Has anyone been using Desk View? I was pretty excited to try it, but very disappointed after hearing some of the hype. It catches my face, and the middle of my chest, but not my desk. I’m using an iPhone 12 Pro. I read that the camera needs to be pretty far away, but even pushed back pretty far, I can’t get it to capture the desk. Am I doing something wrong, or is this feature half-baked?
So I put my iPhone on an external stand and moved it back . . . and back . . . and at about 2 feet it seems to work OK. So this isn’t something to use sitting in front of a monitor it seems, but more to use at a table, where you’ll be smaller on screen. You’d probably need a headset if you’re not already using one, since you’ll be further from the microphone on your MacBook. But I haven’t tested that part.
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Not sure if any of this is helpful, but here is my experience/set up. I have that Belkin attachment; attached it to my iPhone, and put it on my MacBook Pro Display. Then I set up desk view and it worked fine. I was a little too close at first and had this fisheye effect. When I pushed my Mac back a few inches it seemed to work pretty well.
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I thought Jason Snell’s review summed up the issue pretty well:
The problem Desk View faces is geometry. If you are using a laptop on a desk, you need to push that laptop way back on the desk—essentially out of arm’s length—just to give it enough desk surface to shoot. And you’ll probably need to tilt the screen down, to give the camera a better view of the desk. You can get pretty great results out of Desk View, and the app itself seemed very fast and responsive. The question is if you’ll want to bother.
Unless you are using an external keyboard and have super eyes, I can’t imagine Desk View is worth the bother with a laptop. However, with a large external display it may be worth the trouble.
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