Geoffrey Wiseman

Apple's "Your Verse" Ad ad and the iPad as a Camera

Apple's Your Verse ad is all over the internet today; it's a new ad, and a good one, but what struck me immediately about the ad is how much Apple is emphasizing the iPad as a camera. I was a little surprised to see very little commentary on it at first, but I see this morning that John Gruber noted it.

The iPad 1 didn't contain a camera; some suggested that the internals had space for one, as if the removal was late in the process, although iFixit disagreed.

The iPad 2 added a rear-facing camera which wasn't very good, while the iPad 3 ("third generation") and subsequent iPads (iPad 3, iPad Air, iPad Mini, retina mini) have had front and rear-facing cameras, all of which have been reasonably solid.

Even the rumors of iPads with cameras had some imagining with amusement what it might look like to hold up a page-sized tablet to take a picture.

Once iPads with cameras were released, it didn't take long for people to start using it that way or for others to deride the practice as gauche, or at least slightly awkward (cf iPadtography).

Although Apple continues to put camera in iPads, they have not put much effort into promoting the idea of the iPad as a camera. This ad, however, seems like a deliberate attempt to shift the overton window, to suggest that iPad photography and videography is valid, and that using your iPad that way is something that real artists do, not just a thing that gauche tourists do.

In any case, it's interesting to see, and I'm curious to see if that's something Apple continues to promote and whether or not it is approaching normalcy.