An Apple designer hinted at the possibility of a landscape FaceTime camera coming to all future iPads to improve video calls.
The iPad can be used in any orientation. As Steve Jobs put it at the unveiling, “I don’t have to change myself to fit the iPad, it fits me.” But a lot has changed since.
The iPad Pro redesign in 2010 that brought us the Magic Keyboard taught us that people predominantly want to use their iPads in landscape mode.
Reflecting that change, future iPads may bring an Apple logo out the back, rotated by 90 degrees, so it appears correctly when you turn the device upside down.
Future iPads may bring a landscape Apple logo
An Apple product designer, Molly Anderson, told the French-language site Numerama that the team is contemplating using a landscape logo on future iPads.
“I think it could change,” said Anderson. “We are thinking about it. The iPad has long been a product that is used in portrait mode, but we are using it more and more in landscape mode.”
Apple already does this for the boot logo. As of iPadOS 14.5, powering on an iPad while in landscape mode renders the boot logo in the landscape orientation.
Will all future iPads have a landscape FaceTime camera?
Feature request: Please make a landscape camera standard across all iPads. The first iPad to feature a landscape FaceTime camera was the tenth-generation iPad.
The feature expanded to the latest M2 iPad Air and M4 iPad Pro models. A landscape front-facing camera brings a much better vide-calling experience.
With a portrait camera, video calls in landscape mode are awkward as you look sideways and not straight into the camera. This looks weird and breaks eye contact, which isn’t how you want to appear on video. Relocating a FaceTime camera to the iPad’s long edge solves this. This will become a standard feature of all future iPads.