Apple has confirmed that the digital zoom and zoom function of the front camera of the new M1 iPad Pro can work with any video conferencing application, not just FaceTime. This opens the door for popular applications such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams to make distance work and e-learning more seamlessly integrated into the realities of pandemic life – a hybrid lifestyle that is likely to continue even after the outbreak disappears. .
Center Stage, as Apple marks it, keeps video conferencing participants properly framed even when moving around a room, combining machine learning with a 12-megapixel fixed sensor that features an ultra-wide 122-degree field of view. I’ve seen similar tracks on Portal TV, Echo Show 10 and even the Xbox Kinect accessory. But these are niche devices compared to the iPad, which saw increases in sales last year, while students and remote workers took out the tablets en masse.
“Center Stage works with FaceTime and other video conferencing applications,” says Apple on the iPad Pro landing page. Apple missed its chance to scale FaceTime to compete with Zoom and Teams, giving up its promise to turn it into an industry standard in favor of blocking the ecosystem.
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Apple demonstrated Center Stage with two participants, both of whom were recognized and properly framed as they walked into the kitchen, on a FaceTime call with a third. It’s a good demo; The COVID-19 pandemic has mixed work and life so hard that it is now quite common to see people preparing dinner during a Zoom meeting in different international time zones or a child asking for help from a parent during a Teams school lesson. Technology, such as Center Stage, can help infuse this sense of humanity into our otherwise stoic professional and educational activities.
Unfortunately, the position of the front camera, even on the new iPad Pro M1, makes the participants look sideways when used with a docking station for the keyboard, as is usual for businesses and schools. And iPadOS creates other frustrations for video conferencing. Hopefully the iPad Pro is just a start and we will soon see the ultra-late Center Stage webcams that will soon come on the much denigrated but better positioned MacBook webcams.