By David Sims

TMCnet Contributing Editor

That zany ol' Steve Jobs (News - Alert), going and getting us all concerned like that.

 

After this reporter lamented that the iPad doesn't have a camera, thinking what a killer videoconferencing tool it'd be if it did, along comes industry observer Charlie Sorrel to scrutinize the iPad closely and find "what may be a Webcam, tucked away in the black screen bezel just like it is on the MacBook Pro."

Click on the link to see the picture. Sorrel makes a compelling case:



"A screen-grab from the official video of the event shows nothing but a small dot above the screen, opposite the home button. Taken alone, this isn’t much, but compare this with the picture of the iPad leaked just hours before the event…. you could clearly see the camera in the bezel. I even pointed out the cutout in the frame that let us see the Webcam."



Sorrel reports that, "Mac and iPod repair company Mission: Repair has, somewhat strangely, already received replacement parts for fixing iPads. On the company’s blog, employee Ryan Arter has posted pictures which show a spot for a camera in the main iPad frame… Apple (News - Alert) is already sending out parts."



Industry observer Matthew Shaer quotes from the Mission:Repair blog: "Guess what, it fits right in there. The camera slips in the frame, the lens fits in the hole, the LED that indicates that the camera is on, fits, and the ambient light sensor hole is also correct. It appears that the plans to have camera in the iPad is a reality. I’m looking forward to the iPad. . .Rev 2."



Trying to figure out why Jobs says what he says and announces what he announces is a more arcane discipline than Cold War Kremlinology, or trying to figure out what the pompadoured, platform-shoed little nutcase in Pyongyang means.



"Remember the third-gen iPod Touch, which was expected to have a camera and then shipped without it, but with a camera-shaped hole inside," Sorrel says. Bottom line, nobody knows what Steve Jobs is thinking.



Others were less than impressed with the apparent lack of a camera on the iPad. Bruce Nussbaum wrote in BusinessWeek's On Design column that "My Parsons (News - Alert) students gave a tepid shrug of the shoulders vote to the new Apple iPad this morning. They were not impressed and a quite a few were annoyed. Many asked: No camera? How can we make our own videos and post our pictures?"

David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of David’s articles, please visit his columnist page. He also blogs for TMCnet here.

Edited by

Stefania Viscusi