In that case why don’t they have a back facing camera with three lenses and a flash just in case someone wants to take a picture on vacation with their MacBooks? I guess they should also have an accelerometer, a gyroscope and a gps chip just in case I need to use it for directions....

I guess this is more a rhetorical question as taking pictures with a back facing camera is an extreme^10 edge case while doing video calls with the FaceTime camera for most users is a daily or at least weekly occurrence.

It’s not that I don’t think the criticism is valid about the camera, it’s just the idea of saying it should have the same hardware as a phone

Why not? Apple sells ~200M iPhones a year, so they already are ordering millions of FaceTime cameras for the iPhones. Why not buy 10M more of the same model and put them in the MacBooks?

cause they want them to buy an iPhone as well, and iCloud sync to the MacBook.

For $4000, it should be waterproof and come with a bodysuit for surfing the web, WHILE I'm surfing in the ocean. It's all related stuff.

Not at all. A laptop and a phone have different needs. I’m never, and I truly mean never, going to use a laptop to take a quality photo.

Why should Apple put a top of the line camera on it? Is the new Mac Pro worth less because it doesn’t have a camera at all?

Just to be clear, I don't think Apple should put a back facing camera into their laptops. However, they should consider updating the FaceTime camera as it is regularly used by most people.