Thursday, December 12, 2024
OpinionsPatents

Future Mac laptops may have FaceTime cameras that can be moved and replaced

FIG. 3C shows a rear perspective view of a Mac laptop with a movable camera.

Future Mac laptops may replace the current FaceTime camera with a camera that can be moved and, perhaps, replaced. These are features mentioned in a newly granted patent (number US 12052484 B2) for “Camera Integration for Portable Electronic Devices.”

About the patent

The patent involves “optical components” (that is, cameras) that can be moved to different sides of a Mac screen. Or the camera could be re-located to the back of the screen. And if the camera is detachable, it would make sense (at least to me) that the camera could be replaced by a better one when/if it came along. 

Summary of the patent

Here’s Apple’s abstract of the patent: “A portable electronic device can have a housing including a wall, the wall at least partially defining an external surface, and the housing defining an aperture disposed opposite the wall. A display assembly can be positioned at the aperture and a retention component can be positioned at least partially in an internal volume defined by the housing.

“The portable electronic device can also have an optical component that includes an optical component housing defining a camera aperture and a camera module positioned at the camera aperture. The optical component can be configured to be removably retained against the wall by the retention component and to be removably retained against the display assembly by the retention component.”

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Dennis Sellers
the authorDennis Sellers
Dennis Sellers is the editor/publisher of Apple World Today. He’s been an “Apple journalist” since 1995 (starting with the first big Apple news site, MacCentral). He loves to read, run, play sports, and watch movies.