Is Apple Working on a Standalone Digital Camera?

Apple may be working on a standalone digital camera, according to a new report from iLounge.

MacRumors notes that in iLounge's "New iPad Buyers' Guide", the site included a two-page spread arguing that Apple could be working on a camera. The information was from a source that wasn't considered reliable enough to make a concrete statement on the news at the time.

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.


Today Jeremy Horwitz, Editor-in-Chief of iLounge.com, reiterated the claim via Twitter.

So, as briefly noted on Backstage, Apple appears to be working on a standalone camera - the third of three industries Jobs wanted to change.

In the mid-1990s, Apple partnered to with Kodak to produce the QuickTake line of digital cameras but when Steve Jobs returned to the company he discontinued the product.

In his final months, Steve Jobs met with Lytro CEO Ren Ng to discuss the company's camera technology, according to the Inside Apple book by Adam Lashinsky.


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.

Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs says his desires for the future involved reinventing three industries: television, textbooks, and photography.

Is it possible that Apple is really pursuing a digital camera?

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