Thanks for the correction - there’s an iOS autocomplete joke in there somewhere.
I think what we see is basically showing the difference between the phone and laptop markets: people buy new phones to get better cameras because that’s one of the most common activities for a phone but the same is not true for laptops (or at least wasn’t previously), and there’s a much lower threshold where a mediocre camera prevents a sale. That lack of pressure means there isn’t much of a check on either cost cutting or pursuit of thinner/lighter designs.
Like it or not, Apple's often the benchmark the rest of the industry measure themselves against. So if / when Apple improves the MBP cam, the rest will follow. Until then, there's no point in cutting into the razor-thin margin.
I think it’d be interesting to compare with equivalent price points. Does a $2500 PC have a better camera than a MacBook Pro or is it really more like everyone is skimping and Mac owners are just more vocal about expecting something closer to a mid-2010s iPhone?
The only justification I can think of for having such a cheap webcam is that it takes less battery power to process low-res streaming video at lower frame rates.
How thick is the MacBook Pro lid compared to that phone — especially when you factor in curvature & the screen hardware? I think the discrepancy is mostly explained by cameras being a feature which phone buyers pay a LOT of attention to, whereas it was an afterthought for most laptop users prior to 2020 while thinness was a marketing goal, and don't forget that laptop buyers pay the full price up front while a LOT of people pay for their “free” phones monthly.
I'm not in any way excusing the crappy hardware — my iPhone 6S should not be a better webcam than anything built-in or on the normal market now — but I think this is a pretty expected outcome of market forces reflecting buyers' priorities.
Company outfitted us with Dell Alienware m17 R3 laptops, an expensive gaming model that has built-in head tracking. The camera is a 720p with terrible image quality, worse than any Macbook. So no, I don't think Apple is below standard here.
Fair point, but Apple isn't the only company selling laptops with ho-hum webcams.