Apple rumored to be building FaceTime software for Mac, Windows

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Comments

  • Reply 61 of 80
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by arbourable View Post


    Don't understand why you say that. Sometimes FaceTime will be the appropriate tool for the job, other times not. But because not everyone uses it all the time for everything doesn't invalidate it.



    I think you've got "Highlander" disease.



    People have been hyping up facetime like it is going to be huge, a big driver of iPhone, Touch, and even Mac sales. I call BS on that. I highly doubt facetime will become a top 10 app on any of those devices or become a big driver of sales. At BEST it takes off on multiple devices and replaces Skype as the goto choice for internet video chat, but I would be surprised if Google, Skype, MS, Yahoo and others were to sit back and let that happen without serious competition. AND, whomever wins, if there even is a single winner, will still be filling a small niche. I just dont see people wanting to video chat that much in the near future. It will take a cultural shift for people to want to use the tools, no matter how good the tools are.
  • Reply 62 of 80
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by wizard69 View Post


    In anyevent it is pretty obvious here that a lot of people under estimate FaceTime.



    Assuming you have an iPhone 4, how many facetime calls have you placed or received in the last 2 weeks? How many that were not a test or demonstration of facetime, but an actual I want to call someone and talk about something call?
  • Reply 63 of 80
    nkhmnkhm Posts: 928member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by joerg.ehehalt View Post


    FACETIME IS NOT AN OPEN STANDARD, for the time being.



    If you want to prove me wrong, show me where I can find the specifications.



    Sure, Apple said they plan to release it as an open standard, but that was 3 months ago. In the meantime, they haven't said anything about WHEN that would be, so I'm certainly not going to hold my breath.



    As soon as FaceTime is open, it won't be a big issue anymore if iChat supports it or not, because there would be many alternative chat applications supporting it.



    Best regards,

    Joerg



    It's published, same as airplay. All ready distributed to some third party companies, as is airplay. it's not publicly available yet is all.
  • Reply 64 of 80
    nkhmnkhm Posts: 928member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by AIaddict View Post


    Assuming you have an iPhone 4, how many facetime calls have you placed or received in the last 2 weeks? How many that were not a test or demonstration of facetime, but an actual I want to call someone and talk about something call?



    I call my brother in Dubai every night. Next question?



    You know in the old days, not everyone had a phone, or tv. There wasn't much call for it.



    The fact it takes time for new technologies to develop and become more widely used is not a reason to dusmisd them.
  • Reply 65 of 80
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by nkhm View Post


    I call my brother in Dubai every night. Next question?



    You know in the old days, not everyone had a phone, or tv. There wasn't much call for it.



    The fact it takes time for new technologies to develop and become more widely used is not a reason to dusmisd them.



    You reinforce my point. You use it to talk to a close family member who is across the globe, which is the niche it will occupy well.



    People have always wanted to communicate, and the phone replaced mail and telegraphs with a near instant transmission. Of course it took off. Now that we have a variety of instant communication mechanisms, people have been gravitationg toward text over voice and video for the bulk of their communication needs. The usage of phone minutes has been dropping, and video calls are taking voice calling further in the direction people have been moving away from.
  • Reply 66 of 80
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by nkhm View Post


    It's published, same as airplay. All ready distributed to some third party companies, as is airplay. it's not publicly available yet is all.



    Funny, but Qik just said they would look into Facetime support once Apple makes the API's available. Sounds to me like it is not exactly published to a major player in mobile video, let alone "public".
  • Reply 67 of 80
    MacProMacPro Posts: 19,718member
    The more Apple makes that runs on a PC the better for PC makers! My wife's work PC is 1,0000 times better she says since I removed Outlook and set her up with Safari and MobileMe and had all her mail accounts auto forward to her [email protected] account. The new interface is awesome with the calendar, find iphone, contacts etc. Her Mac at home and iPhone are a seamless extension of her office now. I did have the Outlook set up with Mobile me before but it never seemed to work 100% and was very slow as Office and Windows and Kaspersky duked it out for who could upgrade next.
  • Reply 68 of 80
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by delizaza23 View Post


    I have never been able to use the ichat because everyone I know has a hotmail including me, therefor I have never been able to use it. even if I am on a mac using ichat other person is using msn messenger and they dont support each other. FACETIME is great to be on every device. Waiting for it



    Once it is setup, you don't have to think about it, I use iChat to IM with AIM, MSN, Yahoo! users regularly:

    http://blog.toonetown.com/2007/12/10...col-ichat.html
  • Reply 69 of 80
    solipsismsolipsism Posts: 25,726member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by ApplObserver View Post


    Once it is setup, you don't have to think about it, I use iChat to IM with AIM, MSN, Yahoo! users regularly:

    http://blog.toonetown.com/2007/12/10...col-ichat.html



    And you can use video chat with all them even though you are using iChat?



    Anyway, I dislike iChat ecause each service is in it's own window. With Adium I not have them all in one window, but listed by contact as one name and other nice features I think a modern messenger client should have.
  • Reply 70 of 80
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by xSamplex View Post


    Skype is somehow deficient?



    It's great that it exists, and I'm a huge proponent of Skype.



    However, keep in mind that the video quality is sub-par (was great in say, 2008) for today's standards, and that Skype is a P2P protocol that pushes lots of it's own traffic.



    For chatting and voice, it's very very useful.

    For video, it's a great fallback (esp. video to non-mac users).

    Compared to iChat it's not that good.



    Bring on the native FaceTime Mac Client and non-Apple FaceTime implementations!
  • Reply 71 of 80
    mactelmactel Posts: 1,275member
    That would be nice to see FaceTime on the Mac and Windows. Just don't integrate it into iTunes like Ping.
  • Reply 72 of 80
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by nkhm View Post


    Also allowing video chat between someone on a computer and someone on a cell phone is nothing to be sniffed at...



    It's on wifi so it's probably using some variant of computer based chatting anyway. its the connection protocol that is the issue. ichat is already linked into AIM and Jabber, perhaps they 'facetime' using the same network. Even if it is separate, an update to chat to link into the facetime connection servers isn't that hard. and since they want it to be open they could license it out to Skype or any other multiservice program. Or even perhaps yes release a Windows version of ichat.
  • Reply 73 of 80
    I don't believe Facetime will ever come to Mac/Windows. It will be available, but only through MobileMe. This is the Mac portal to the PC, and the future platform of iOS on desktops and laptops. The days of adding features to OSX (or OS11, etc) are done. The Mac, and Mac software for the PC will become server/heavy use. The only thing you will use your Mac for in the future will be photo editing, video editing, long sessions of typing, gaming, data storage/backup. Every thing else including Facetime will be done with a dedicated iOS device, or in the browser.



    All Mac utilities (Contacts, Facetime, Email, Ping, iTunes, File Storage, etc.) will be on MobileMe. Which you will pay for and will be ad free. It will also be updated for free and work on any computer, and sync to any iOS device. The change from .mac to MobileMe was not about reinventing .mac, it was about iOS.



    Just my opinion : )
  • Reply 74 of 80
    drdoppiodrdoppio Posts: 1,132member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by joerg.ehehalt View Post


    FACETIME IS NOT AN OPEN STANDARD, for the time being.



    If you want to prove me wrong, show me where I can find the specifications.



    Sure, Apple said they plan to release it as an open standard, but that was 3 months ago. In the meantime, they haven't said anything about WHEN that would be, so I'm certainly not going to hold my breath.



    As soon as FaceTime is open, it won't be a big issue anymore if iChat supports it or not, because there would be many alternative chat applications supporting it.



    Best regards,

    Joerg



    Good luck trying to educate the die-hards here. They wouldn't know an open standard if it hit them in the face all the time.



    "Many specifications that are sometimes referred to as standards are proprietary and only available under restrictive contract terms (if they can be obtained at all) from the organization that owns the copyright on the specification. As such these specifications are not considered to be fully Open." -- read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by nkhm View Post


    It's published, same as airplay. All ready distributed to some third party companies, as is airplay. it's not publicly available yet is all.



    "Distributed to some" is not the definition of an open standard. Also, distributed to WHO?



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by AIaddict View Post


    Funny, but Qik just said they would look into Facetime support once Apple makes the API's available. Sounds to me like it is not exactly published to a major player in mobile video, let alone "public".



    True dat.
  • Reply 75 of 80
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by al_bundy View Post


    how is facetime not locked down? Skype won't let it's calls go through facetime, but the other services probably will.



    The day Apple introduced FaceTime, Skype issued a press release saying they will adopt the FaceTime standard into their video calling system. They just don't have their conversion to it done yet.
  • Reply 76 of 80
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Multimedia View Post


    The day Apple introduced FaceTime, Skype issued a press release saying they will adopt the FaceTime standard into their video calling system. They just don't have their conversion to it done yet.



    Skype are considering opening their own protocol. If they do that before Apple opens FaceTime, it may make more sense to others to adopt Skype's protocol instead.
  • Reply 77 of 80
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by DrDoppio View Post


    Skype are considering opening their own protocol. If they do that before Apple opens FaceTime, it may make more sense to others to adopt Skype's protocol instead.



    1) So it?s one considering opening their protocol against one that has submitted it to the open standards body.



    2) Being first has little baring in the history of technology. You?re need to consider the ease of implementation, efficiency, and many other things that potentially affect a vendor?s cost and profit and the user?s desire to adopt this tech.
  • Reply 78 of 80
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by solipsism View Post


    1) So it?s one considering opening their protocol against one that has submitted it to the open standards body.



    2) Being first has little baring in the history of technology. You?re need to consider the ease of implementation, efficiency, and many other things that potentially affect a vendor?s cost and profit and the user?s desire to adopt this tech.



    I have no doubt that FaceTime may have many advantages over Skype and eventually prevail -- let's wait and see. As to "considering" vs. "submitted", until we see anything published, it is all guesswork unworthy of arguing about.
  • Reply 79 of 80
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by DrDoppio View Post


    I have no doubt that FaceTime may have many advantages over Skype and eventually prevail -- let's wait and see. As to "considering" vs. "submitted", until we see anything published, it is all guesswork unworthy of arguing about.



    I?m not saying that FaceTime will prevail. My point was to show being first to market is not always a recipe for success of a product or standard.



    I wouldn?t for a second discount Skype.. For starters, they have a much longer history of this type of networking, they have an installed base and product name that crosses many OSes, both desktop and mobile, and with FaceTime being open they will be free to dissect FaceTime and use any of the open protocols within that will work for them. If Apple wanted to analyze Skype to make FaceTime better they would have had to use subversive methods.
  • Reply 80 of 80
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by solipsism View Post


    And you can use video chat with all them even though you are using iChat?



    Anyway, I dislike iChat ecause each service is in it's own window. With Adium I not have them all in one window, but listed by contact as one name and other nice features I think a modern messenger client should have.



    That is currently true on the video chat not working across services. For me the video chat is only used for the kids to talk to their grandparents who also have a mac, so no problem.



    I use Chax to have a unified contact list (across services) in iChat, so no problem on that one:

    http://www.ksuther.com/chax/
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