Could The iPad Ship With A Built-In iSight Camera?
Even though an iSight camera (or its accompanying UI) wasn't shown off last Wednesday's iPad media event, speculation has now fallen to if the iPad will ship with one. These rumors started when Steve showed the device to the media. For a split second (around the 9:24 mark on the video podcast), you'll see the studio lights catch what appears to be a concealed hole in the top center of the iPad's new bezel. Sure, we've been here before. This could be a number of things, an ambient light or proximity sensor for one.
Granted, this "evidence" is pretty sketchy, and probably likely to be debunked, but it gets better. Mission Repair today started to receive replacement Apple iPad parts of which it posted some shots of on their blog. Among the parts was the iPad's outer frame .. and guess what? It has a molded slot which fits the iSight camera part, perfectly. The photo shows the iPad's outer frame (top), an Apple Macbook iSight unit (middle), and the Macbooks inner frame (bottom).
Wired reports the iPad simulator seeded as part of the iPhone OS 3.2 SDK still features a "Take a Photo" OS action, when adding a contact's photo to Contacts.app, for example. There's even speculation that the reason Apple didn't show the camera at the event was due to its then unfinished supporting UI. This image posted by Shaun supports the rumor, suggesting that Apple didn't just leave in the same UI from iPhone OS, but that it has been modified to look and feel dedicated to the iPad, although as you can tell, it's far from final.
Maybe we'll see another event at the end of March, just before they launch the Wi-Fi iPad model. "One More Thing?" .. Or could this be a design choice for a future iPad model? I'm sure we'll find out soon!