5 ms·

Facetime has the best audio/video quality of any conferencing software I've used by a mile. If free software, vendor lock in, excluding those without Apple prod

Facetime has the best audio/video quality of any conferencing software I've used by a mile. If free software, vendor lock in, excluding those without Apple products, etc. etc. aren't sticking points for you, Facetime is awesome for a family/group of friends with iDevices.

generatorguy 7y ago
My circles are all on zoom due to superior audio and video quality in zoom than FaceTime for groups. 1 on 1 still FaceTime
nicoburns 7y ago
It's a shame FaceTime was never made open. I heard that this was Apple's original intention, but there were issues with patents (not held by Apple).
- lberk 7y ago
  I'm not sure it was actually Apple's original intention. Rumour has it the decision was made on stage[0] [0] - https://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/05/11/facetime-standard https://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/05/11/facetime-standa...
  - scarejunba 7y ago
    What an absolute legend, that guy, making product decisions on stage hahaha. I absolutely love it.
tootie 7y ago
I try to avoid Apple products. They're not worth the high price.
- alharith 7y ago
  Depends on how you are defining "worth" here. They are the only devices "worth" their price as evidenced by how well they hold their value and how much consumers are willing to pay for them. They are not "worth" the high price if you are valuing the internals (what GPU, processor, memory, HD you get).
  - tootie 7y ago
    I've ended up with multiple iPads over the years despite my best efforts. They definitely do stop working after a while. I've also noticed MacBooks get burning hot doing a video conference for more than 15 minutes. And I'm not a hardcore gamer, but my kids play Minecraft and it's fine by glitchy. Compared to the Acer I bough for $700 with a basic Nvidia card and upgradeable memory that can handle everything I throw at it. My last Acer ran fine for almost 6 years but I dropped it one too many times.
    - alharith 7y ago
      Now do me this favor: take your experience and opinion, and compare it to others. How many people share this with you? If the Acer was just that substantially better in terms of value and build quality, why isn't Acer the #1 laptop in the US? Why do so many companies, organizations, and developers not share this take with you? What may you be missing?
- rajlego 7y ago
  hackintosh's aren't all that hard to build
  - enitihas 7y ago
    Hackintosh are hard to build, by any reasonable definition, even for an average HN users. It's possible some people find that easy, but surely it is much harder than following an even medium difficulty tutorial.
    - rajlego 7y ago
      Have you tried building one before? I built mine for the first time in February with 0 prior experience with such things and followed this guide: https://hackintosh.gitbook.io/-r-hackintosh-vanilla-desktop-guide/ https://hackintosh.gitbook.io/-r-hackintosh-vanilla-desktop-... If you're doing a config with a motherboard that's well used you can generally find the right configs to use. If you're using something not often used, you'll have trouble with the initial setup but once you get over that initial setup trouble in my experience everything will work and stay fine. There are also lots of helpful people in the /r/hackintosh subreddit and discord if you run into troubles. I was debating between building a hackintosh and buying the new MacBook pro and I can say 100% it was worth it.
  - distances 7y ago
    I'm now first time using Mac due to my project. It works fine, but I do prefer Linux for development. Hackintosh probably makes sense if you're stuck on some Mac software though.
    - rajlego 7y ago
      Ironically I'm using Mac over Linux because I want to use parallels to run a windows application that I must use. I tried using VMware for a while but it drove me insane that everytime I switched workspaces it would exit fullscreen.
InternetOfStuff 7y ago
> Facetime has the best audio/video quality of any conferencing software I've used by a mile. Out of curiosity: can you compare it to Google Duo? Because it has the best quality and stability of any 1:1 product I've ever tried (never tried Facetime)
- tatersolid 7y ago
  WTH is Google Duo? They have a third video conferencing solution besides Hangouts and Meet? Madness.
  - InternetOfStuff 7y ago
    So they do :-D It's getting long in the tooth by Google standards I suppose. Who knows when they'll axe it. I think it's strictly 1:1 (which, I gather, Facetime isn't?). It has good video quality, but what I like most about it is that it's nicely resilient on dodgy connections. I've often used it wandering around my garden, at the fringe of Wifi range, and it does the right thing: tries to stay on Wifi, but switches over to 4G if the connection becomes too dodgy, then back to Wifi once that's stable again. All of that with pretty minimal artefacts.

generatorguy 7y ago

My circles are all on zoom due to superior audio and video quality in zoom than FaceTime for groups. 1 on 1 still FaceTime

nicoburns 7y ago

It's a shame FaceTime was never made open. I heard that this was Apple's original intention, but there were issues with patents (not held by Apple).

lberk 7y ago
I'm not sure it was actually Apple's original intention. Rumour has it the decision was made on stage[0] [0] - https://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/05/11/facetime-standard https://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/05/11/facetime-standa...
- scarejunba 7y ago
  What an absolute legend, that guy, making product decisions on stage hahaha. I absolutely love it.

tootie 7y ago

I try to avoid Apple products. They're not worth the high price.

alharith 7y ago
Depends on how you are defining "worth" here. They are the only devices "worth" their price as evidenced by how well they hold their value and how much consumers are willing to pay for them. They are not "worth" the high price if you are valuing the internals (what GPU, processor, memory, HD you get).
- tootie 7y ago
  I've ended up with multiple iPads over the years despite my best efforts. They definitely do stop working after a while. I've also noticed MacBooks get burning hot doing a video conference for more than 15 minutes. And I'm not a hardcore gamer, but my kids play Minecraft and it's fine by glitchy. Compared to the Acer I bough for $700 with a basic Nvidia card and upgradeable memory that can handle everything I throw at it. My last Acer ran fine for almost 6 years but I dropped it one too many times.
  - alharith 7y ago
    Now do me this favor: take your experience and opinion, and compare it to others. How many people share this with you? If the Acer was just that substantially better in terms of value and build quality, why isn't Acer the #1 laptop in the US? Why do so many companies, organizations, and developers not share this take with you? What may you be missing?
rajlego 7y ago
hackintosh's aren't all that hard to build
- enitihas 7y ago
  Hackintosh are hard to build, by any reasonable definition, even for an average HN users. It's possible some people find that easy, but surely it is much harder than following an even medium difficulty tutorial.
  - rajlego 7y ago
    Have you tried building one before? I built mine for the first time in February with 0 prior experience with such things and followed this guide: https://hackintosh.gitbook.io/-r-hackintosh-vanilla-desktop-guide/ https://hackintosh.gitbook.io/-r-hackintosh-vanilla-desktop-... If you're doing a config with a motherboard that's well used you can generally find the right configs to use. If you're using something not often used, you'll have trouble with the initial setup but once you get over that initial setup trouble in my experience everything will work and stay fine. There are also lots of helpful people in the /r/hackintosh subreddit and discord if you run into troubles. I was debating between building a hackintosh and buying the new MacBook pro and I can say 100% it was worth it.
- distances 7y ago
  I'm now first time using Mac due to my project. It works fine, but I do prefer Linux for development. Hackintosh probably makes sense if you're stuck on some Mac software though.
  - rajlego 7y ago
    Ironically I'm using Mac over Linux because I want to use parallels to run a windows application that I must use. I tried using VMware for a while but it drove me insane that everytime I switched workspaces it would exit fullscreen.

InternetOfStuff 7y ago

> Facetime has the best audio/video quality of any conferencing software I've used by a mile. Out of curiosity: can you compare it to Google Duo? Because it has the best quality and stability of any 1:1 product I've ever tried (never tried Facetime)

tatersolid 7y ago
WTH is Google Duo? They have a third video conferencing solution besides Hangouts and Meet? Madness.
- InternetOfStuff 7y ago
  So they do :-D It's getting long in the tooth by Google standards I suppose. Who knows when they'll axe it. I think it's strictly 1:1 (which, I gather, Facetime isn't?). It has good video quality, but what I like most about it is that it's nicely resilient on dodgy connections. I've often used it wandering around my garden, at the fringe of Wifi range, and it does the right thing: tries to stay on Wifi, but switches over to 4G if the connection becomes too dodgy, then back to Wifi once that's stable again. All of that with pretty minimal artefacts.