4 ms·
It's dead anyway, unless all your contacts (the ones you want to communicate with) own Apple devices.
by gsich 8y ago
It's dead anyway, unless all your contacts (the ones you want to communicate with) own Apple devices.
- overcast 8y agoSo essentially everyone I know. We're not talking windows mobile here.
- blowski 8y agoOnly the person you want to talk with at that moment needs to be on an Apple device. For example, my wife and I both have iPhones, so we use FaceTime because it’s easier. My niece doesn’t, so we use Skype. Just because you personally aren’t using it, doesn’t mean it’s “dead”.
- gsich 8y agoIt's dead. If Email would only work between the same vendor, I would call it dead too. So dead means technologically dead. I would not recommend anyone using it. It doesn't allow cross vendor communication.
- gsich 8y agoLove the downvotes from Apple fan(atics). It means that the truth stings.
- skrowl 8y agoThey love their walled garden. When you point out > 80% of new devices sold are Android and can't use FaceTime, they don't care and just downvote without comment.
- blowski 8y agoHN in general frowns upon flamewar topics. Making comments like “FaceTime is dead” with no data to back it up, and “it’s only iPhone fanatics downvoting me” doesn’t contribute to a meaningful discussion. That’s why it’s being downvoted.
- gsich 8y agoAlthough I haven't said your quotes directly, it's still the truth. Making the same comment about Skype wouldn't have resulted in downvotes. This is probably because although Android devices are more common in general terms, here it is more likely to be 50/50. Hence the downvotes from Apple fan(atics).
- 27182818284 8y agoHangouts has been noticeably dropping off in my life. I realized I was talking to fewer and fewer people on it once one person responded that she missed my Hangouts messages because she didn't even have the app installed anymore. On the flip side, I'm seeing a lot of non-technical people start to use Signal.
- soylentcola 8y agoI wonder how much of the Hangouts drop-off is a result the increased focus on smartphones over desktop/laptop for a lot of users. In the mid-late 2000s it was super common for me to chat with everyone this way. It was great on my phones back when SMS were often still limited and expensive and I could continue in the Gmail tab that was perpetually open on my PC when at home or at work. Practically everyone I knew had a Gmail address so we could keep a running set of conversations going even at work or other places where we might not have been able to install something like AIM in earlier years. With the shift to mobile-only (or at least mobile-mostly) for a lot of people, it wasn't a given that you would have GChat or, later, Hangouts. iPhone people might not bother to install it. Android people might gravitate toward Facebook since everyone was on it already. Google's tendency to make good services but fail to pitch them or stick to a focused strategy can't help either. Even though I tend to like their products, I can't honestly claim to appreciate the way they seemed to be finally integrating Voice, SMS, and IP-based chat into Hangouts...before then splitting them all off into multiple similar-but-different products. Now I still chat with plenty of people on Hangouts and have multiple years-spanning group chats still active. But I can't say I'm enthusiastic about the service or optimistic about its future. It could've been the cross-platform iMessage/Facetime competitor I wanted but now it feels like another wasted opportunity.
- ceejayoz 8y agoMy kids (aged 9) use it pretty much daily to keep in touch with family and to set up their own playdates in the neighborhood. Hardly dead - Apple has enough market share to make it compelling in plenty of cases, and there alternatives for talking to folks on other devices.
- gsich 8y agoYou just confirmed what I was saying the parent.
- sbuk 8y agoNot really. Dead by implication means either the service is going nowhere fast or no-one is using it, neither of which are remotely true.
- gsich 8y ago>going nowhere certainly true. Or are there other non-Apple devices capable of using it?
- arkades 8y agoApple owns 1/3 of the market. And insofar as it’s skewed upmarket, rather than a randomly distributed one out of three people, it easily owns entire social circles. On what planet is 1/3 dead?