Why not? Apple sells ~200M iPhones a year, so they already are ordering millions of FaceTime cameras for the iPhones. Why not buy 10M more of the same model and put them in the MacBooks?
I'm completely with you. I have the older TouchBar model and every time I use the external Apple keyboard I am so much happier with the physical brightness, music controls and changing volume keys.
For me I'd actually pay to have a model without TouchBar (but with TouchID, which actually is really useful).
Just to be clear, I don't think Apple should put a back facing camera into their laptops. However, they should consider updating the FaceTime camera as it is regularly used by most people.
I guess this is more a rhetorical question as taking pictures with a back facing camera is an extreme^10 edge case while doing video calls with the FaceTime camera for most users is a daily or at least weekly occurrence.
Imagine they offered the same configuration with and without TouchBar, with the model with TouchBar costing $400 more - how many people would choose the model with? I bet less than 5%.
Is Apple afraid to offer this because it clearly would show that almost no one is ready to pay for it?
Even from this audience, who of you would be willing to pay the premium for the TouchBar?
To be honest, I am also really surprised by the apologism and the creative possible reasons that people come up with (e.g. "Apple couldn't handle the traffic the increased resolution would cause"). But you're right, I didn't say it is a dealbreaker for me and it actually isn't. It is still very likely that I buy this machine - yet stuff like this bothers me, especially at the price point that Apple is commanding.
Imagine buying the top of the class Mercedes S-Class only to find out that the steering wheel is far worse than the ones that Mercedes uses in other models - you'd somehow feel cheated.
Sure, but besides a very low number of comments on HN I've never seen anyone who really appreciated the TouchBar (and the increased price it causes). Say Apple would offer a model with and without TouchBar and the TouchBar model would cost $400 more, how many people would be willing to pay that? I bet it would be less than 5%, maybe even less than 1%.
Can someone explain to me how Apple can justify only including a 720p FaceTime HD camera into the "the world’s best pro notebook"?
The last iPhone that had this FaceTime camera was the 6S, released in 2015. Since the iPhone 7 (2016) the phones have had at least a 1080p FaceTime camera. Given that FaceTime / Skype calls are such a common use case and rarely anyones uses external webcams anymore, why doesn't Apple use the existing camera system of the iPhone 11 for the MacBook?
Seriously, if I pay north of $4000 dollars for a laptop, why do I get an obsolete camera?