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Zoom Adds Support for iPad Pro's New Center Stage Feature
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Just like FaceID was more suitable for the M1 iMac and TouchID for the M1 iPad Pro (like on the Air).
Both are preexisting tech, perfectly possible to implement. Product design decisions at Apple are baffling. It's like they don't factor in use case scenarios at all and instead keep on keeping on with the most minimum effort direction that requires the least possible adjustments in tooling. A.k.a. lazy.
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Interesting. I couldn’t find a new API in AVFoundation that enables automatic face tracking and cropping. Does this mean Zoom gotten access to yet another undocumented API? (Which it did on some other instance, as revealed in the Epic vs Apple trial).
That said, the functionality is doable without an iPad pro. When one only needs a 720p stream yet the front facing camera is ~7MP (iPad Mini and Air), it’s perfectly doable to detect a face and crop a 720p image around it to stream out. Even the basic iPad’s front facing camera is 1080p, which still leave some margin to crop out a 720p image from.
That said, the functionality is doable without an iPad pro. When one only needs a 720p stream yet the front facing camera is ~7MP (iPad Mini and Air), it’s perfectly doable to detect a face and crop a 720p image around it to stream out. Even the basic iPad’s front facing camera is 1080p, which still leave some margin to crop out a 720p image from.
This is great but it has the same internals as a Mac now. How about making iPadOS zoom and macOS zoom feature equal. Some of the reactions aren’t supported on the iPad and no video backgrounds (damnit I want my baby yoda background….)
For what is worth, Microsoft sometimes takes its sweet time also to jump on other’s. Microsoft Teams still doesn’t support MacOS native notifications, even after blogs and a MR article talked about said updates! I just finally got the option to share system sound when sharing the screen (something that has been elsewhere for years), even when it was said that the feature was added several months ago.
I don’t get this “software company” to be honest... they create amazing things, like .NET, C# and F#, etc yet can’t do a chatting application properly.
Zoom needs iPad support for:
—always viewable chat
—PIP / split screen
—breakout room management
way more than Center Stage. I’ve found people in Zoom meetings are distracted by it and I turned it off.
—always viewable chat
—PIP / split screen
—breakout room management
way more than Center Stage. I’ve found people in Zoom meetings are distracted by it and I turned it off.
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This isn't a problem anyone was asking to have solved, the issue is the off-center camera placement. Apple deceptively advertised Center Stage with the camera facing the viewer from the top edge of the iPad (this only happens when you're holding it, while most people have it in a case and so on its side), without showing the edges, making it appear like they had changed the camera placement. I'd settle for a hardware "camera on" green light next to the camera instead of their practically invisible orange software dot on the opposite (!) side of the screen from where the camera is. The harder I try to like my iPad Pro the more I see it's a Frankenstein botch-job that Apple itself doesn't really know what to do with, other than make sure it doesn't cut into their Mac sales.
Zoom does have split screen support on it, just sometimes you have to select the zoom window for it to update
Center Stage is only possible on the new iPad Pros because of the wide-angle lens on the front-facing camera. The devices before it wouldn’t be able to support it because of the lack of viewing angle.
In Europe many companies have stopped using Zoom and moved to Teams. Not sure what you are talking about here. Zoom is absolutely forbidden in many companies.