In my case, it’s because people don’t like all my pictures of the wall behind my computer screen.
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Damn, some commenters are just being rude. It’s not a ridiculous question and this is the community for it, even if it was, isn’t it? It’s no real stretch of the imagination to wonder why if phones have great cameras and tablets have good cameras, why don’t laptops offer anything close? I agree, the bulk of the laptop makes it awkward and the demand is low when “everyone” in the primary markets already have a camera phone in their pocket
Why would you be sitting behind the screen? If you need to film a conversation between two people with one webcam…have the webcam face their profiles
To answer your question directly- because it wouldn’t serve a need that users typically have.
have you never been in a workshop and wanted to show someone what you’re working on? it would be awesome to just be able to flip the camera and walk over
I mean, I would turn the laptop around. Or the webcam on the PC. Or use my phone for the call?
I wouldn’t suggest that there is no use for this kind of camera. Yours is a good example. But for the cost and risk of damage, that is not something that most would want by default in a laptop.
Also I have a phone with a camera for that purpose
A 30€USB webcam can do it, or simply turning around the laptop. Moreover, corporate have nice video conferencing room often with multiple camera, so you can select what you want to show. Finally, when I want to show a prototype to management, I rather invite them to the lab, or take the time to edit a video (even a smartphone camera one) for people in remote. Avoids the pitfalls of bringing something to a meeting room and starting it on the fly
Imagine the abuse girls would further have. Girls are LANning while boys are Stanning…
i don’t see how a laptop would be used for that, phones are an issue but a big laptop pointing directly at you is pretty obvious
You’d be surprised what an erection makes people do.
on the streets
“Hey, can you take a picture of this?”
“Brb, unpacking my backpack to get out my laptop”
🤣
What would be the benefit in a camera facing away from the user?
It would be unused in 99% of use cases and the other 1% a external camera is more functional.
walking around with the laptop showing people stuff, would be EXTREMELY useful to me
You seem to be in the minority there, maybe an external clip-on webcam is a better solution? I doubt a back-facing webcam would be used very much because most people use laptops like a take-home work station, and they use phones to show things to people (I’m sure there’s a good reason you’re not doing that, it’s just what most people do)
There are some laptops where the screen flips over, I have one of those laptops. I have to say I only use that feature like once every 3months or so.
Tablets (including iPads) have rear-facing cameras.
Because tablets are not normal PCs, but rather big smartphones, which are expected to have cameras.
YOU’RE NOT A NORMAL PC!
Tablets don’t have keyboards permanently on. This makes it easier to pick up and take pictures with a back camera.
That camera would be facing the wall. It’s about 6 inches from the back of the monitor to the wall. Also I do not want a camera built into my monitor. Just another thing to break. If I need a web cam I’ll go to my closet and get the camera and plug it into the pc usb port.
There’s this neat laptop by Honor (the “MagicBook Art 14” I believe, I think it has the option of either a Snapdragon X Elite or the Intel Core Ultra series processors…) where the webcam magnetically attaches and can be flilled both ways, and tucks in to the side when it is not needed, so the display doesn’t have a notch/hole.
It’s a gimmicky feature though, most people don’t need something like that, and the people that do have other ways to go about it (e.g. document scanner, smartphone, mirrorless/DSLR camera). Most laptop webcams aren’t very good anyways
For PCs, I guess you could mount a webcam the other way? For most people you would only see wall.
Thanks for sharing, that is a neat design.
There have been several laptops/tablet pcs that have done this. Microsoft Surface and its clones from HP, Dell, Lenovo etc. did this.
Ive had a laptop that had this. You coud turn the webcam part around.
My Dell XPS m1210 had a webcam you could rotate around to either point at you or face the other way. I used it a couple times to try to record lectures, but the quality (both audio and video) was shit
It’s just not as useful as the rear-facing camera on a phone or tablet. You can’t aim it easily, so it’s stuck pointing slightly downward at the surface it’s sitting on, unless you’re interested in making your screen harder to see.
Plus it’s more expensive for a feature that few people would find useful.
My surface pro from work has this, though I can’t say I’ve ever used it in all these years.
Why? No one ever needed this.
i would use it
Creeper no creeping
what?
