Wish List: A real Continuity Camera
So Apple is apparently taking the smart home seriously. Apparently the company is working on a new home controller that looks like a small iPad, and is exploring security cameras and smart doorbells. All of that makes some sort of sense, since most of it can be assembled out of software and hardware features Apple has already integrated with some other product.
I’d like to suggest another one. I’ve actually mentioned it before on a few podcasts, but I guess it’s never appeared here, so let’s do it. I was prompted to write about this by Six Colors reader Jono, who wrote:
I’m really wanting a “Continuity Camera” device for Apple TV, because Zoom is going away from the discontinued Facebook Portal TV device and I don’t want to have to have my parents attach their phone to a mount every time we want to have a call.
Yes, Jono! I love Continuity Camera, the feature that lets you use an iPhone as a remote camera for other Apple devices, including the Apple TV. Since 2020, my wife’s parents and siblings have gotten together every other week via Zoom for a family video chat. For the last few months we’ve been do it on Apple TV, using the Zoom app for tvOS connected to my iPhone via Continuity Camera. (It’s better than it used to be.)
In fact, the experience is pretty awesome. Center Stage makes sure the right people are in frame, the quality of the iPhone camera beats every other webcam out there, and watching everyone on our big-screen TV makes it feel like something out of a sci-fi movie about how people will communicate in the far-off future year of 2025.
To get it to work, I have to clip my iPhone into a iPhone-compatible tripod that I can set on my coffee table (I previously used a magnetic mount on top of the TV), but once it’s set up, it works okay. Still, it’s clunky. Which leads to the hardware request: How about just making a continuity camera, Apple? It would be nice to permanently stick one on the top of my TV so that I could use it whenever I wanted to do a FaceTime or Zoom from my living room.
I’d suggest that Apple TV could be made to support USB webcams, but whoops—Apple took away the USB-C port! So it’ll have to be a wireless connection, though the camera itself will need to be plugged into power. It could even double as a standalone high-quality webcam for Mac users who are stuck with worse cameras.
Apple’s already got all the pieces to this puzzle. I could argue that the worst thing about Continuity Camera is that it requires (and monopolizes) your iPhone. I’m not going to buy a second iPhone to use as a camera, but I’d buy and install a Continuity Camera in a heartbeat.
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