Matthew Skyrm’s .Plan in Japan

I must admit, I truly love to read Apple rumors. Now I’m going to start my own rumor.

Apple to release new Cinema Displays with built-in iSight cameras that work on Mac and Windows out of the box!

Let me explain…

The other day I was checking out Apple’s Leopard site and came across something interesting on the Photo Booth page….

Let’s look closely at the text:

USB Camera eh? Apple doesn’t sell those! Well, let’s remember in the Mac OS X 10.4.9 release notes some months back there was mention of “…iChat support for USB Video Class webcams.” While Yahoo! Messenger and Skype have had support for non-Apple USB webcams on the Mac for ages, iChat has always been basically an iSight-only affair (let’s not count the other Firewire cameras…)

So the iSight standalone firewire camera has not been sold since last year. Obviously Mac Mini and Mac Pro owners need something… So which USB camera is Apple talking about?

Let’s dig a little deeper…

Apple is now supporting “USB Video Class” or UVC cameras in iChat and Photo Booth. This is a big deal because in order to receive the full Windows Vista logo on the box, USB webcams have to support UVC and that basically means all new webcams will be UVC. That means Windows XP sp2, Vista, Linux, and now Mac OS X support right out of the box with no driver necessary for all new webcams!

So, will Apple start selling cameras from Creative Labs and Logitech at their stores? I doubt it. They just don’t aesthetically fit.

I believe Apple has gone through this trouble so that when the Cinema Displays with iSight come out, the built-in iSight will be UVC and thus will work right-out-of-the-box-plug-and-play-no-drivers-necessary with Mac OS X, Windows Vista, Windows XP sp2, and Linux!

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 28th, 2007 at 12:49 am and is filed under Hardware, Apple. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.