Way overdue. Should’ve done this long ago to capture Android market which was huge. Now, Apple should seamlessly integrate FaceTime on Android as it does in iOS.
I agree. To little, too late. WhatsApp have killed the social market, and Zoom and Teams have got the corporate market. With all the resources at Apple’s disposable, they do a lousy job with some things.
You do realize that Apple's business model is based around selling the hardware they manufacture right? They're not some social media startup trying to rope as many people into using a free communication platform as they can while making money by harvesting information about all their activities on that platform. They've built their reputation around privacy and so the only way they could make it worthwhile from a business perspective would be to make it a subscription service, which the vast majority of Android users would never pay for, no matter how good Apple made it.
What they've done now is essentially for the benefit of the people who own Apple hardware. They've made it so that, if you own an iPhone and want to video conference with someone on Android, but avoid using WhatsApp and other platforms which aren't as good as Apple's when it comes to privacy, it's now possible with FaceTime.
Also: Apple’s take on cross-platform communication might actually be reliable 🤭😳
Only as reliable as the platform itself 🙊
But seriously, Apple has never really been good at cross-platform development (iTunes and Quicktime on Windows aren't exactly great apps). The reason why their software works so well on their own platforms is because they create everything from bottom to top, and so they have the in-house expertise to really get to the bottom of things. For example, there's nothing like having the person who actually designed the audio/video hardware explaining how to get the lowest possible latency from it. I don't think they could possibly get FaceTime to work as well on other platforms.
My thoughts exactly 👍🏽
On the premise that Tim and his buddies consider the FaceTime brand an important (perhaps even very important) part of the Cupertino company, then we can assume yesterdays announcement of platform agnostic FaceTime is the result of a comprehensive evaluation. Because if doesn’t deliver then end-user confidence will drop and thus a major reason to buy into the ecosystem have disappeared.
However, ’s execution of yesterdays boost in Apple Music’s audio quality is not impressive: After enabling lossless audio on the iPhone, you get three or four quality options x3 for each of the three contexts (cellular streaming, Wi-Fi streaming and downloads). What a mess! And further, managed to provide total confusion regarding the signal chain required to take advantage of the High-Resolution Lossless option—an upgrade that instantly rendered Blusound, Sonos and other Hi-Fidelity solutions obsolete! At no extra cost!!
—let us hope cross platform FaceTime will be executed in the customary style: It just works 😋
WTF? You don't think people will need/want to manage their bandwidth or data usage?
"signal chain"? WTF is that? How did enabling lossless render ANY existing hardware (that still works) obsolete? It still works just like it did before.
Way overdue. Should’ve done this long ago to capture Android market which was huge. Now, Apple should seamlessly integrate FaceTime on Android as it does in iOS.
I agree. To little, too late. WhatsApp have killed the social market, and Zoom and Teams have got the corporate market. With all the resources at Apple’s disposable, they do a lousy job with some things.
You do realize that Apple's business model is based around selling the hardware they manufacture right? They're not some social media startup trying to rope as many people into using a free communication platform as they can while making money by harvesting information about all their activities on that platform. They've built their reputation around privacy and so the only way they could make it worthwhile from a business perspective would be to make it a subscription service, which the vast majority of Android users would never pay for, no matter how good Apple made it.
What they've done now is essentially for the benefit of the people who own Apple hardware. They've made it so that, if you own an iPhone and want to video conference with someone on Android, but avoid using WhatsApp and other platforms which aren't as good as Apple's when it comes to privacy, it's now possible with FaceTime.
Also: Apple’s take on cross-platform communication might actually be reliable 🤭😳
Only as reliable as the platform itself 🙊
But seriously, Apple has never really been good at cross-platform development (iTunes and Quicktime on Windows aren't exactly great apps). The reason why their software works so well on their own platforms is because they create everything from bottom to top, and so they have the in-house expertise to really get to the bottom of things. For example, there's nothing like having the person who actually designed the audio/video hardware explaining how to get the lowest possible latency from it. I don't think they could possibly get FaceTime to work as well on other platforms.
My thoughts exactly 👍🏽
On the premise that Tim and his buddies consider the FaceTime brand an important (perhaps even very important) part of the Cupertino company, then we can assume yesterdays announcement of platform agnostic FaceTime is the result of a comprehensive evaluation. Because if doesn’t deliver then end-user confidence will drop and thus a major reason to buy into the ecosystem have disappeared.
However, ’s execution of yesterdays boost in Apple Music’s audio quality is not impressive: After enabling lossless audio on the iPhone, you get three or four quality options x3 for each of the three contexts (cellular streaming, Wi-Fi streaming and downloads). What a mess! And further, managed to provide total confusion regarding the signal chain required to take advantage of the High-Resolution Lossless option—an upgrade that instantly rendered Blusound, Sonos and other Hi-Fidelity solutions obsolete! At no extra cost!!
—let us hope cross platform FaceTime will be executed in the customary style: It just works 😋
WTF? You don't think people will need/want to manage their bandwidth or data usage?
"signal chain"? WTF is that? How did enabling lossless render ANY existing hardware (that still works) obsolete? It still works just like it did before.
Please join reality.
Thank you for your kind invitation
Bandwidth: I expected an intuitive and elegant solution from If I wanted knobs and dials I would have joined the Win/Android camp.
Signal chain: This is the hardware required to reproduce sound, if you select High-Resolution Lossless in Apple Music. Obviously this includes a DAC (digital to analog converter). Specifics regarding connecting your Apple device to the DAC is unclear (for me, anyway).
At first this might seem simple, but the very idea with High-Resolution Lossless is to access the original master track in order to enjoy the purest reproduction of the music as intended by the artist. Thus it is imperative that the digitally stored music file is converted to analog by a decoder of sufficient quality—and especially that only one DAC is present in the signal chain (otherwise your setup would be something like watching a 4K movie on a fancy 4K OLED display—from the basement on a cathode tube tv hooked up to a VHS camcorder that captures the image on the OLED!)
You seem to confuse obsolescence with non-functionality: Of course existing hardware still works! If you wanted to playback music in 24-bit/192kHz, Bluesound was one of the very few options available. Until monday morning. For no extra cost, you can now select this highest audio quality in Apple Music, thus rendering the expensive Bluesound solution obsolete (unless Bluesound has other unique features you are interested in).
Comments
"signal chain"? WTF is that? How did enabling lossless render ANY existing hardware (that still works) obsolete? It still works just like it did before.
Please join reality.
Bandwidth: I expected an intuitive and elegant solution from
If I wanted knobs and dials I would have joined the Win/Android camp.
Signal chain: This is the hardware required to reproduce sound, if you select High-Resolution Lossless in Apple Music. Obviously this includes a DAC (digital to analog converter). Specifics regarding connecting your Apple device to the DAC is unclear (for me, anyway).
At first this might seem simple, but the very idea with High-Resolution Lossless is to access the original master track in order to enjoy the purest reproduction of the music as intended by the artist. Thus it is imperative that the digitally stored music file is converted to analog by a decoder of sufficient quality—and especially that only one DAC is present in the signal chain
(otherwise your setup would be something like watching a 4K movie on a fancy 4K OLED display—from the basement on a cathode tube tv hooked up to a VHS camcorder that captures the image on the OLED!)
You seem to confuse obsolescence with non-functionality: Of course existing hardware still works!
If you wanted to playback music in 24-bit/192kHz, Bluesound was one of the very few options available. Until monday morning.
For no extra cost, you can now select this highest audio quality in Apple Music, thus rendering the expensive Bluesound solution obsolete (unless Bluesound has other unique features you are interested in).