Have you ever taken a whiff of your IPhone’s camera and detected a faint but distinct foul odor? Have you ever noticed a brown haze to your photos? If you have, you’re certainly not alone, and Apple has finally divulged the reason why: The camera in your IPhone once travelled the whole length of a stranger’s digestive tract. That’s right—it was once inside a pill used in a stranger’s capsule endoscopy procedure.
After passing through someone’s entire digestive system, snapping pictures along the way to help diagnose gastrointestinal disorders, the camera pill, or PillCam, is expelled into the toilet and retrieved by either Apple’s CFO (Chief Fecal Officer) or an unsuspecting college student, who at one time was actually thrilled about landing a prestigious internship at Apple.
Apple CEO Tim Cook recently explained this seemingly bizarre practice of installing used endoscopy cameras into their IPhones. “We use PillCams because they’re simply the best designed, most robust and they take amazing pictures,” he said.
“Think about it,” Cook continued. “These cameras have undergone the best quality control tests of any on the market. They function exceptionally well in very harsh environments. Nothing stops these cameras—not the enzymes in your saliva, not the forceful peristaltic waves in your esophagus, not the acidic environment of your stomach, not the digestive enzymes in your small intestine, and not any of the gross stuff in your colon and rectum. Nothing destroys them, and their images are amazing and that’s why we use them.”
Cook understands that germaphobes will be appalled by this news. But he urges them not to worry because “each PillCam camera goes through an extensive sterilization procedure prior to installation.” This process, he explained, consists of the camera being wiped down by a single Clorox wipe for 2 seconds.
These cameras aren’t perfect though. Very rarely, a technician forgets to wipe the memory from the camera before inserting it into an IPhone, and the consequences can be devastating. Recently divorced Mike Orman explained: “My wife was checking something on my phone when all of a sudden these disgusting photos of some woman’s intestine pop up. As my wife scrolled through, the final image was…well, let’s just say the PillCam went rogue at the end and snapped an image of the woman’s genitals as it plunged into the toilet. My wife immediately threw me out of the house!”
Such incidents are thankfully rare. Experts say IPhone users have nothing to worry about when taking a photo except remembering to smile and say “Cut the Cheese.
