Today, Apple announced the details of the forthcoming update to the iPhone OS. One thing that Steve did not dive into but was referenced on the screen hyping the 1,500 new APIs opened to developers was this gem:
What does this mean? Well, first let me say that I am by no means a developer, so while I do have an understanding of APIs and technical mumbo jumbo, I don’t claim to be an expert.
That said, the first thing that came to mind when I saw this was “A ha! Now that the iPhone OS has opened up full access to the still and video camera data, you should be able to pair your iPhone to your iPad.” What do I mean by that? Well, imagine using your iPad in a dock and your iPhone (or iPod touch that will be undoubtably released with a camera in the near future) as a wireless camera. This would be much easier than trying to video conference on the iPad if it had a native camera, and now that you will be able to multitask, sharing files and utilizing the touch screen of the iPad with a wireless camera (iPhone/iPod) setup is a much better user experience.
Apple has released the iPhone 4.0 SDK today so if any developers have had a chance to dive into to it, I’d love to know if this is plausible.
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You can do this now. There are two apps that allow it. I think one is just called “Camera” and the other consists of two apps, “Camera-A” and “Camera-B”. Neither work on the original iPhone.
Yes, but it only works for still images. Not for live video streaming as far as I’m aware. What I’m talking about is more along the lines for video chat over Skype or AIM.
Video would definitely be a welcome addition. Especially being able to shoot via iPhone and edit on the iPad. Of course they will probably limit it to the 3gs.
I was pretty disappointed to find out that multitasking won’t work on my 1st gen iPhone.
Yeah, it stinks that some older devices can’t handle it. Not really Apple’s fault but people will complain nonetheless.