The only thing I hate about Apple Macs is the lack of Webcams for them. When I had my PC, I could plug in my Logitech QuickCam Express and chat to others using Skype, or Yahoo! Messenger, without too many hitches. Yet when I changed to a Mac I discovered that my webcam would not work with the Mac as there are no Apple Mac drivers for it, from Logitech, thus preventing me from having video chats with my mates.
This I think is a shame, as more and more people are buying Apple machines, partly due to the success of the iPod - people see how good they are, and think if an iPod is good, then I bet their computers are.
It would seem that if you want to purchase a webcam for use on a Mac, there is only one option available, and that is to purchase Apple’s iSight webcam, however this webcam can no longer be sold in Europe as it contains lead, a substance that the EU has banned from being used in consumer goods, and at £99 is an expensive camera. Apparently Logitech’s QuickCam Pro 4000, QuickCam Zoom, QuickCam Orbit/Sphere, QuickCam for Notebooks Pro and Philips SPC900NC are Mac compatible, but I have not seen these models on sale anywhere.
I think it’s time that webcam manufacturers started to make Mac drivers for their webcams, especially now that Skype has released a beta of version 2 for Mac, that includes video support, so that us Apple Mac users can video chat with people, whether they use an Apple, PC or Linux box.
Thankfully there is an open source project called MacCam that is in the process of writing a driver that will support as many webcams as possible, and this can be found
at http://webcam-osx.sourceforge.net/ however this is not the ideal solution for getting a webcam Apple compatible as the webcam manufacturer should be making Apple drivers that work with all the webcams it makes / has made.
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