« Sting and 2000 Investment Bankers | Main | Smokey Day in Sacramento »
September 28, 2004
Apple iSight Review
I love my iSight! ISight is the video conferencing camera from Apple Computer, which when used with Apple's iChat software (which comes included with the computer) delivers extraordinary quality video conferencing for the money ($150). It's hard to convince people of this though until they actually use it. I've been trying to talk my friend Tom into buying one for months, so I could more easily visit with him and his rambunctious family. Finally I just gave up and shipped him one. My uncle is getting one soon too, as an early birthday present. Generous, you may think. Nah, having your closest friends on iChat with iSight just improves the value of your own iSight installation. The camera gets exponentially more useful the more people that you want to talk with have one. Amazon has a good deal on them right now. I think I paid $139 with free shipping. Update April 15, 2005: Amazon is now shipping the latest model of the Apple iSight with Autofocus. The price last checked was $140.
The hidden benefit is that the iSight is a great professional tool. I've had 2-4 hour working sessions on it with clients in New York City and colleagues in Palo Alto, improving the quality of meetings and cutting back on travel costs. The camera automatically adjusts focus and adjusts for lighting. It has a built in mic. Somewhere there must be some great echo cancellation mechanism. I don't know if it is in the hardware or software, but the resulting audio appears to be full duplex (both parties can talk and hear each other at once) without a nasty echo.
According to my friend Kelly's brother, you can now use iSight and iChat on a Mac to talk with people using AOL's AIM on a PC.
Links:
Making Movies with the Apple iSight
Apple Store
Make your own iSight tripod attachment.
Posted by elise on September 28, 2004 to Computers
