In case you didn’t know, most Macs come with cameras built-in, excluding the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro, and every Mac before Intel came on board. Last week, I went searching for a camera + microphone, because during my other little adventure of unscrewing and re-screwing my Mac 39 times, I managed to somehow break the inbuilt mic (and there’s no way, I’ll open up my Mac for a mic.!). So, I went searching for a solution that was cable-efficient. Like most Mac-laptops, mine only has two USB-ports and no line-in for a mic., so my choices were:

• getting a USB-mic & a separate USB-webcam (using both USBs)
• getting a USB-webcam with a mic. built in (in theory: 1 slot)
• getting a USB-webcam & a separate Bluetooth-headset (1 slot)

Whatever would happen, I would end up using at least 1 USB-slot, so my decision would be somewhere in-between quality and cost.

The search

Enter a consumer-electronics store (Mediamarkt is no. 1 here in the Netherlands or Germany), and you will likely be confronted with a whole bunch of Logitech, some Microsoft, maybe some Philips, and some other, possibly cheaper or more upscale brands. Of these, none but one (I’ll get to it later) actually mention anything like Mac-support.

Luckily, my Mediamarkt also had an internet-connection (through the Apple-section) for me to check the many confusing brand-designations (I want to shoot whoever thought a combo of letters and numbers was a good way to sell products to consumers!).

Turns out, getting a webcam or a USB-mic that works on a Mac, isn’t a problem. Plug it in and it usually works. The webcam just needs to be UVC—a Universal USB 2.0 Video Class Cam. Getting a webcam & a built-in mic, however, and we enter complex territory. First of all, hardly any sites really discuss the mic factor (you can find Mac-compatible stuff here). I guess, because most laptops have a built-in mic or line-in, hardly anyone considers it. I’ve had a couple of adventures, such as a Microsoft one, where the mic. wasn’t recognised and a for-Macs advertised webcam, which, 1st of all, had horrible video-quality and second, came with a headset that needed a line-in (eh, not really useful for many Macs).

So, one camera in the whole store, offering ca. 30 webcams, is advertised as 100% Mac-compatible: the Logitech Quickcam Vision Pro for Mac. It is the only camera that is 100% designed for Macs. It is also the most expensive in the store, at ca. €100 euros, though offering a 2-megapixel sensor and a fairly good in-built mic. Everything else, in that store at least, doesn’t “officially” work for Macs (you can find a few more on Amazon). Btw. if you do need anything like a driver, check out macam or iUSBcam.

Why Mac audiences are so valuable

So why are Mac-audiences so valuable? Well, you can literarily charge more. Whether it’s a webcam, a usb-mic, software, etc. You can hike up the price by at least 10% and watch the less price-sensitive consumer roll in. You frequently hear the “Windows = bigger market” argument, and I wholeheartedly agree. But my argument that Windows is a big market for commodities rings more true. For every super-upscale model you offer in hardware, there will be dozens of cheaper knock-offs eating up your market. And for every upscale software, you can be sure that a million pirated versions are floating around on the networks.

The closed system, which I am as critical of as the next guy, is what makes Macs attractive for technology-companies, because at whatever small scale you do end up producing, demand will most certainly exceed supply.

And the consumer? Well, he did decide to buy a more expensive machine in the first place, and whatever you can say about Mac-pricing, he will, most of the time, get a better machine and accessories than on the Windows-side of things.

What was my solution?

Being a cheapskate (a previous Windows-user and I’m Dutch), I found a free bluetooth headset lying around, I got with my mobile phone once. Turns out, all of those are compatible with Macs that come with Bluetooth (pretty much all of them). And now, having 2 free USB-slots, I can take my time and pick a UVC-compatible webcam that offers reasonable video-quality for Skype.

Were you ever in a similar situation? Probably not, but if you were, let me know how you solved the problem!

Vincent