Less than one week after its unveiling and three weeks before its retail debut, the iPad is already generating buzz about its hardware, and lack thereof.

The story all began when Apple first started to ship iPad replacement items to various ceritified repair shops. With a big release on the horizon, Apple obviously wants to make sure that technicians are equipped to handle any early models that may possibly break down or suffer damage.

One of those shops to receive the various spare components was Kansas-based Mission Repair, which noticed something curious in the frame. It seems that the top part of the iPad's frame is perfectly equipped for the exact same camera that is built-in to the MacBook and MacBook Pro models.

This has touched off a new set of rumours and speculations about a camera shipping as an option in either the current iPad model or a future revision version. Since Steve Jobs made no mention of a camera during his carefully-prepared unveiling last weekend, I'm inclined to believe the latter.

So why would a camera have been scrapped? There are a number of reasons, the first being price. Given everything already included in the iPad, Apple's profit margins have to be pretty thin. Though not super expensive, the camera hardware may have been part of the compromise to get the tablet down to $499.

The second being battery life. Every time you add bells and whistles, you add a drain on the battery. For a tablet system designed to be portable, this is a big deal. Not only is there the drain from the camera itself, but you also have the processing power stepped up to crunch all the imaging. If Flash was left out because of its drain on batteries, the same fate befalling video would not surprise me much.

Finally, you have the relative usefulness of a camera. At some point Apple must have weighed the number of people that would really make use of a built-in camera and decided that it was not enough to trump the first two concerns.

Perhaps, as Mission Repair suggests, we could see the camera come back in the iPad 2.0, when power management and battery life improve.

03 Feb 2010