Uh, how will they go about doing that? 
By deciding to do it.
They have an engineering team that literally just blew the doors off just about every PC laptop and most consumer-grade desktop computers out there. And thatâs their entry-level computer now.
Do you really believe they canât figure out how to get a camera with 1/4 of the pixel data as their current phone camera into a laptop?
Last yearâs front facing camera on the iPhone can record 4K video @ 60 fps. Given that the iPhone camera can shoot good, high-res video through a pinhole-sized lens, getting 1080p at 30fps would seem to be a trivial accomplishment in comparisonâŚno? Itâs 1/4 of the pixel data at half the framerate, in a chassis that has a ton more computing power.
Itâs almost certainly a matter of priority, not possibility.
Physics is a harsh mistress 
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If youâre suggesting that the bezel needs to be thicker, maybe so.
But the whole iPhone is only about 8mm thick, and the camera isnât all of that - so weâre not talking about much thicker, most likely.
As mentioned above, without the need for things like image stabilization the lens could be flatter. Maybe they could add a tiny bit more bezel thickness or a slight camera âbumpâ. The bump could extend into the slight recess provided by the trackpad, and that could even be designed to be a tiny, tiny bit lower if necessary. Or they could reverse-curve the top of the laptop, so the camera could sit flush but extend backward slightly more than the rest of the computer. I would think it would be possible to do that in a sleek, Apple-like way.
I have to believe that they could do it pretty easily if they decided it was a priority.
And on the completely off chance they canât do that, they could use their massive expertise in image enhancement software to make the 720p webcam the best webcam in any laptop, bar none.
Counting the camera bump, the iPhone 12 Pro is 9.6mm thick. Based on the iFixit tear down the camera system uses all of that except for the thickness of the screen itself. At the camera location, the lid on my 2012 Retina MacBook Pro is 4.3mm thick. So if you want something as good as the rear camera weâre probably talking about slightly less than twice as thick. The front facing camera seems to take up almost the entire thickness of the phone sans camera bump, which is about 7.6mm, so a bit less, but still closer to 2x the current thickness.
I am not a camera expert, but I am suggesting that the thickness of the iPhone gives Apple considerably more space to work with than the lid of any of its notebooks. Iâm also (lightheartedly) suggesting that for optical applications, there is no (inexpensive) substitute for space.
This they have not done yet, and I think itâs fair criticism to point it out.
The camera in my exceedingly expensive 16" MacBook Pro is handily outclassed in non-optimal, but very typical lighting by my coworkersâ Dells that cost half as much. In my opinion, and in answer to the question asked in the subject of this post, it would be difficult to be overly critical of Appleâs notebook webcams.
I love using my MacBooks, and I wouldnât trade them for anything else on the market today, but they have terrible cameras, all the more so for the price.
Iâm obviously not a phone hardware engineer, but my understanding of cameras is that it comes down to things like glass size, focal distance, sensor size. Obviously bigger sensors and bigger glass and adjustable focal distance make camera optics better, which is why you can get better pictures (without software enhancement) from ginormous DSLR lenses with full-frame sensors than you can from a smartphone.
But I can say a few things.
The first is that the front-facing camera in the iPhone 12 shoots 4K. If scaling is even roughly proportional, thatâs a sensor thatâs 1/2 the size in each direction for a 1080p webcam. And potentially even smaller if youâre allowed to make the assumption that you donât need extra pixels for image stabilization. So a 7.6mm lens assembly could logically get significantly thinner.
The second is that a lot of the problems with putting wider images onto smaller sensors has to do with edge distortion - which seems like a prime candidate for solvability with software, providing the distortion isnât too severe.
If we pretend that without image stabilization they could shave a millimeter or so off the camera assembly, that would let them put the entire current sensor in a bezel with a couple mm of âback bumpâ. And if they did that, they could sell a top-quality 4K webcam in a laptop. I think thereâd be some massive market potential for that.
If they just chopped the sensor by 50% in each dimension, and were able to adjust the glass / focal length stuff accordingly, a 1080p camera might be possible with just a little bit of extension past the inside of the lid - which could potentially still clear, given the slight existing recess of the trackpad.
Maybe theyâve done the math, and itâs just not worth it to put in the effort - but it definitely feels possible.
Exactly. Apple prides itself on being a tool for audio / video professionals, so it feels like âgetting the webcam rightâ should be not only in their wheelhouse, expertise-wise, but it should be important to them to do so.
I meanâŚyou could imagine the hypothetical exchange:
Customer: âItâs a pandemic! Everybody needs to stay at home and do meetings on Zoom! I need a laptop with a good webcam!â
Salesperson: âOh, here - itâs a $500 Dell.â
Customer: âNo, I want the best quality built-in camera I can get since thatâs how the whole world will be experiencing me for the next half a year or more. If I spend the $1500 on a Macbook Pro itâll have a way better camera, right?â
Salesperson: âUmâŚyou want the best built-in webcam?â
Customer: âYes! Which laptop should I get?â
Salesperson: <Gestures toward the $500 Dell>
It shouldnât be that way - especially when Appleâs phone cameras are some of the best in the world.
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Iâm not an expert, butâŚ
The screen part of the laptop is super thin though compared to a phone - I wouldnât want my laptop to get thicker to improve the camera. The trade off is a long way from being worth it. As others have said, the big issue I have isnât that someone doesnât look like theyâre in a TV studio, but that their internet isnât fast enough to carry the video - increasing the resolution would surely make this problem even worse?
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I just had an odd idea. Rather than making the laptop lid thicker, Apple could take advantage of owning the whole ecosystem and integrating hardware and software:
- Put a ring of MagSafe magnets in the laptop lid, just below the top edge of the screen.
- Snap an iPhone onto those magnets (back to back, so the iPhoneâs rear facing camera is pointing at the person using the laptop)
- Sensors in both the phone and the laptop that know when theyâre connected.
- Automatically set up a wireless connection and start feeding live video from the phone to the laptop.
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Yes and no. Iâve used the Camo connection to my iPhone.Your recommendation is wonderful method to sub-contract imaging to a tool that can nicely fulfill the requirements for higher quality. It is however equivalent to doing so using coat-hangers and fishing line to jury-rig the hardware in place.
And, with this approach, you canât use your iPhone at all during the Zoom meetings (yes, sometimes you may need to check something on the iPhone even while being at a Zoom meeting).
The demands for better quality video from Apple laptops have certainly been pushed by the urgencies in the contingency situation over the last year. I have a suspicious though that, once COVID is done, we will loose the urgency of this discussion. After COVID, folks who realize that they need to continue having high quality video during on-line meetings will invest in the right hardware to do that job in addition to or in spite of their computer. We will see a flurry of new Webcams on the market at the $50 price point that provide the same quality as an iPhone or Samsung or ⌠via direct physical and software âplug-and-playâ options to any type of laptop. By analogy ⌠the equivalent of a âlavalier cameraâ that simply clips-on to your laptop and interfaces with Bluetooth or WiFi.
â
JJW
It wouldnât inherently make the problem worse, as a higher-resolution camera could certainly send video at a lower bandwidth. It would increase the potential quality significantly though, given good Internet conditions.
And either way, even if they kept the 720p camera, the quality of the video should still be addressed. Bad Internet plus bad image quality is worse than just bad Internet. 
Thereâs another opportunity. Instead of a giant, chunky phone to magnet to the laptop, Apple could make a device that just magnets to the back of your laptop, provides a 4K webcam with all of the iPhoneâs image processing power, and takes up an absolutely tiny amount of space.
I meanâŚif you removed everything except the camera sensors and image processing components from an iPhone, I would bet you could get it into a pretty small package. Sure, youâd need a SoC of some sort for some of the processing, but I feel like it would be a very small device overall.
If they were a little extra-creative they could even use the Macâs processor to do the image processing, so that wouldnât have to be in the camera itself.
âLike strapping an iPhone to your Macbookâ.
iStrapO⌠no, I cannot, must not, shall not.
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Physics!
Apple Strap? 
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Completely unproven though, unless youâre a physicist?
It feels based on the little bit I know of lenses that the camera should be able to get thinner if resolution and stabilization capabilities decrease. How much thinner, whether thatâs thin enough to get into a laptop lid, and whether there are other accommodations that would make it possible are the questions.
And historically, those are the sorts of things Apple is Very Good at figuring out.
It would almost have to be something like â______ Proâ. They wouldnât call it âstrapâ if it didnât have a strap, butâŚhmmmâŚ
MagCam Pro?
iSight Pro?
Or perhaps a photographer.
The âiâ moniker was a Steve Jobs thing. How about Apple Sight Pro? 
That makes us even then.
Youâve worked at Apple before?
No, but Iâve seen the sorts of products they release.
If a sensor decreases in size by more than 75% (half the distance each way, plus a bit more because image stabilization wouldnât require extra pixels), wouldnât that inherently make it possible to flatten the lens assembly because of how camera lenses work?
I would never in a million years dispute that big glass + big distance = the potential for much better photos. But in a laptop / phone form factor, with software image enhancement, I think Apple has demonstrated that some of the previous ârulesâ can be bent a bit due to the software behind the image processor.