Windows support for Apple's iSight Camera for next Public Release

I know it has been mentioned few times before, but we would like to bring it up again and again to the Parallel team. We ned Windows support for Apple's iSight Camera. iSight support in Skype, MSN Messenger and Yahoo Messenger would be a great feature to offer, and should attract more users to Parallels. If you would take a vote on this, you will notice that 99% of the users will want this feature and support in the next public release. Keep up the great work

 

mmmmmmmmk....if apple makes [contracts someone else to make] the camera and does not supply the drivers for users of boot camp how do you expect Parallels to supply a driver for hardware that they don't make and that the "maker" doesn't supply themselves? I am not trying to start a flame war but if it's not supported in boot camp then it probably won't work in parallels. This is an Apple problem...not a Parallels one.

HTH,
-Levi

PS: the new beta Skype supports iSight, in a bit it'll be released publicly.

 

I'm not entirely convinced of how important support for iSight is in Parallels/Windows - it doesn't matter to me anyway - but supporting it shouldn't require any hardware documentation or special drivers. You forget that Parallels is a Mac application, it has full access to the OS X APIs.

The tricky bit is not accessing the iSight, but writing the necessary hardware emulation on the virtual side to make it look like a generic USB webcam so that Windows can use it. Parallels is nothing like BootCamp. On BootCamp you write Windows software for Mac hardware. With Parallels they write Mac software that pretends to be generic PC hardware.

 

I generally don't get the point to having web cam support in Parallels, when you could simply use it from the Mac side. Are there really that many things that use web cams on Windows that you can't do on the Mac?

 

I agree. The only thing I can thing of is using it with MSN messenger or similar. This is because MSN for mac doesn't support Webcams. there are other solutions to this, like 3rd party MSN clients which do allow webcams over MSN on a mac.

 

Actually, drivers wouldn't be needed and would actually be counterintuitive to how an emulator works. It would be easier to hook into the Apple iSight API and emulate a generic USB Quickcam.

 

Sure, I'd like to have as much hardware support as possible under Parallels. But, do I want the Parallels team to waste the time (if it's even possible, I'm not sure it is, without some massive hacks)? No, thus I voted no

 

There's some CISCO stuff I need to be able to run in order to avoid having to trek my Dell laptop around for video conferencing. While at home, I need to be able to use PalTalk with a camera. Likewise, ICQ....

So, in short, yes... at least for me. I'd love to be able use a vid-cam of sorts on the Windows side of the Mac.

 

I'd much rather the parallels team spent their time on useful things. How about getting rid of the show-stopper sleep bug. Maybe adding support for the emulated serial port to go to a physical serial port and the emulated floppy drive to go to a physical floppy drive so those emulated devices would become useful instead of totally useless.

I've never used the iSight for anything except verification it worked. There's plenty of software native to Mac OS X to support video conferencing and such.

 

You guys are all missing the point (I guess none of you write software).

When someone builds a device that communicates via USB to the OS, unless it is something simple like a keyboard or a mouse, they need to write a driver that runs on the computer that recognises when its device, in your example, an iSight web cam, is connected. When it gets a message from the OS that a new device has been plugged in, and the devices hardware ID matches the device it is looking for, it can create the bridge between the camera and the computer. The driver has specific (and often proprietary) knowledge written into it to talk to that device and then either uses it itself or makes a more generic interface available to other applications.

When you buy a printer, you get drivers for that printer that talk to the printer directly and have knowledge of that printer's features and at the same time creates an entry in the OS telling it that a printer is available using a protocol defined by that OS. So the driver acts as the bridge between proprietary equipment and the OS.

For the same reasons Parallels can't write printer drivers for XYZ printer they can't write a Windows side driver for the iSight camera. If Apple were to write a driver for the camera for Windows (since Apple knows how to talk to an iSight), then it should work in Parallels. But it is not in Parallels power to write a Windows iSight USB driver (or one for the FireWire ones for that matter) any more than it is their power to write drivers for other hardware. All that they can do (and I wish they did) is provide a stable and working USB emulation so that drivers that actually do exists can work properly.

Regards,

rcomeau

 

USB in general

I would like to see usb support in general, even if only at 1.0 speeds to be able to accept streaming data.

 

rcomeau:

I write software, and I know where you're coming from.

I just personally have no real need for USB support in Parallels, so it's hard to get too deeply invested in this entire issue. I can print to both my USB and network printers, and that's all I actually need. I do realize that other people have more significant needs, but there are other things I'd rather see done first, such as improved graphics support (both use of dirty rects and support for acceleration).

 

I do, I do need it, . I go on Paltalk using windows side and do lots of video chatting, so it would be nice to get that going.

 

Apple iSight Windows driver problem is the sole responsibility of Apple. Parallels just needs to get its USB device support compatibility improved. So I hope anyone asking for the iSight support shouldn't tell Parallels to do it. It's asking the wrong person.

 

Yes. Being able to use Skyp 2 on my laptop with web cam support is important. I'm all over the world all of the time, and I hate the fact that I can't properly web cam with my girl friend anymore since I switched to to mac. Skype 2 is the only program currently that gives a stable quality larger than a post stamp, and other than iChat it doesn't break off the connection every time there is a network hitch.

 

My vote is that Parallels let apple solve this problem. I want to buy a VM. Not a VM + drivers for certain operating systems. There are much, much, much bigger issues to be addressed in the VM itself, IMHO. Namely USB support, graphics performance optimizations, and ACPI support.

I would HATE to see Parallels move in the direction of becoming more of a Windows on Mac solution than a VM on Mac solution.

 

Skype...

you could use the beta version of skype 1.5.0.17 which works just as well as the windows version..

 

Diito VTMac's comment. I voted "no"

 

This is essential (i.e. the only option) for Mac users wanting to collaborate via Microsoft Live Communications Server... so yes, yes, a thousand times yes [that doesn't count for a thousand "Yes" votes in the poll does it ], please make it work.

 

Frankly I did not expect this much support for the isight, but inlight of the lack of support from the parallel team, I really do not think this will happen very soon, but it was good to gauge the interest. Thank you for all of your inputs and opinions.... Mark