Microsizing is something that will always compromise the performance and control of a camera.

When an iPhone has a zoom lens that is a constant f/1.4 arperture, with a full frame equivalent focal length zoom range of 14mm to 500mm…whose gigantic elements are comprised of forcefields that are weightless and optically perfect…that get projected out in front of the camera…engaged by thought control…and another forcefield holds the iPhone to your eye (viewed through an optical eyepiece that also employs projected forcefield mirrors) and follows wherever you look…and images onto a sensor the size of the touchscreen…all this for a data package costing only $10 a month…that never drops calls…ONLY THEN WILL I BE IMPRESSED by a phone camera.

Otherwise, we are just talking overpriced gobbledygook, personal electronic bling…nothing more. Certainly not a real tool for real photographers!

As I said before, Apple is sitting on well over $70 billion in cash. They are a greedy corporation. They need to do their “fair share” and spread the wealth around…”gift” it to the treasury to help bring down the deficit…so Obama can go stand in front of another rusty bridge somewhere, and fix it with his rainbows and unicorns.

Truth is, I don’t think Apple would produce a camera anything like this. SLR? Interchangeable lenses? These are almost offensively crude for the Apple world. No, the camera Apple would design would look a lot like a Leica X1 I think. Quality would ooze from every last piece of the system, massively trumping flexibility and control in every case. Apple is about doing one thing and doing it incredibly, violently better than everyone. An Apple camera would be zero involvement, point and click that would turn up amazing images. It would let you select nothing about the photo, because Apple has already put a lot of effort into making the correct decisions for you. (Look at the Camera app across four generations of iPhone. Even the iPad.)

And if you’re designing your own camera, from the ground up, to really change cameras? Throw out the SLR mechanisms (go mirrorless) and start with more generalized computing hardware (ARM/PowerVR based programmable app platforms). There’s no real point to making buttons or dials for a specific purpose either (think NEX soft buttons but done a bit more carefully).

If you really do this right from the ground up engineering and design, everyone will be able to love the camera without having to specifically add the exact features everyone wants. There’s a (camera-)app for that.

I’m surprised you didn’t include a CCD sensor with live view.