Sure there’s a load of great collaboration and sharing tweaks being made to iPad, Mac and iPhone, but the one great idea Apple had today took aim at their own device webcams – the idea is to use your own iPhone as a webcam!
Using small MagSafe mounts from companies like Belkin, Apple Mac computers will detect your iPhone and use it’s camera as your Webcam.
Because it’s using the rear camera array on iPhone, you get great quality, but also access to high quality portrait mode, as well as the iPhone style lighting effects such as Studio lights if you don’t already have great lighting.
It’s all part of the continuity Apple offers between its devices, but they’ve gone one step further.
Using the standard wide lens for your Facetime or Zoom camera, but then allowing you to share “desk” view which shows a camera angle top down on your physical desktop. This might be when demonstrating something physical, or drawing perhaps.
But it’s not a top-down camera, instead Apple takes the Ultra Wide Angle lens on your iPhone and uses advanced processing to straighten and stretch the view as if to show a straight top-down view.
It’s quite remarkable.
It will require iOS 16 and MacOS Ventura, so expect some fancy video conferences and calls in the future.
