Facetime finally pays off for me

[aphex]

My wife is in Costa Rica at the moment visiting with the family and she's able to video chat with me without either of us needing to sit in front of a computer. I'm also able to see the nieces and nephews to say hi, as well as give my sister in law a tour of our new house all from the palms of our hands.

Its nothing revolutionary, but it sure does come in handy. :thumbsup: facetime

 

[mmntech]

Too bad it only works iPhone 4 to iPhone4/iPod Touch. I wonder why Apple has never released an iChat app.

 

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

It's open industry standard. Don't just say iChat. Any video chatting service out there can tap into it.

But yes, iChat support would be a welcome edition to open it up to more users.

 

[jalaram]

It's open industry standard. Don't just say iChat. Any video chatting service out there can tap into it.

But yes, iChat support would be a welcome edition to open it up to more users.

That's what they say, but has the SDK been released or spec been published? Is Skype or any other company planning to support it? That would be cool.

 

[mmntech]

It's open industry standard. Don't just say iChat. Any video chatting service out there can tap into it.

But yes, iChat support would be a welcome edition to open it up to more users.

Beyond that, I was thinking more of an iChat app. A unified IM app for iOS.

 

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

I don't think that they have released the spec yet for developers. I wish they would already.

iChat isn't a unified IM client.

 

[silverpig]

I don't think that they have released the spec yet for developers. I wish they would already.

iChat isn't a unified IM client.

I'm pretty sure skype and fring do video chatting on the iPhone 4 now...

 

[Kaido]

My wife is in Costa Rica at the moment visiting with the family and she's able to video chat with me without either of us needing to sit in front of a computer. I'm also able to see the nieces and nephews to say hi, as well as give my sister in law a tour of our new house all from the palms of our hands.

Its nothing revolutionary, but it sure does come in handy. :thumbsup: facetime

Seeing someone in color, in motion, with audio, in the palm of your hand, wirelessly, from 1,000 miles away isn't revolutionary?

 

[TheStu]

Seeing someone in color, in motion, with audio, in the palm of your hand, wirelessly, from 1,000 miles away isn't revolutionary?

In the sense that others have been doing it for years. My friend goes to school in England, and when he was back stateside for vacation he sat on the porch with a laptop, and video chatted with his girlfriend back in the UK. He was sort of blown away by that. Just the convenience and whatnot.

 

[MJinZ]

My wife is in Costa Rica at the moment visiting with the family and she's able to video chat with me without either of us needing to sit in front of a computer. I'm also able to see the nieces and nephews to say hi, as well as give my sister in law a tour of our new house all from the palms of our hands.

Its nothing revolutionary, but it sure does come in handy. :thumbsup: facetime

America welcomes with open arms European and Asian Telecom technology from 10 years ago!

Nice!!

 

[MJinZ]

Seeing someone in color, in motion, with audio, in the palm of your hand, wirelessly, from 1,000 miles away isn't revolutionary?

It certainly was about 15 years ago.

 

[Kaido]

It certainly was about 15 years ago.

Form factor ftw.

 

[bearxor]

Seeing someone in color, in motion, with audio, in the palm of your hand, wirelessly, from 1,000 miles away isn't revolutionary?

In what was been frustratingly irritating, North American cellular carrier have been pulling front facing cameras off Windows Mobile phones for years. We could have had video calling here in the states 10 years ago (on Sprint most likely since most of their network was going EVDO in 2003) but, due to bandwidth fears, it just didn't happen until this year and even Sprint is the only one brave enough to do it over the network, it seems.

There really needs to be an open standard for this. I don't think Apple's is it though. Not because it isn't good, but because it's Apple's. How many other of Apple "open standards" have been widely adopted. I can only think of one, firewire, and I probably wouldn't even use the words 'widely adopted' for that.

 

[MJinZ]

In what was been frustratingly irritating, North American cellular carrier have been pulling front facing cameras off Windows Mobile phones for years. We could have had video calling here in the states 10 years ago (on Sprint most likely since most of their network was going EVDO in 2003) but, due to bandwidth fears, it just didn't happen until this year and even Sprint is the only one brave enough to do it over the network, it seems.

There really needs to be an open standard for this. I don't think Apple's is it though. Not because it isn't good, but because it's Apple's. How many other of Apple "open standards" have been widely adopted. I can only think of one, firewire, and I probably wouldn't even use the words 'widely adopted' for that.

Firewire lol. As if anyone has to save the 5 seconds of time transferring their Torrented music collection. OMG James Bond file transfer. LEETTTTTT.

 

[Illusio]

I'll be happy when facetime works over the 3g network. Having to have both of us be on a wifi limits its use for us.

 

[aphex]

I'll be happy when facetime works over the 3g network. Having to have both of us be on a wifi limits its use for us.

3G unrestrictor when jailbroken removes that limitation. My wife actually called me via facetime last night when I was at Walmart.

 

[GTSRguy]

Seeing someone in color, in motion, with audio, in the palm of your hand, wirelessly, from 1,000 miles away isn't revolutionary?

Heres a nice quote from PC Mag

"But FaceTime may still make a big splash. Apple is known for taking existing technologies and making them smoother, more usable, and better understood. The iPod wasn't the first MP3 player, and the iPhone wasn't the first smartphone. But both grabbed consumers' imaginations with interfaces that made their features very easy to use."

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2364801,00.asp

Some members think because that other phones did bad video calling a few years ago that makes facetime nothing special, sort-of like telling a guy with the first digital camera that its no big deal because we've had cameras for years....flame away

 

[Kmax82]

There really needs to be an open standard for this. I don't think Apple's is it though. Not because it isn't good, but because it's Apple's. How many other of Apple "open standards" have been widely adopted. I can only think of one, firewire, and I probably wouldn't even use the words 'widely adopted' for that.

Webkit. People are flocking to that in droves and it's actually good.

 

[cronos]

Too bad it only works iPhone 4 to iPhone4/iPod Touch. I wonder why Apple has never released an iChat app.

Wait, so Touch to Touch won't work?

 

[Kmax82]

Wait, so Touch to Touch won't work?

Yea, you can do Touch to Touch.

 

[Paperlantern]

Firewire lol. As if anyone has to save the 5 seconds of time transferring their Torrented music collection. OMG James Bond file transfer. LEETTTTTT.

The speed difference, even today will still amount to a lot more than 5 seconds. When firewire was created, it was BLAZING fast compared to any other transfer option available at the time. Networks were only 10/100MBit (and even that was semi new then), USB was only at 1.1 as a standard, which caps out theoretically at 11MBps and realistically at roughly 8 or 9.

Having Firewire at the time (around 1998, even though firewire actually was introduced in 1995), was INSANELY faster than anything else. Even a direct network connection was only 1/4 the speed of firewire. Yes, nowadays, firewire (at the more common 800MBps, even though there are applications that have firewire that is twice to 4 times that speed) is slower than (the fastest, but not more common) network, and only theoretically twice as fast as USB 2.0, so yeah, for most smaller transfers, NOW, it isnt a big difference in time, but then it was.

My 150GB backup i take weekly of my home server takes about 30 minutes on firewire... USB may take roughly 45 minutes to an hour, not a big save in time, but before USB 2.0, that same job... you would NEVER think to put it over USB, it would take over a day.

You try to back up 10 times that much, say 1 and a half terabytes, you are looking at roughly 5 hours to back up, vs 10 hours over USB. 3 TB is 10 hours over firewire, and 20 hours over USB, now the technology is looking more desireable isnt it. 3TB backup that can still be done overnight at a business, rather then over a weekend. Get the more expensive Firewire that runs 1600 and 3200MBps and the time is further reduced.

Yes there are faster or better backup solutions out there as well but they do cost a good bit of money, firewire is still, to this day one of the cheapest and fastest transfer technologies for large amounts of Data. Of course this could, and probably will change with the advent of USB 3.0's theoretical 4800MBps transfer speed.

 

[Kaido]

The speed difference, even today will still amount to a lot more than 5 seconds. When firewire was created, it was BLAZING fast compared to any other transfer option available at the time. Networks were only 10/100MBit (and even that was semi new then), USB was only at 1.1 as a standard, which caps out theoretically at 11MBps and realistically at roughly 8 or 9.

...

Not only that, but you get stable speeds. iirc USB 2.0 is technically faster, but it's not as stable for transfer speeds. I was a big fan of Firewire for a long time (mostly just use eSATA now). Most of the high-end audio equipment uses Firewire as well. It's still in such demand by music & video guys that Apple put it back on the 13" MBP after removing it!

 

[bearxor]

Webkit. People are flocking to that in droves and it's actually good.

Except... For the fact thy WebKit was basically lifted from KDE. Sure, Apple did a lot to Konqueror, but we can't really pretend like it was an Apple standard can we?

And not disparaging Apple here. They've done a lot for OSS I'm general. But taking OSS and forking it and calling it something new can't really qualify as an 'Apple Open Standard'.

Hell, FireWire barely qualifies. The only reason it does is because Apple did a lot (but not all) of the major work and they're main interest was replacing internal hard drive connectivity. We see how well that worked out. Would it be fair to say that FireWire failed because it didn't accomplish what it was created for?

 

[Kmax82]

Except... For the fact thy WebKit was basically lifted from KDE. Sure, Apple did a lot to Konqueror, but we can't really pretend like it was an Apple standard can we?

Hmm.. never knew that. Ok.. well that does change that a bit. I'd probably argue that Apple has done more for Konqueror than Konqueror will ever do, maybe.. I don't know enough about Konqueror to definitively state that though.

In the end, Apple creates things that benefit them, and sometimes it helps out others.

 

[bearxor]

I don't disagree with you. As I said, I think Apple does great stuff for the OSS community, but so do a lot of companies, including Microsoft (ha! My iPhone just autocaptialized Microsoft!).

And there's no doubt that Apples presense in the market changes thing for the better. Remember smartphonea in 2007? I sure do. I used WinMo devices for years and the iPhone changed everything as soon as it was announced. Remember what was considered a tablet 6 months ago? Next year, we'll be talking about how the AppleTV changed the marketplace, even though there's nothing especially great about it compare to a Roku player that's been on the maker for a few years.

That's what FaceTime will hopefully do. It will kick the video call market in the ass. I don't think FaceTime will end up being the defacto choice, as what cell phone maker or mobile os maker is going to want to adopt the technology of one of it's biggest rivals, but hopefully a standard will emerge and apple will not be slow to adopt it, if it's clear that FaceTime isn't going to win.