Apple’s new iPad Pro has a bunch of neat features that techies and AV pros alike will enjoy, specifically the new Ultra Wide camera and Center Stage feature.
According to Apple, the new Ultra Wide front-facing camera comes with a 12MP sensor and a 122-degree field of view, “making it perfect for FaceTime “and the Center Stage feature that uses the camera and machine learning to pan to keep the participant centered in the frame. When overs join or leave the call, the view expands or zooms in.
Here’s the part that AV pros and remote workers will love even more: Center Stage works with Facetime and other videoconferencing apps.
Apple has never really been in the videoconferencing game, as FaceTime is mostly a consumer-grade app that allows family and friends to connect in very casual settings. Users can make a group call with the app, but participants are capped at 32.
The device is powered by Apple’s M1 chip, leading to a “massive leap in performance,” according to Apple.
“The revolutionary M1 chip has been a breakthrough for the Mac, and we’re incredibly excited to bring it to iPad Pro,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “With M1’s huge jump in performance, a groundbreaking extreme dynamic range experience on the 12.9-inch Liquid Retina XDR display, up to 2TB of high-speed storage, Thunderbolt expansion, a four-speaker audio system, pro cameras with LiDAR Scanner, blazing-fast 5G connectivity, an amazing video-calling experience with Center Stage — combined with the advanced features of iPadOS and a powerful pro app ecosystem all in a device users can hold in one hand — there’s nothing else like iPad Pro.”
However, opening the door for apps like Zoom and Microsoft Teams to use those new features represents somewhat of a shift as consumer-grade devices and professional videoconferencing devices begin to blend more and more.
Take Facebook’s Portal, for example, which also works with several videoconferencing apps and can extend to a user’s TV to allow them to take video calls from the couch.
Could the iPad Pro and these new video calling features become part of your integration firm’s UCC offerings, especially as your customers continue to straddle the line between their work and home lives? Do you see the iPad Pro becoming an ancillary part of a conference room or as a room scheduling panel? It’s certainly powerful enough to find its way into those use cases.
