[lssndrdn]

They complain about lack of video, but I have to imagine that holding up this object to take pictures or record video would be quite awkward. It is a large object. It would look kind of funny - in the way that large cellphones from 1998 look kind of funny today.

[DannoHung]

I think they mean a front facing camera.

[MartinCron]

I wonder if it's possible to make decent bluetooth cameras? That feels more useful to me. A tiny camera you point and shoot that sends pictures/video to the giant iPad screen.

[krakensden]

The latest bluetooth standard (from april of last year) supports transfer speeds of 24Mbit/s according to wikipedia, so yes. Unfortunately for manufacturers, there's a bit of a chicken and egg problem there.

[jodrellblank]

It's possible to make a bluetooth camera: http://www.bt-1.com/

I think it will depend on whether the Bluetooth stack is "keyboard only" in the same way the iPhone is "headset only", or whether it's "whatever you want but the App will have to be the driver" so it would need to be a Skype+Camera pairing. Actually, that sounds somewhat unlikely doesn't it? :(

(How would you Skype without it running in the background? You'd have to phone someone to arrange Skyping).

[Luc]

The camera could be built into a see-through part of the edge, kept horizontal by a small motor driven by the accelerometer.

This way you could just 'shoot from the hip', looking down on your tilted tablet like you would look at the screen of one of those old Hasselblad cameras.

The screen is large enough to hold at some distance from your eyes, after all!

[gaius]

They still make 'em, with digital backs. For a lot of types of photography waist-level finders (WLFs) make a lot of sense. For example, you usually want to shoot people from their eye level or slightly below, with an eye-level finder you might find yourself kneeling a lot...

[easp]

I use my iPhone camera as a note taking device, and on an iPad, video conferencing could be nice.

That said, people seem to be forgetting all about the camera connection kit. Right now it is for downloading off your camera or memcard (something I wish the iPhone had long ago) but it could support more use cases in the future.

[ZeroGravitas]

Tethering an iPhone to this thing to act as a camera would probably be one of the few areas where they don't overlap uncomfortably in functionality, but doesn't feel very Apple-y.