Nobody wants to take photographs on their iPad. In fact, the only reason to have a camera on the device—a front-facing camera, specifically—is for video chat. Apple knows this, and they know video chat on an iPad would be an awesome, the-future-has-arrived feature.
So why isn’t it included? The simple answer is because Apple doesn’t want its customers using features that suck.
Video chat means using the iPad’s network connection to simultaneously upload and download large amounts of data at a constant rate for the duration of the conversation. The iPad has two ways of doing this, 3G and wifi, and both fail to function to Apple’s standards of user experience when it comes to video chat.
Sending live video over AT&T’s notoriously bad 3G network sounds painful. And even if Apple switched to a more reliable carrier, 3G lacks the bandwidth to transmit and receive beautiful, high resolution, 1024-by-768 video. Apple would rather not have you chatting than have to suffer through blocky visuals like it’s 1998 all over again.
Wifi can handle necessary the bandwidth, true, but it eats battery life like nothing else. If you’re going to chat with grandma and grandpa from the comfort of your couch, you want to do it leisurely. You don’t want to have it cut out after half an hour.
It was because 3G is too slow for great, Apple-quality video and wifi is a battery hog that Steve Jobs nixed the camera and its primary app. This is a bummer for all of us hoping to use our iPads as magical communication devices straight out of Hollywood fantasies, but it’d also be a bummer to have that magic ruined by the limits of existing tech. Apple, unlike so many other companies, would rather not do a feature than do it and have it suck.
Hmmmm …… so the fact that many users would use video chat over wi-fi is lost on you apparently.
Well, except for the part where I wrote:
“Wifi can handle necessary the bandwidth, true, but it eats battery life like nothing else. If you’re going to chat with grandma and grandpa from the comfort of your couch, you want to do it leisurely. You don’t want to have it cut out after half an hour.”
Reviews in the last couple of days indicate that the battery life of the iPad is phenomenal, so my critique may turn out wrong, but I decidedly did not neglect the notion that people would use wifi.
Hmmmm …… so the fact that many users would use video chat over wi-fi is lost on you apparently.
Hmmmm …… so the fact that many users would use video chat over wi-fi is lost on you apparently.
Well, except for the part where I wrote:”Wifi can handle necessary the bandwidth, true, but it eats battery life like nothing else. If you’re going to chat with grandma and grandpa from the comfort of your couch, you want to do it leisurely. You don’t want to have it cut out after half an hour.”Reviews in the last couple of days indicate that the battery life of the iPad is phenomenal, so my critique may turn out wrong, but I decidedly did not neglect the notion that people would use wifi.
Well, except for the part where I wrote:
“Wifi can handle necessary the bandwidth, true, but it eats battery life like nothing else. If you’re going to chat with grandma and grandpa from the comfort of your couch, you want to do it leisurely. You don’t want to have it cut out after half an hour.”
Reviews in the last couple of days indicate that the battery life of the iPad is phenomenal, so my critique may turn out wrong, but I decidedly did not neglect the notion that people would use wifi.