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Facetime for the Mac
- hasenj 16y agoIs this different from yahoo messenger's video calls?
- swilliams 16y agoIn that you can video chat with someone with the proper iOS device.
- zacharycohn 16y agoiPhone <--> Desktop
- pt 16y agoBoth have platform limitations at this time: Facetime: iPhone <--> Mac Yahoo Messenger : iPhone <--> PC
- zacharycohn 16y agoSorry, I guess the implied "mac" part of "Desktop" didn't come across.
- contol-m 16y agoNope. Yahoo Messenger video chat works on a Mac as well.
- eddieplan9 16y agoUnfortunately, it mistakenly points to iWork 09 trial download for now.
- philwelch 16y agoAccounts are tied to the email address on your Apple ID. Interesting way of getting around having to create another IM account.
- e1ven 16y agoIt's also portable to when there is a version of FaceTime for Android/etc. They had originally claimed it to be an open standard.
- glhaynes 16y agoYeah, has there been any progress on publishing specs?
- ceejayoz 16y agoNope.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- mikedanko 16y agoAre you sure? That seems to be nothing but delivery of transport streams over HTTP and suggests nothing of negotiating calls ala SIP.
- alexophile 16y agoMy bad - that was for HTTP Live Streaming. FTTM.
- mikedanko 16y agoAccording to the presentation, it's supposed to be made a standard. I'm assuming this would hit the IETF's Audio/Video transport working group, so that'd be where to keep a lookout.
- 16y ago
- CharlesPal 16y agoUse the bottom link. The top link is pointing to iWork 09
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- rflrob 16y ago"the call rings through on every Mac you own, even if face time isn't running" Does this sound just a little too intrusive to anyone else?
- ynniv 16y agoHave you heard of a telephone? Do you know how they work? You can turn it off in the preferences.
- Samuel_Michon 16y agoYou just made me laugh out loud, which I rarely do while sitting at a computer. I honestly thought rflrob's comment made a lot of sense, until I read yours. I have to say though: I absolutely loathe doorbells and ringing phones, they stress me out. Ideally, my doorbell would have a vibrate mode, making the floor gently purr.
- glhaynes 16y agoYou can toggle it on or off individually per device, they just mean the FaceTime app itself doesn't have to be "open".
- rbanffy 16y agoSo, it's actually running. You just can't see it.
- ben1040 16y agoYep -- looks like it's got a push listener running in the background, even though FaceTime isn't running. $ ps ax | grep FaceTime 5317 ?? S 0:00.38 /Applications/FaceTime.app/Contents/PrivateFrameworks/IMCore.framework/imagent.app/Contents/MacOS/imagent 5318 ?? S 0:00.25 /Applications/FaceTime.app/Contents/Frameworks/ApplePushService.framework/apsd-ft
- ceejayoz 16y agoCan't get it to connect. @SteveStreza reports his doesn't work on a wired connection at all.
- lukifer 16y agoIs there a reason they couldn't have just folded this feature into iChat?
- citricsquid 16y agoit's not REVOLUTIONARY then, is it?
- bkyle 16y agoRevolutionary: no. Magical: yes.
- johns 16y agoI'm guessing so they can do a Windows client with a consistent UI.
- e1ven 16y agoI wish they had- It loses several major features of iChat sharing- Screensharing, replaceable backgrounds, Multi-person chat...
- fredleblanc 16y agoWe just downloaded it and tried it (bringing my total Facetime experiences to two, both of which occurred about 10 feet from the person on the other end). The interface is more iOS-y than normal for OS X. The picture quality was pretty good (the Mac being wired, iPhone 4 being wireless of course). Simple to use, pretty good stuff.
- bobx11 16y agocalled the wife from the mac to her iphone... she didn't know the difference. later she called me back on facetime to the pc and it just popped up - overall not bad!
- eli 16y agoIt would be exciting if I'm proven wrong, but I'm not buying the hype about video chat. Even if/when I'm able to video chat anyone from my iPhone without being on wifi, I still don't imagine it being terribly useful. And the few times I've tried using video chat in a business setting have not been very fruitful.
- jw84 16y agoI work in a startup in SF. I've been using video chat for awhile. We go out of our way to find good quality stable video chat solutions. Everyone on our floor of startups use video chat. People not able to video chat with us are now equal to people asking us to fax something in.
- gurraman 16y agoVideo chat is just one of those nice-to-haves in my opinion. I work remotely a lot and always choose audio chat over video chat. Video chatting, in that context, just doesn't add anything for me. Video chat was great when my girlfriend was living abroad for a couple of months though!
- kgroll 16y agoI'm definitely not suggesting that Facetime is, or will be, a failure. Thinking about it, however, reminded me of a passage from Infinite Jest about the failure of video chat. (1) It turned out there there was something terribly stressful about visual telephone interfaces that hadn’t been stressful at all about voice-only interfaces. Videophone consumers seemed suddenly to realize that they’d been subject to an insidious but wholly marvelous delusion about conventional voice-only telephony. ... EDIT: Instead of that wall of text, here's a link to the rest of that passage. Sorry about that. http://stevereads.com/weblog/2010/06/07/iphone-4-facetimeinfinite-jest-mashup/ http://stevereads.com/weblog/2010/06/07/iphone-4-facetimeinf...
- ugh 16y agoVideo chat it not the next big thing. It’s not telephony only better. It’s not instant messaging only better. It’s not telegraphy only better. Video chat is merely a different way of communicating that might be useful in certain, even rare, cases. I actually think that Apple’s ads do a great job of capturing what those use cases might be. They are somewhat kitschy but they at least don’t suggest that video chat might be useful for, say, restaurant reservations. Telephones are awesome. They get most any job you throw at them done with ease. Why would anyone go through all the trouble of buying expensive stuff and setting all that technology up and then paying much more just to get a grainy stuttering picture? That was the situation until only a few years ago. If you want people to actually use video chat in those rare instances when it’s appropriate you have to make it really frictionless. Skype does a great job at that and I think Apple is also doing quite well, at least if they can increase interoperability in the future.
- commieneko 16y agoFacetime, and video-phony in general, fits into a continuum of communication strategies. When you want to _see_ someone, you video them. When you only want to hear them, you audio them. When you don't want to hear them you text them. Then there's the whole time-shifting thingie. What I would like now is the video equivalent of an email, voice mail, or text message. I _could_ record a video, and email it, but...
- 16y ago
- thought_alarm 16y agoJudging from this FaceTime app and the new iLife apps, it looks like there will be all sorts of new iOS-like UI goodies for Cocoa 10.7 developers to use.
- dmpatierno 16y agoMy favorite feature of FaceTime for the Mac: it stays full screen even when you tab away to do work on another monitor. FaceTime is now my preferred video conferencing software.
- neovive 16y agoFacetime could become a strong competitor to Skype once a Windows client is available as the UI seems very polished and well "integrated". Now only if my parents had a Mac so I can test it out. They always seem to have issues getting video chat working on Skype/Windows.
- callmeed 16y agoI was actually thinking today that Apple should buy Skype ... recalling the recent post about Apple buying Facebook, I think Skype would be a better fit.
- moe 16y agoNot really. Skype is strong in businesses. In the office-setting people first and foremost use the text-chat, then the audio calls, then the conference calls. Video calls come dead last. I wouldn't be surprised if even desktop sharing is used more than the video feature.
- pohl 16y agoIn our office we use any old jabber client for text chat, telephones for audio & conference calls, and only resort to Skype for video calls.
- alphabeat 16y agoThe desktop sharing of skype has a long way to go to be used seriously. I can only assume from your comment that you haven't used it. They may have their audio codec down, and the video codec works for live video, but not for content. It's the same deal with JPEG for text for instance.
- todd3834 16y agoI like the icon. I am really glad to see they didn't go the same direction as the new iTunes icon.
- pluies 16y agoWhy set the minimum OS to Snow Leopard? That sounds a bit of a far-fetched requirement for some videoconferencing software.
- rantfoil 16y agoForced obsolescence.
- g_lined 16y agoMy guess is that it uses some newer APIs which were introduced in 10.6. This may be because they wanted to use Grand Central Dispatch (better multi-core support), a later addition to Core Graphics or simply an API which gave their GUI the more iOS feel compared to the GUI elements in 10.5.
- nico 16y agoI just wish there was a Facetime API.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]