creaky cowling: Poll: Now that Nikon has gone Android, does Apple need to get into the camera business?

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Poll: Now that Nikon has gone Android, does Apple need to get into the camera business?

Nikon has announced a new Coolpix 5800c digital pocket camera, but one with a twist -- it runs the Android 2.3 Gingerbread operating system.. That means not only can you take photos, but once you've taken them, you can do pretty much anything with them you could do with smartphone photos, including processing them and sharing them to your favorite social networks.

Now the iPhone 4S already has a pretty great camera, and who knows what the iPhone 5 will be packing, so do dedicated point-and-shoots even matter anymore? And this Nikon will be running a relatively old version of Android, quite a bit behind the current Android 4.1 Jelly Bean that all our friends over at Android Central are raving about. So... should this even matter to Apple?

I don't see Apple licensing out iOS to Canon anytime soon, but I don't see them making a traditional, dedicated camera any more either. That's the past and Apple is all about the future. We asked our resident product rendering expert, John Anastasiadis, what he thought. The image above is what he came up with -- using an iPhone as the "brain" for a camera attachment. It would slide onto a next generation iPhone and add profoundly better optics to the already excellent internet connectivity and interface.

Apple's late co-founder, Steve Jobs famously said he wanted to revolutionize photography the way he had computers, phones, tablets, and music. Did he mean making a camera, or making Apple's existing digital devices better at photography than conventional cameras? Or something else entirely?

What do you think? Now that Nikon has gone Android, does Apple need to get into the camera business? Would you buy an iOS-powered camera from Apple? An iPhone camera attachment? Neither? Something else? Vote up top and let me know the details below!

Iphone Pro