals - mostly DECWriter II's), several years before you were born. By the time you touched your very first Commodore 64, I had been getting paid to write software in BASIC, 6502 assembly, Pascal and C, for several years already, and was disassembling machine language programs for fun and teaching others how to program. I have no need for your watered-down "history lesson" - I lived through all of that and was paying more attention than you. You're spouting off about oooh, 5¼" floppies - before floppies, I used an original Apple ][ with a cassette tape drive, and did my Fortran assignments on punch cards using an IBM 029 Key Punch, while you were crawling around wearing diapers. So I win, and you lose.

By the way, Bill Gates didn't invent either BASIC, or DOS. BASIC was invented at Dartmouth College in 1964 by Kemeny & Kurtz. Bill Gates was 9 at the time. And Microsoft bought what became MS-DOS from Seattle Computer Products. I expect the rest of your information is as full of inaccuracies.


You're throwing all that up as some sort of counter argument to my statement that you're assigning malicious intent that you cannot possibly prove, because you don't like Apple's decisions. You're spouting off a whole bunch of history and numbers and assertions (many of them wrong) that prove absolutely nothing about intent, despite you starting off the story by saying it shows how you know Apple's intent. At best, you can say that you have some experience talking with a handful of their engineers (you know they have orders of magnitude more engineers than the 17 you spoke with, right? and the ones you spoke with aren't the ones deciding why to release or not release something, right?). That doesn't give you any insight whatsoever into Apple's motivations behind their decisions they make about what products to release. It does, however, explain the huge chip you have on your shoulder about Apple, which likely explains why you're so quick to assume malice when you have no proof. So we got that from this interaction, I guess.

But you're certainly impassioned about your interactions with Apple - you should pitch that to maybe Lifetime or Hallmark, and they can make a TV movie out of your trials and tribulations.

You are hysterical. A hysterical waste of my time. Your self-righteous humor isn’t even funny. You can choose to believe or disbelieve what I do or don’t know about the inner workings of Apple (which would take a 1000 page book to write). This was one, singular example of how their V.P.s handle their business. I’ve been dealing with Apple since the first one I bought, but I’ve been using them since the Apple II. Go back and read again (as you obviously missed the part about my cassette backup drive and plotter for the Commodore). Of course I know about punch cards but it wasn’t relevant, just as I know it took entire rooms full of computers at NASA to figure out launch trajectories in 1960 that could run on an Intel 8086, which is less than what the Space Shuttle had to work with when it was being built in 1974 and still considered to this day to be the second most complex machine ever built.

I don’t blame the engineers at Apple, but the V.P.s that head up their projects. They make the call. They have one or more V.P.s for every product they make, every software they release. The fact they wouldn’t recall a defective product is exactly how Apple has operated since Jobs and Wozniak founded it.

I didn’t learn Pascal and C until I was older. So what? HP invented the mouse. So what? This forum is about Apple. The good and the bad. Apple and Samsung are constantly suing each other and working with each other simultaneously. It is my opinion that there are more bad seeds in the Apple than good ones.