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Yes, the 2018 MacBook Air's FaceTime HD Camera is Awful

Apple has really become greedy for profits now, that they are cutting corners. Instead of Building a good product with a little above median pricing, They are building two categories outright crappy and slightly alright products with exorbitant pricing. So you are narrowed to choosing between a Yuck va Yup product.

It is almost as if Angela wants to buy her new Mansion in Hawaii and Tim wants to but a private jet that they are charging those prices for crappier products than the market. This is plain exploitation of people in the ecosystem. I am really getting angry with Apple now! What are they building ?

Their competition is ahead of them in everything. And Where they are ahead slightly, they have unusable software and exorbitant pricing like the iPad Pro. Microsoft surface in comparison is a decent PC device that i could use today, instead of some dreamy Post PC hardware/software combo that would replace my Laptop.

The novelty of iPad has eroded right now i want a iPad that could run Mac software as well as connect to screens if i want and act as a iPad/Book reader when i want.

Quite frankly i have been waiting for a legitimate Laptop replacement Tablet for yrs, but Apple has forcefully restricted it to just some iOS Apps instead of a Full Mac App.
 
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Hater said:
Everything from the IP phones with the cameras on top of them to cisco branded webcams? They all say made for WebEx/Jabber on them. You'd know all about it if you were actually a United comms engineer
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You don’t understand how Webex is used. People join WebEx from all sorts of places: Hotels, home offices, airports, Starbucks, etc.

You should really stop commenting on things you don’t understand. You are making a fool of yourself.

Any camera can be used with WebEx. That’s not the point. The point is that a camera in a Mac should never be of such crappy quality that it’s embarrassing to join any video conference bridge from it.

Nice handle, by the way. Serves you right.
 
Naraxus said:
Not true these days....
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Exactly! I don't think that new macs are in tune with what Steve thoughts about "delivering the best experience at a reasonable price".
[doublepost=1546573126][/doublepost]Well, at least new macs are cheap! .....just kidding here!
 
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Dim display, awful camera and higher price..... Apple been on a roll in 2018
 
My wife still has her 2015 MacBook Air; there are a lot of things I am unequivocally happy about after moving to the Surface line, and one of the big ones is the absolutely absurd jump in webcam quality. After being with the Mac for the last several years, the Surface webcam is something you really appreciate every time you use it - anytime you’re calling up friends or family or participating in a business meeting. It’s a night and day difference.
 
Unless they make a MacBook display as thick as an iPhone/iPad to accommodate a higher-end camera assembly (possibly with Face ID*), this is about as good as you're going to get for the occasional FaceTime call.

*Face ID still does not support multiple users/faces, which is obviously a non-starter since Macs are much less frequently 1:1 devices like iOS devices are.
 
CPx said:
As mentioned before, it's the super thin clamshell lid that's constraining the camera. You need physical space for a quality camera and lens. If you need a better video conferencing camera, unfortunately you'll need an external webcam.

All in all, the Macbook situation is better than putting the camera below the display and shooting up the user's nose.
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Make it stick out and recess the keyboard side with an indentation for the lens to slot into. Not hard.
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lewdvig said:
That computer offers such unbelievably poor value. The least Apple could do is make the social features, including their proprietary FaceTime feature that most people love, best of breed.

It costs almost nothing for apple to fix this. They deserve all the scorn.

Expect the scorn to intensify to 1997 levels soon. I'm with Gruber in that I think peak price power for Apple is behind them on their current offerings. If they want to keep 35-40% margins they will need to invent a new category.

I love my Apple stuff but I won't pay full price for most of what Apple offers. Used market suits me fine. I paid way less for a 2017 MBP 2x USB C with 16GB/512GB/AC+ than what a new Air costs.
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A new category? They can't even invent a wireless charging pad!
 
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Is it just me, or do the pictures look fine? But yes, it's worse than the 2015 one. Also, I haven't ever had a video call on any platform work properly above 480p anyway, so I don't care.

I'd first complain about how FaceTime seems to require an impossibly flawless connection, whereas Skype and such work fine with a few dropped packets.
 
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gavroche said:
That is ONE point. And another point (his point) is that ANY camera can take crappy pictures in extremely bad lighting.
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Extremely bad lighting? In an office where florescent lighting is normal? We’re not at a photo shoot here. We’re making a FaceTime call with a computer in an office with normal lighting conditions. It’s just supposed to work remember?
 
To my eyes, the 2015 Air looks substantially better than any of the newer machines (2017/2018), just in the way it processes the lighting.

I have been disappointed with the camera on my 2017 13" nTB MBP. But I don't use it very much so it's not a big deal for me.

Still, I hope there's a good technical reason why Apple chooses to use subpar cameras in their otherwise premium device.
 
MacRumors said:



Since the launch of the 2018 MacBook Air, we here at MacRumors have heard multiple complaints from MacRumors readers about the quality of the FaceTime HD camera housed in the device.

There have been multiple threads on the MacRumors forums and the Apple Support Communities complaining about the graininess of the camera so we decided to investigate to see if it's worse than recent MacBook Pro models or the older MacBook Air.


Many of the complaints that we saw suggested the camera was poor quality without offering direct comparisons, or with comparisons to FaceTime cameras like those in the iPhone, which are wildly better than the 720p "FaceTime HD" camera Apple uses in the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro lines.

In a direct comparison, photos taken from Photo Booth on a 2018 MacBook Air and a modern 15-inch Touch Bar MacBook Pro are almost identical, and both are pretty terrible. The MacBook Air photos are a bit darker, which can be interpreted as "worse," but all in all, both cameras are bad.

2018macbookairvs2018macbookpro-800x450.jpg

When comparing the new MacBook Air and the older 2015 MacBook Air, however, we found a more noticeable difference in quality. The FaceTime HD camera in the 2015 MacBook Air is a bit clearer and brighter, with the 2018 MacBook Air's camera letting in less light and producing an overall grainier, less clear result.

2018macbookairvs2015macbookairbright-800x450.jpg

Even though we can clearly see a difference between the 2015 and the 2018 MacBook Air FaceTime HD cameras, it's not a huge gap. Both cameras are subpar, and that the FaceTime HD camera on the MacBook Air appears to have gotten worse over time rather than better is certainly disappointing.

2018macbookairvs2015macbookair-800x450.jpg

On a modern machine with a Retina display, a 720p FaceTime HD camera just doesn't hold up, especially in comparison to devices like the iPhone XS, iPhone XR, and iPad Pro, which have much higher resolution cameras. FaceTime is limited to 720p on all devices, but the FaceTime HD camera does serve other purposes as well.

2018 MacBook Air owners are disappointed, and honestly, MacBook Pro owners should be too. 720p looks awful and it is outdated technology. Apple implemented a better 1080p FaceTime HD camera in the iMac Pro, and the quality is much better.

2018macbookairvsimacpro-800x450.jpg

Hopefully future Mac notebook updates will feature higher-quality webcams as video quality has become an increasingly important feature that consumers look for when making a purchase.

Many of the complaint threads that suggested the MacBook Air camera is worse than other machines did not include comparison images, so we're still working with just a few data points here. If you have a MacBook Air and another machine, please feel free to post comparison images in the thread below so we can further investigate this issue.

Article Link: Yes, the 2018 MacBook Air's FaceTime HD Camera is Awful
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12C6F6B4-3FD1-4780-A7F4-E85CFE09A3DE.jpeg
Yes! The new MacBook Air (2018) is noticeably worse than the 2013 model. And this is the second unit after we returned the first.
 
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Of course they use cheaper components nowadays. How else would they compensate for their huge losses?
 
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gavroche said:
You should ignore me... or rather than ignore me, you should find an enthusiast site that actually is something you like. You clearly don't like Apple.
[doublepost=1546559864][/doublepost]

Too many people on this site that are just here to bash Apple. Incapable of actual reasoned conversation.
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i understand, is true there are some people like that but i am reasonable
:D
but there are also some others that just try to defend apple even when apple is wrong

i am neutral if they do something good
i’m the first one to clap and congratulate them but if they do something wrong
i can’t say that is perfectly fine

in this case how is possible that an older camera looks better than a newer camera
when technology should move foward not backwards

apple simply downgraded the quality of the components to make more money

regards
:)
 
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It's why i never use the camera on my MBA.but after seeing this, i never knew it was *that* bad

hagar said:
Of course they use cheaper components nowadays. How else would they compensate for their huge losses?
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Good components elsewhere, but bad components for Facetime camera on Mac ? Ya that makes sense, when most would use their phone for taking selfies anyway.. Put the better camera in the phone where you need it the most on holiday. The rear camera on the phone was always superior.

Occasional stuff on Mac, but not enough to warrant a better/substituted camera.
 
MyRandomUsername said:
[doublepost=1546586788][/doublepost]View attachment 813990 Yes! The new MacBook Air (2018) is noticeably worse than the 2013 model. And this is the second unit after we returned the first.
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yes this the right way to do it
and it shows that the old model looks better, thumbs up your post
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Tech198 said:
It's why i never use the camera on my MBA.but after seeing this, i never knew it was *that* bad



Good components elsewhere, but bad components for Facetime camera on Mac ? Ya that makes sense, when most would use their phone for taking selfies anyway.. Put the better camera in the phone where you need it the most on holiday. The rear camera on the phone was always superior.

Occasional stuff on Mac, but not enough to warrant a better/substituted camera.
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that is a very bad excuse, if i have a camera in my mac i want a good camera, just because the iphone has a good camera it doesn’t mean that you have to put or give me a bad camera for my mac, if i showed my ipad or my iphone when buying a new mac, do i get a discount? no right, i’m paying for the product that i’m buying, all the other products doesn’t have nothing to do with this, so just make good iphones and gives us crappy macs because we don’t use it that much, ok tim, maybe you don’t use or like macs that much, but i do

nothing stop apple from puting a good camera on their macs

unless they want to use cheaper parts to make more money

this just showed that apple standards has gone down the drain

remeber steve words
“we just can’t ship yunk”
 
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