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Apple's All-Seeing Screen
Based on a recent patent we may be seeing a new kind of display coming from the Apple store in the near future, one that can capture images as well as display them. From the article: "The clever idea is to insert thousands of microscopic image sensors in-between the liquid crystal display cells in the screen. Each sensor captures its own small image, but software stitches these together to create a single, larger picture."
First, it connected via FireWire.
People have been using USB because it has been sufficiently fast, cheaper, and universally available. Firewire is an Apple idiosyncracy.
Second, it came with mounting brackets (included, for free in the iSight box) to attach the camera securely to the top center of Apple's LCD monitors and laptop screens.
Are you really so naive to believe that it has occurred to nobody else before that that's a good place to put a video camera? In fact, for as long as there have been desktop video cameras (hint: Apple didn't invent them either), that's where most people have been putting them, and cameras have generally included mounting options for that. And Sony and other manufacturers have been putting video cameras at the top center of laptops for many years.
As far as mounting options go, iSight is actuall poor--it fails to attach to many non-Apple monitors. I had to use duct tape to stick it to my monitor (but I used a designer color!). If the choices of video conferencing cameras for Mac weren't so darned limited, I'd happily toss out the iSight.