Apple allegedly working on a standalone iSight camera [Rumor]

If you’ve read the official biography of Steve Jobs written by renowned author Walter Isaacson, you’ll probably recall that photography was one of the three areas he wanted to reinvent. Things started to get interesting early this year when rumors surfaced about Steve Jobs interest in working on a camera with photography company Lytro. An excerpt from the book “Inside Apple” written by Adam Lashinsky described how it came to be:

The company’s CEO, Ren Ng, a brilliant computer scientist with a PhD from Stanford, immediately called Jobs, who picked up the phone and quickly said, “if you’re free this afternoon maybe we would could get together.” Ng, who is thirty-two, hurried to Palo Alto, showed Jobs a demo of Lytro’s technology, discussed cameras and product design with him, and, at Jobs’s request, agreed to send him an email outlining three things he’d like Lytro to do with Apple.

Earlier this week, iLounge released a “New iPad Buyer’s Guide” that has a two-page spread citing that Apple might be working on a camera. This speculation is reportedly backed up by an unnamed source. iLounge writes:

Take special note of pages 152 and 153—“Making the case for a standalone iSight Camera.” I’ll share more on this topic shortly, but for now, I’ll say that this two-page spread very nearly had a different title. We were tipped that this project is actually happening at Apple right now, but we didn’t feel confident enough in our source to call it a certainty; it’s therefore billed as speculation. Still, there’s enough smoke to make us think there’s a fire.

Of course, for us, these are still speculations and are no more than rumors. Jeremy Horwitz of iLounge also sent a tweet today that seems to nail the rumor to the board.

Gene Ryan Briones
Categories: Apple
Tags: Camera