Apple iPhone camera on 60 minutes

[foot]

Apple was the subject of a wide ranging but not very hard hitting 60 Minutes segment on Sunday night. Charlie Rose steered the conversation through topics that Apple and its CEO Tim Cook have addressed repeatedly over the last few years. (Yeah, those Steve Jobs questions just keep coming.) But the episode did reveal one semi-interesting new detail: Apple now says there are 800 people solely dedicated to working on the iPhone's camera.

http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/20/10631330/iphone-camera-team-800-people

 

[Jude 101]

Apple was the subject of a wide ranging but not very hard hitting 60 Minutes segment on Sunday night. Charlie Rose steered the conversation through topics that Apple and its CEO Tim Cook have addressed repeatedly over the last few years. (Yeah, those Steve Jobs questions just keep coming.) But the episode did reveal one semi-interesting new detail: Apple now says there are 800 people solely dedicated to working on the iPhone's camera.

http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/20/10631330/iphone-camera-team-800-people

800 Sony people...

 

[noflashplease]

Apple was the subject of a wide ranging but not very hard hitting 60 Minutes segment on Sunday night. Charlie Rose steered the conversation through topics that Apple and its CEO Tim Cook have addressed repeatedly over the last few years. (Yeah, those Steve Jobs questions just keep coming.) But the episode did reveal one semi-interesting new detail: Apple now says there are 800 people solely dedicated to working on the iPhone's camera.

http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/20/10631330/iphone-camera-team-800-people

Considering that they're buying in 3rd party sensors and hardware, you really have to wonder if Apple's extreme profitability has lead to extreme overstaffing? After all, we're talking about tiny and cheap 1/3" sensor?

For the record, iPhone 6S images still look like they're been taken by a smartphone with a 1/3" sensor. Not wonderful at all. Other than the incomparable 3rd party app ecosystem, which has nothing to do with these 800 employees at Apple, there isn't anything all that remarkable about the camera on the iPhone.

We don't know what these blokes are doing but it doesn't make much of a difference to the end user. My guess is that Apple could get by with 80 as opposed to 800.

 

[Jude 101]

Apple was the subject of a wide ranging but not very hard hitting 60 Minutes segment on Sunday night. Charlie Rose steered the conversation through topics that Apple and its CEO Tim Cook have addressed repeatedly over the last few years. (Yeah, those Steve Jobs questions just keep coming.) But the episode did reveal one semi-interesting new detail: Apple now says there are 800 people solely dedicated to working on the iPhone's camera.

http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/20/10631330/iphone-camera-team-800-people

Considering that they're buying in 3rd party sensors and hardware, you really have to wonder if Apple's extreme profitability has lead to extreme overstaffing? After all, we're talking about tiny and cheap 1/3" sensor?

For the record, iPhone 6S images still look like they're been taken by a smartphone with a 1/3" sensor. Not wonderful at all. Other than the incomparable 3rd party app ecosystem, which has nothing to do with these 800 employees at Apple, there isn't anything all that remarkable about the camera on the iPhone.

We don't know what these blokes are doing but it doesn't make much of a difference to the end user. My guess is that Apple could get by with 80 as opposed to 800.

Apple's business model is based upon selling over-priced products thru hype.

 

[chipmaster]

Apple was the subject of a wide ranging but not very hard hitting 60 Minutes segment on Sunday night. Charlie Rose steered the conversation through topics that Apple and its CEO Tim Cook have addressed repeatedly over the last few years. (Yeah, those Steve Jobs questions just keep coming.) But the episode did reveal one semi-interesting new detail: Apple now says there are 800 people solely dedicated to working on the iPhone's camera.

http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/20/10631330/iphone-camera-team-800-people

800 Sony people...

You are confused! Sony has many more working on development and manufacturing of the sensors. Sensors from 1” to FX, they have huge volumes of scale to leverage new technology in billion dollar fab to due this. Something that others like Canon can’t afford to do and fall further behind.

It was interesting the very quick discussion about the complexity and obsessive as Apple only does to manufacture the best in the smallest form factor. Then the discussion about the studio they setup to insure they capture all the different lighting conditions and the post capture computation/calculation they are doing to get the best IQ. Think about that, Apple designs the custom graphics / CPU on the latest generation silicon and has a volume of more than 200 million units a year. They make how much profit and fold it back with obsession to create the best end pictures. How much R&D and silicon technology can the other manufactures afford compared to Apple?

Like the line about how the most used feature of the iPhone was to take take pictures. Any wonder that the P&S is dead and that the high end is relegated to a nich of sports/wedding/PJ. Dang even the PJ element is shortly to be taken over by a bunch of iPhones likely with zoom contraptions soon

Love always the Apple haters... I'm sure they would be happy with the CrackBerry key boards or what Android would have been if it wasn't for Apple. Of course we could have waited for Xerox to have taken what was developed out of PARC to the world.

"Today's Pictures Are Tomorrow's Memories"

 

[noirdesir]

Apple was the subject of a wide ranging but not very hard hitting 60 Minutes segment on Sunday night. Charlie Rose steered the conversation through topics that Apple and its CEO Tim Cook have addressed repeatedly over the last few years. (Yeah, those Steve Jobs questions just keep coming.) But the episode did reveal one semi-interesting new detail: Apple now says there are 800 people solely dedicated to working on the iPhone's camera.

http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/20/10631330/iphone-camera-team-800-people

Considering that they're buying in 3rd party sensors and hardware, you really have to wonder if Apple's extreme profitability has lead to extreme overstaffing? After all, we're talking about tiny and cheap 1/3" sensor?

For the record, iPhone 6S images still look like they're been taken by a smartphone with a 1/3" sensor. Not wonderful at all. Other than the incomparable 3rd party app ecosystem, which has nothing to do with these 800 employees at Apple, there isn't anything all that remarkable about the camera on the iPhone.

Except that just about every review concludes that the iPhone produces the most consistently good and pleasing image quality. It is not the iPhone has a much better sensor or lens (it hasn't, 1/2.3" sensors will generally outperform the the iPhone camera sensor). No it is the image processing where Apple is better at getting a good result in a very large range of scenes and subjects. It's like a very well-designed and well-tuned suspension and automatic gearbox in a car. Other phones might have a less noisy sensor but the iPhone has better NR.

And 'good', 'pleasing', and 'better' refer to how the broad majority of the population evaluates images.

We don't know what these blokes are doing but it doesn't make much of a difference to the end user. My guess is that Apple could get by with 80 as opposed to 800.

Apple's business model is based upon selling over-priced products thru hype.

Apple's business is creating products that people willingly spend more money on than on most competing products. Until the last year or two, the marketing budget of Samsung for smartphones was multiples of what Apple was spending. Go to the websites, look at the commercials, most companies display their products in a very favourable way. Everybody is hyping their own products.

The iPhone was not the success it became because it had an Apple logo on it or because Steve Jobs once or twice a year appeared in public and lauded it. It became successful because its users loved it and that then spread by word of mouth (which of course includes the media). Its success was then propelled further by network effects (platform lock-in). Something every platform that makes it to number one or two profits usually profits from (for some types of product, eg, general computer operating systems, network effects can even end up boosting largely only the number one, as it was the case for Windows from the mid-nineties for about a decade).

 

[Savas Kyprianides]

iPhone camera still struggles with less than favorable light. A Cook appearance on 60 minutes is an engineered appearance.

 

[kreygscott]

Even though I'm an Apple user I must admit that Apple has failed the customers in the quality of their latest products and are only surviving in the market simply because of the "Name". There will come a day however when consumers will jump ship and switch to a better alternative.

Forcing customers to purchase new products via newer versions of IOS is not marketing but extortion.
--
My Blog

http://prakticalphotography.blogspot.com

My Website

https://scottcraigphotography.smugmug.com/

 

[Jude 101]

Even though I'm an Apple user I must admit that Apple has failed the customers in the quality of their latest products and are only surviving in the market simply because of the "Name". There will come a day however when consumers will jump ship and switch to a better alternative.

Forcing customers to purchase new products via newer versions of IOS is not marketing but extortion.
--
My Blog
http://prakticalphotography.blogspot.com

My Website
https://scottcraigphotography.smugmug.com/

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.