Apple Patent: ISD “Cam-Display”
After talking about the rumor a while back, I today found a story on TUAW about a technology I am very excited about. Best of all; Apple are filing for the patent.
It occurred to me that while the iSight in the MacBook Pro was very “cool” and inevitable; it was quite frankly…. ugly. It needed some work because while it was incredibly small, it didn’t do much for the look of the product overall. Having that small black dot there (almost as bad as the IR sensor) threw the display off center of the frame which was very unbalanced and not at all aesthetic.
It looks like the technology to solve this issue, and many more, may well be coming to a Mac near you soon. Apple have filed for a patent that would enable them to effectively double the amount of pixels on a display, however; every other pixel would in fact be a miniature camera. That would give the screen both input and output capabilities. In effect, the screen would see you as you see it. Kids are smarter than us after all.
This technology would mean that we no longer need web-cams, we no longer need “built-in iSights” and we no longer have to have off center displays. This would also mean that you are actually looking into the eyes of a person you are video conferencing with as opposed to at the screen and you each seeing the others forehead and eyelids. Of course, it doesn’t end there. It would almost certainly bring a clarity and resolution unmatched by traditional web-cams and be much lighter also.
What about the downsides? Well, I am sure many of you are thinking about being “filmed” while going about your business and the like, but it just doesn’t work that way. I am sure there would be people writing malware for these changes, but I doubt anything would get very widespread before being crushed. It would, I should imagine, higher the cost of the displays and thus the Mac overall, but as it becomes more widespread, it will certainly become less costly as is always the case. I am confident that Apple would make best use of this and bring potential that we haven’t even thought of yet.
I for one am very excited and can’t wait to see the benefits brought to life in a year or two.
