iMac screen used as speedlight
The most ingenious ideas seem obvious after the fact: Apple is using the new iMac’s display to illuminate the subject when snapping pictures in the new PhotoBooth app.
Damn that’s clever. Instead of integrating a flash into the new iMac, they said “hey, the screen is a flash!” So, before it takes your picture it flashes the screen white. How about that.
Note: this is not the first time that the full illuminative potential of the iMac has been realized.
Update 10/23: Manuel writes:
The first piece of software I recall using the monitor as a lamp was “Quaid Analyzer” in the eighties. Given that it was using mainly for some midnight hacking (it was a monitor for tracing any DOS/BIOS calls, single stepping thru any code, etc) the UI had a “light bulb” option just in case you needed to check some hardcopy docs in the middle of the night.