Filed under: Multimedia, Macbook Pro
MacBook Pros feature a 1.3MP camera sensor
Ken at Mac Daddy World confirmed an interesting discovery with a friend recently. Namely, the Santa Rosa MacBook Pros don't feature the same iSight as the previous MBP modelPictured at right is a snapshot from System Profiler on my own MBP (a 2.0 GHz Core Duo), above, and Ken's (a Santa Rosa model), below. As you can see, the manufacturer has been changed from "Micron" to "Apple, Inc." Plus, the product ID has changed from "0x8501" to "0x8502."
But wait, there's more. While Ken was able to produce a VGA (640×480) image with an "older" MacBook Pro featuring the original iSight, the Santa Rosa model produced a much larger 1.3 MP (1280×1024) image (you can see both images at Mac Daddy World). Pretty cool.
Thanks, Ken!

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Matt Smith said 3:13PM on 6-27-2007
I noticed on mine that the camera physically looked a little different to my previous Core 2 Duo model.
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Ahmad said 3:18PM on 6-27-2007
damn, that's slick
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Richard said 3:22PM on 6-27-2007
What a nice catch. Well done!
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lmo said 3:24PM on 6-27-2007
BTW, I ordered a new MBP last week, with the 160 GB 7200rpm hard drive. Delivery date was Aug 16. But I just got a "shipped" notice this morning, with a delivery date of next Tuesday. So if you've been angst'ing over not being able to get the MBP with the speedy harddrive, you're in luck!
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Don said 3:33PM on 6-27-2007
My 6 month old, 2.33 17 MBP, non Santa Rosa, has the micron iSight with the same product and vendor IDs.
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David said 3:41PM on 6-27-2007
That is pretty nice if it's true I guess, though Dell is using a 2MP camera in their XPS M1330 (though only 0.3MP/VGA in the LED backlit version)
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tehpyro said 3:53PM on 6-27-2007
Why is the micron version 1.84 and the Apple Inc Version 1.45?
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JeffDM said 4:36PM on 6-27-2007
Are there any sample pictures? I didn't notice any links here or in the linked story. Not that I'm expecting much, a lens the size of a pinhead is not going to collect a lot of light, and I doubt the light sensitivity of the sensor is improved much.
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PSM said 5:56PM on 6-27-2007
Ooh, fun. I thought my new MBP was cool already, now I'm even more glad I waited. Hopefully there will be apps to take advantage of this soon.
JeffDM, the link does have sample pictures from the old and new camera.
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JeffDM said 6:45PM on 6-27-2007
OK, you are right. The larger picture isn't very good at all. Scaling down to half resolution and backup again shows so little detail loss that it's not funny.
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jacob said 9:34PM on 6-27-2007
I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that I can hardly scan any books into Delicious Library using the iSight on my new MBP. Can any new MBP owners comment on this?
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Chad Zeluff said 5:28PM on 6-28-2007
Maybe this explains why my dev copy of Leopard just DOES NOT WORK with my MBP...
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Jon said 8:34PM on 7-01-2007
You think it is the same camera HW that is in the iPhone? I do.
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Sander Backus said 3:47PM on 7-02-2007
How to find software to actualy use this higher-resolution, photobooth isn't doing it.
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