One other relevant aspect of FaceTime being closed: it has rapidly evolved over the past two years in order to 1) first get established 2) begin working on the phone-free iPod touch 3) interconnect with Mac desktop systems.
Opening a standard and then changing it quickly has bad results. Look at Android fragmentation, where different clients all have different API versions. With FaceTime, I think Apple progressively lost its incentive to make it a standard even as it rapidly began developing it to the point where it would make sense to license.
And of course, the point of the article is that after spending millions (Google) or BILLIONS (Microsoft), the two primary potential licensees left are not exactly interested in dropping what they're doing to adopt FaceTime.
There's also no real business model supporting either Apple-created FaceTime clients for Android, Windows, WP7 and so on (how will Apple make money giving away free iCloud accounts?), nor really any third party implementations of FaceTime. Apple really only needed FaceTime to become a standard if there wouldn't have been substantial adoption otherwise.
Recall that since 2010, iPhone 4 went on to sell as many units as every previous iPhone generation had (more than anyone, including Apple, had predicted); iPod touch added millions, and the iPad put FaceTime on +60 million more devices. And ~40 million Macs. No real need to get Nokia's 10 million WP7 devices on board to make it viable.
The Tension is that if Apple doesn't control the end device, it can't be judge jury and executioner on abuses (send kill code... now. buh bye.), all the open sourcing the 'juicy bits' of authentication just exposes their walled garden, and allows someone else to make something at good.
I don't like apple baiting and switching on the open source stuff, but in reality, there is no logical market for this. Skype controls the low end, and I don't think Apple wants Android to be 'built in compatible' with Facetime. What's the value add?
Or maybe Apple could open up FaceTime so that we ACTUALLY HAVE JUST ONE SYSTEM BEING USED UNLIKE FRIGGING ICHAT WHERE EVERYONE SAID, "NOPE, NOT GONNA BE COMPATIBLE!" AND SKYPE DID THEIR OWN THING MAKING A BUNCH OF WORTHLESS, INCOMPATIBLE SYSTEMS.
These morons don't want to use the standards that Apple sets because they don't like being told what to do. My response to that is, "how about actually being the first to make something worth using, then?"
Same with USB at first, same with Thunderbolt.
I don't think you can blame Skype or the third parties on this one. When Apple introduced FaceTime, they promised that they would release it as an open standard. To my knowledge, they have never done so.
Now, it's possible that Apple has offered it to third parties and they have refused to accept it, but I've never seen anything even suggesting that. If that were true, though, then you could blame the third parties. But if Apple failed to make it available for licensing, you'd have to blame Apple.
So, Apple, make a FaceTime app for Android and Windows, and then you can still control access while opening up and making FaceTime the de facto industry standard - maybe make the requirement for it to work be that the individual set up an iCloud account...
That's a good idea, too. However, I'm not sure I see Apple doing it because of the fragmentation and zillions of different phones they'd have to support.
I don't get it… this is FaceTime. You're telling me that we'll start to see spam VIDEO calls where we just see a telemarketer sitting in his cubicle as he tries to sell us crap? Do you seriously think that this would ever happen for any reason ever? That isn't going to happen...
Well... it happens today on Skype. Do a Google search for "Skype Urgent Notification".
This article is ok, but the author does not have any understanding of video calling beyond the vendors noted in the article. The idea that Apple could only benefit by licensing FaceTime to mobile vendors misses the whole VoIP and Telepresence/Video markets. A market that is already compatible with FaceTime where it counts. This is exactly Microsoft's point when mentioning VoIP. Don't get me wrong, not a fan of Microsoft or Skype. Microsoft is opening Skype to Lync, but they are almost as bad as Apple, but at least they never promised interop.
Apple needs to open this up. Of course they have to clean up the FaceTime addressing to not use addressing that is owned by other companies, ISPs, etc by forcing all address they route to be in one of their domains. Because of Steve's public promise, I'm pretty sure they are going to have to do it. I thought of how to force the issue in the US and EU while reading this article and will have to look into getting the ball rolling.
Video calling is awesome, but it needs to be as ubiquitous with full interop with existing voice. Having a SIP address that anyone on the planet can call in HD is great. It just sucks that these islands exist where they should not.
Want a free open standards HD soft client, free address, free registration, to call other standards based clients including the highest-end Telepresence systems?
Want a free open standards HD soft client, free address, free registration, to call other standards asked clients including the highest-end Telepresence systems?
I have only used Skype. Do any other platforms support txt, IM, phone calls to actual phone #, virtual phone #, video, file transfers, image attachments, busy, away messages, avatars, slogans/taglines, address books, support for all OS, conference calls, and all the other features that are supported within the single Skype application?
Facetime being tied to Apple hardware makes it a non starter. Apple is not even in this discussion unless they open up facetime.
Google talk/hangouts (whatever they call it now), and Skype although are islands, they are Islands with multiple bridges that allow you access.
Facetime is even a non starter for most of Apple products. I bet skype usage Kills facetime usage on Apple products.
When your competitors are on every connected internet device and with a feature like video chat, you can't win. Facetime will never be competative with the likes of Skype, Google video chat, and facebook video chat (skype), and oovoo. Facetime is a non starter it should not be in the conversation until it provides access to its island.
You know how ridiculous facetime is? Imagine is Apple only allowed voice phone calls to only apple users. Or gmail users being able to send emails to other gmail users.
Playing gate keeper with communication without the vast majority market share= slow death. Facetime does not stand a chance.
I have only used Skype. Do any other platforms support txt, IM, phone calls to actual phone #, virtual phone #, video, file transfers, image attachments, busy, away messages, avatars, slogans/taglines, address books, support for all OS, conference calls, and all the other features that are supported within the single Skype application?
The only thing close to chat is gmail/gtalk. You can't seperate the two.
Want a free open standards HD soft client, free address, free registration, to call other standards asked clients including the highest-end Telepresence systems? Http://www.ciscojabbervideo.com
I have only used Skype. Do any other platforms support txt, IM, phone calls to actual phone #, virtual phone #, video, file transfers, image attachments, busy, away messages, avatars, slogans/taglines, address books, support for all OS, conference calls, and all the other features that are supported within the single Skype application?
My bad. I didn't realize Skype had become the MySpace of video clients. High-quality, low-latency video calling is not for you.
Try to think critically about this before posting such ludicrous things.
No, you're right. Why would a company want to call millions of people, with the ability to show them fancy images and rolling video while trying to sell them something? For free, I might add. Have you never heard of Telemarketers?
At least current Telemarketers have to pay for absurdly high phone bills to call half of the country -- imagine if they could call you for free.
Yes, this would happen. It would happen overnight. And no, it's not happening right now, because Apple doesn't allow just anyone to start randomly "dialling" millions of different email addresses (reason #4,961 why Apple's implementations are always better than everyone else's -- they think about these things).
Add Facetime over 3G and there goes your monthly bandwidth damn fast
My bad. I didn't realize Skype had become the MySpace of video clients. High-quality, low-latency video calling is not for you.
Skype is fine for me. The only quality issues I notice are related to network bandwidth. The video looks great and the audio is perfectly in sync if you have a good high speed connection. I do use a lot of the integrated features also. Overall I think it works well. I am sure there are higher quality video chat clients but I don't need any better video. The main thing is that all my contacts abroad use Skype so what good would a higher quality video client be if I had no one to talk to. I don't need perfection in video I need adequate video with ubiquity of platform.
I bet skype usage Kills facetime usage on Apple products.
Hasn't so far. Guess that's that.
You can use any video you want for FaceTime today on the Mac client as long as the device looks like a compatible camera. Even if it is a FireWire camera playing back a pre-recoded video. I would also fully expect you can script calling of FaceTime with AppleScript to complete the solution. If Apple doesn't open FaceTime it isn't the end of the world since the hardware can just run other software. It would just be a truly consumer friendly action to live up to their promise.
You can use any video you want for FaceTime today on the Mac client as long as the device looks like a compatible camera. Even if it is a FireWire camera playing back a pre-recoded video.
Ah! That's actually pretty cool. Thanks; I didn't know that.
My bad. I didn't realize Skype had become the MySpace of video clients. High-quality, low-latency video calling is not for you.
Skype is fine for me. The only quality issues I notice are related to network bandwidth. The video looks great and the audio is perfectly in sync if you have a good high speed connection. I do use a lot of the integrated features also. Overall I think it works well. I am sure there are higher quality video chat clients but I don't need any better video. The main thing is that all my contacts abroad use Skype so what good would a higher quality video client be if I had no one to talk to. I don't need perfection in video I need adequate video with ubiquity of platform.
Ubiquity of platform is the issue with all of these vendors in the article. That is why people would benifit from open standards interop. Your experience sounds reasonable. The one thing you cited about network bandwidth is part of the point. Great clients can do some fantastic things to minimize and sometimes even eliminate the issues as compared to Ok clients under the same conditions. One example is that a higher quality camera will introduce less noise in the video. The less noise means more efficiency is possible in the encoding. Efficient encoding means less bandwidth is actually required. The encoding can be more efficient in the software or hardware client as a seperate factor as well. These clients can also employ various techniques to conceal problems, adapt to network conditions, etc. So the quality of client/endpoint has a great deal to do with the overall quality of your conversations. Even though Skype quality has improved, it is very easy to beat.
This is Apple's fault for not opening up FaceTime. They should've done that by now.
Those are actually two seperate issues. The proposed standards are for web based calling within a browser (think W3C). Opening FaceTime for standards based interop just puts more muscle behind having standards based video in browsers. Google's proposal is by far the best and closest aligned to standards. Of course their codec selection is the only real problem with it. H.264 is the codec that needs to be used to make the feature more than a political statement about royalties for codecs and hatred for Apple.
Ubiquity of platform is the issue with all of these vendors in the article. That is why people would benifit from open standards interop.
Interoperability might be good for end users but companies have very little to gain from it unless they have a really small market share. Then Interoperability is to their advantage. Skype already has the largest market share so they have absolutely no motivation to open their code or adopt open standards. Apple seems to be rethinking that situation as well right now. When they first launched FaceTime, they had close to zero percent of the video chat market so offering to open source the protocol seemed like a good idea. Now that they have such a strong foothold in the mobile space the thought of giving away one of their distinct marketing advantages doesn't make much sense. I get the feeling they will renege on their original promise.
Comments
One other relevant aspect of FaceTime being closed: it has rapidly evolved over the past two years in order to 1) first get established 2) begin working on the phone-free iPod touch 3) interconnect with Mac desktop systems.
Opening a standard and then changing it quickly has bad results. Look at Android fragmentation, where different clients all have different API versions. With FaceTime, I think Apple progressively lost its incentive to make it a standard even as it rapidly began developing it to the point where it would make sense to license.
And of course, the point of the article is that after spending millions (Google) or BILLIONS (Microsoft), the two primary potential licensees left are not exactly interested in dropping what they're doing to adopt FaceTime.
There's also no real business model supporting either Apple-created FaceTime clients for Android, Windows, WP7 and so on (how will Apple make money giving away free iCloud accounts?), nor really any third party implementations of FaceTime. Apple really only needed FaceTime to become a standard if there wouldn't have been substantial adoption otherwise.
Recall that since 2010, iPhone 4 went on to sell as many units as every previous iPhone generation had (more than anyone, including Apple, had predicted); iPod touch added millions, and the iPad put FaceTime on +60 million more devices. And ~40 million Macs. No real need to get Nokia's 10 million WP7 devices on board to make it viable.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
Stop just saying words, please.
usb 3.0 > firewire
Glad apple included it in their latest MBA even though its supported natively.
The Tension is that if Apple doesn't control the end device, it can't be judge jury and executioner on abuses (send kill code... now. buh bye.), all the open sourcing the 'juicy bits' of authentication just exposes their walled garden, and allows someone else to make something at good.
I don't like apple baiting and switching on the open source stuff, but in reality, there is no logical market for this. Skype controls the low end, and I don't think Apple wants Android to be 'built in compatible' with Facetime. What's the value add?
I don't think you can blame Skype or the third parties on this one. When Apple introduced FaceTime, they promised that they would release it as an open standard. To my knowledge, they have never done so.
Now, it's possible that Apple has offered it to third parties and they have refused to accept it, but I've never seen anything even suggesting that. If that were true, though, then you could blame the third parties. But if Apple failed to make it available for licensing, you'd have to blame Apple.
That's a good idea, too. However, I'm not sure I see Apple doing it because of the fragmentation and zillions of different phones they'd have to support.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
You're telling me that we'll start to see spam VIDEO calls where we just see a telemarketer sitting in his cubicle as he tries to sell us crap?
You're taking video conferencing entirely too literally.
It's just a video stream. Any video stream. Ever hear of a tv commercial? It's a video stream. Pictures, graphics, voiceover. Selling you something.
A pre-recorded voice chat, if you will. Much like a pre-recorded telemarketer over the phone.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
I don't get it… this is FaceTime. You're telling me that we'll start to see spam VIDEO calls where we just see a telemarketer sitting in his cubicle as he tries to sell us crap? Do you seriously think that this would ever happen for any reason ever? That isn't going to happen...
Well... it happens today on Skype. Do a Google search for "Skype Urgent Notification".
Apple needs to open this up. Of course they have to clean up the FaceTime addressing to not use addressing that is owned by other companies, ISPs, etc by forcing all address they route to be in one of their domains. Because of Steve's public promise, I'm pretty sure they are going to have to do it. I thought of how to force the issue in the US and EU while reading this article and will have to look into getting the ball rolling.
Video calling is awesome, but it needs to be as ubiquitous with full interop with existing voice. Having a SIP address that anyone on the planet can call in HD is great. It just sucks that these islands exist where they should not.
Want a free open standards HD soft client, free address, free registration, to call other standards based clients including the highest-end Telepresence systems?
Http://www.ciscojabbervideo.com
Not a commercial, just an option to try out an open standards service. Oh, pretty sure you can use the service with their iPad client too.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Phone-UI-Guy
Want a free open standards HD soft client, free address, free registration, to call other standards asked clients including the highest-end Telepresence systems?
Http://www.ciscojabbervideo.com
I have only used Skype. Do any other platforms support txt, IM, phone calls to actual phone #, virtual phone #, video, file transfers, image attachments, busy, away messages, avatars, slogans/taglines, address books, support for all OS, conference calls, and all the other features that are supported within the single Skype application?
Facetime being tied to Apple hardware makes it a non starter. Apple is not even in this discussion unless they open up facetime.
Google talk/hangouts (whatever they call it now), and Skype although are islands, they are Islands with multiple bridges that allow you access.
Facetime is even a non starter for most of Apple products. I bet skype usage Kills facetime usage on Apple products.
When your competitors are on every connected internet device and with a feature like video chat, you can't win. Facetime will never be competative with the likes of Skype, Google video chat, and facebook video chat (skype), and oovoo. Facetime is a non starter it should not be in the conversation until it provides access to its island.
You know how ridiculous facetime is? Imagine is Apple only allowed voice phone calls to only apple users. Or gmail users being able to send emails to other gmail users.
Playing gate keeper with communication without the vast majority market share= slow death. Facetime does not stand a chance.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mstone
I have only used Skype. Do any other platforms support txt, IM, phone calls to actual phone #, virtual phone #, video, file transfers, image attachments, busy, away messages, avatars, slogans/taglines, address books, support for all OS, conference calls, and all the other features that are supported within the single Skype application?
The only thing close to chat is gmail/gtalk. You can't seperate the two.
My bad. I didn't realize Skype had become the MySpace of video clients. High-quality, low-latency video calling is not for you.
Originally Posted by bcode
Why would a company want to call millions of people, with the ability to show them fancy images and rolling video while trying to sell them something?
That can't be done with FaceTime in the first place, can it?
…it's not happening right now, because Apple doesn't allow just anyone to start randomly "dialing" millions of different email addresses…
Can't it just dial out to anyone whose address/number reports as being set up with FaceTime? How is that hard to automate?
Originally Posted by mstone
Are you sure your hatred for Skype doesn't stem from some other personal bias.
I'm certain.
Originally Posted by Just_Me
usb 3.0 > firewire
Thunderbolt >> USB 3.
Originally Posted by bikertwin
It's just a video stream. Any video stream. Ever hear of a tv commercial? It's a video stream. Pictures, graphics, voiceover. Selling you something.
A pre-recorded voice chat, if you will. Much like a pre-recorded telemarketer over the phone.
How am I supposed to do that with FaceTime right now, if that's even possible?
Originally Posted by Techstalker
I bet skype usage Kills facetime usage on Apple products.
Hasn't so far. Guess that's that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bcode
Try to think critically about this before posting such ludicrous things.
No, you're right. Why would a company want to call millions of people, with the ability to show them fancy images and rolling video while trying to sell them something? For free, I might add. Have you never heard of Telemarketers?
At least current Telemarketers have to pay for absurdly high phone bills to call half of the country -- imagine if they could call you for free.
Yes, this would happen. It would happen overnight. And no, it's not happening right now, because Apple doesn't allow just anyone to start randomly "dialling" millions of different email addresses (reason #4,961 why Apple's implementations are always better than everyone else's -- they think about these things).
Add Facetime over 3G and there goes your monthly bandwidth damn fast
Quote:
Originally Posted by Phone-UI-Guy
My bad. I didn't realize Skype had become the MySpace of video clients. High-quality, low-latency video calling is not for you.
Skype is fine for me. The only quality issues I notice are related to network bandwidth. The video looks great and the audio is perfectly in sync if you have a good high speed connection. I do use a lot of the integrated features also. Overall I think it works well. I am sure there are higher quality video chat clients but I don't need any better video. The main thing is that all my contacts abroad use Skype so what good would a higher quality video client be if I had no one to talk to. I don't need perfection in video I need adequate video with ubiquity of platform.
You can use any video you want for FaceTime today on the Mac client as long as the device looks like a compatible camera. Even if it is a FireWire camera playing back a pre-recoded video. I would also fully expect you can script calling of FaceTime with AppleScript to complete the solution. If Apple doesn't open FaceTime it isn't the end of the world since the hardware can just run other software. It would just be a truly consumer friendly action to live up to their promise.
Originally Posted by Phone-UI-Guy
You can use any video you want for FaceTime today on the Mac client as long as the device looks like a compatible camera. Even if it is a FireWire camera playing back a pre-recoded video.
Ah! That's actually pretty cool. Thanks; I didn't know that.
This is Apple's fault for not opening up FaceTime. They should've done that by now.
Ubiquity of platform is the issue with all of these vendors in the article. That is why people would benifit from open standards interop. Your experience sounds reasonable. The one thing you cited about network bandwidth is part of the point. Great clients can do some fantastic things to minimize and sometimes even eliminate the issues as compared to Ok clients under the same conditions. One example is that a higher quality camera will introduce less noise in the video. The less noise means more efficiency is possible in the encoding. Efficient encoding means less bandwidth is actually required. The encoding can be more efficient in the software or hardware client as a seperate factor as well. These clients can also employ various techniques to conceal problems, adapt to network conditions, etc. So the quality of client/endpoint has a great deal to do with the overall quality of your conversations. Even though Skype quality has improved, it is very easy to beat.
Those are actually two seperate issues. The proposed standards are for web based calling within a browser (think W3C). Opening FaceTime for standards based interop just puts more muscle behind having standards based video in browsers. Google's proposal is by far the best and closest aligned to standards. Of course their codec selection is the only real problem with it. H.264 is the codec that needs to be used to make the feature more than a political statement about royalties for codecs and hatred for Apple.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Phone-UI-Guy
Ubiquity of platform is the issue with all of these vendors in the article. That is why people would benifit from open standards interop.
Interoperability might be good for end users but companies have very little to gain from it unless they have a really small market share. Then Interoperability is to their advantage. Skype already has the largest market share so they have absolutely no motivation to open their code or adopt open standards. Apple seems to be rethinking that situation as well right now. When they first launched FaceTime, they had close to zero percent of the video chat market so offering to open source the protocol seemed like a good idea. Now that they have such a strong foothold in the mobile space the thought of giving away one of their distinct marketing advantages doesn't make much sense. I get the feeling they will renege on their original promise.