16 ms·

How Does FaceTime Work?

196 points by r4um 5y ago

nerdbaggy 5y ago
Here is a good write up on how the WebRTC implementation works for their new browser based calls. https://webrtchacks.com/facetime-finally-faces-webrtc-implementation-deep-dive/ https://webrtchacks.com/facetime-finally-faces-webrtc-implem...
sgt 5y ago
FaceTime is amazing. I keep in touch with my entire family using FaceTime video, often across thousands of kilometers. It's also such an equalizer, allowing even the non-computer literate to use it and focus on the actual conversations. In fact, my 103 year old grandmother is able to do video calls with me, which is great because I rarely see her in person these days. I don't think there exists an alternative she would be able to use.
- randomdata 5y ago
  Unfortunately, calls with more than two people seem to fall apart quickly if the network connection isn't perfect, even where Meets, Zoom, etc. work flawlessly.
  - acdha 5y ago
    This substantially the opposite of my experience so I’d bet there is some factor for proximity to CDNs or traffic shaping done by your ISP. FaceTime is rock-solid; Zoom is also good but has noticeably lower video quality (but good noise handling). Meet’s native apps are good but their browser UI is coded to break Firefox so I don’t use it much.
    - scatterhead 5y ago
      So it sounds like Facetime's Firefox support is better in your experience?
      - randomdata 5y ago
        The benefit of FaceTime being an open standard.
        imwillofficial 5y ago
        It’s not an open standard
        randomdata 5y ago
        Nor does it currently work in Firefox. Hence the continuation of the joke. It was originally announced as an open standard, though. Anyone who remembers Steve Jobs would have caught on. It is easy for us old-timers to forget how long ago that was now, so I extend my apologies to the youngsters.
        imwillofficial 5y ago
        Hahaha you’re right! I remember jobs saying that, or was it iMessage He was talking about?
      - acdha 5y ago
        I’d flip it the other way: Google decided to remove the benefits of portability, similar to how Zoom removed the benefits of being able to use their service without installing a client first. FaceTime is limited to Apple devices until iOS 15 allows anyone with a browser to join a call, so you’d think they’d be emphasizing the benefits of portability more.
      - blacksmith_tb 5y ago
        Facetime doesn't work in any browser, does it? On macOS and iOS it uses a dedicated app, the protocol is proprietary so no 3rd part clients exist?
        bleachedsleet 5y ago
        FaceTime is coming to the web https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/7/22522889/apple-facetime-android-windows-web-ios-15-wwdc https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/7/22522889/apple-facetime-an...
  - jwineinger 5y ago
    Agreed. For me, the hallmark of a good system is being able to forget that I'm using it. That has never happened to me with Facetime.
- trompetenaccoun 5y ago
  It's so great and easy to use it even works for video calls with a person in China, while all other foreign communication apps are blocked there. Isn't that interesting.
  - randomopining 5y ago
    CCP doing analysis on foreigners' faces and call contents so that they can cull dissention after they take over in 10 years. But Apple wants to do business there!
- throwthere 5y ago
  Semi-related question since I'm looking to get my grandma setup. Waffling between an iPhone and iPad, maybe an iPad mini but don't know if the air would be better (lighter I think). What device does your grandma use to FaceTime? Do you know does she do anything else with it?
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    I think iPad Air is worth it for older people since it does not cost much more and the grandparents in my family appreciate the size of the screen, especially since they use it with enlarged text size.
  - dekoruotas 5y ago
    Just three days ago I've set up my 93 year old grandfather on a Lenovo Smart Display 7. I think it has multiple benefits over an iSomething: - Always plugged in - no need to remember to charge - Shows our family picture albums that I can remotely update via my Google Photos - It is loud. Left the volume at 3/4 - Sits on a table and you're never holding it wrong™ - No settings to mess up, two previous tablets were too complicated
    - daemoon 5y ago
      You're one those who cannot let other people use and enjoy Apple products just because you do not like them.
    - acdha 5y ago
      Those are good selling points but all but the last applies equally to a tablet (e.g. there’s no law requiring you to use a tablet on battery). The key point is the single function: a general purpose computing device has more UI & management than some people want to deal with. This is something the industry really hasn’t done a great job with, especially since it overlaps with the problem of treating things as disposable because the revenue model for single purpose devices is mostly broken and so people are often forced to churn them because the device they’re used to has been discontinued or no longer works with their WiFi.
    - 5y ago
- caddybox 5y ago
  I think it is unfair to label a platform with a two hundred dollar entry barrier as an equalizer. VoIP and allied technologies are the real enablers and ad-supported platforms like WhatsApp et al. have been true equalizers by allowing anyone to communicate with anyone at marginal costs. The ease of picking up the phone and calling somebody with no consideration of cost has enabled so many people to connect and communicate on a more frequent basis.
  - epicureanideal 5y ago
    > I think it is unfair to label a platform with a two hundred dollar entry barrier as an equalizer. Even in poor areas, lots of people are walking around with iPhones. $200-500 gadgets are not out of the range of poor people. That works out to less than a dollar a day. One time amortized expenses aren't that much of a barrier, from what I've seen. The real barriers the poor face are things like high rents, high medical cost, high cost of education, etc.
    - wpietri 5y ago
      About a quarter of the world's population lives on less than $3.20 per day. [1] $200-500 is a lot of money to billions of people. [1] https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2018/10/17/nearly-half-the-world-lives-on-less-than-550-a-day https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2018/10/17/n...
  - krrrh 5y ago
    The cost of entry should be expressed as the difference between lower cost or used iPhones and iPads vs similar android devices. Even though there is a cost premium for iOS devices the proven longer longevity of arguably makes them cheaper for most people, especially light users who are happy sticking with a device for 5-8 years. The family members who do tech support for them can mostly rest happy with automatic security updates turned on.
  - skygazer 5y ago
    Certainly, equality is an overloaded term, so it's useful to note the context. He's not talking about economic equality. He's talking about bringing a simplified interface to an otherwise complex and confusing process, particularly for his elderly relative. Different people will suffer from the existence of different barriers. It doesn't have to be a competition. What Apple does to simplify things (prioritize simplicity and accessibility, obsessively remove or hide options, make reasonable defaults, broaden the happy-path) can be replicated on more affordable platforms. That said, I've struggled to teach my elderly mother how to even answer her iPhone -- she finds it overly complicated. If she could get over the technical hurdle, she could stay in better touch with remote family and friends who now prefer texting and video calls to snail mail and begin to alleviate her loneliness.
- LivelyTortoise 5y ago
  Is there anything that sets FaceTime apart from cheaper competitors like WhatsApp / Signal video calling in this aspect of ease of use? (I say cheaper because you don't need to buy an iDevice to use those)
  - xrisk 5y ago
    You can take the call on a computer?
    - reayn 5y ago
      macs come with facetime preinstalled (the newer ones at least) and you can send facetime links to people and they can join using the web client if they dont have a mac.
    - benhurmarcel 5y ago
      Only on a mac.
  - masterof0 5y ago
    Don't you also need to buy a phone/computer/tablet to use whatsapp or signal? How does whatsapp is cheaper than facetime? But anyway, yeah, I noticed Facetime's both video and audio calls have better quality, in my personal experience. Also, most if not all my friends and family use iDevices, so I dont need to convince them to install signal/whatsapp/telegram etc... But YMMV.
    - thisisussbs 5y ago
      Yes but a practical new Android phone with reasonable spec (I don't mean cheap Chinese oems with 1gb ram) can be had for $100 and can run WhatsApp/signal fine. The cheapest iphone is $399 iirc, the high entry costs that disqualifies a lot of people even in the US and certainly abroad where apple tax difference compare to base currency of usd399 exceeds regional sales tax differences (mexico for example)
      - 5y ago
comandillos 5y ago
Telegram also provides this service quality, its available on all platforms and its free.
- rubyist5eva 5y ago
  I use both, and prefer facetime when I can (all people with iphones have it so barrier to entry is lower) - but Telegram is the next best thing for me.
- nizmow 5y ago
  FaceTime is also free, and Telegram’s audio and video quality is vastly inferior.
  - Jcowell 5y ago
    Not to mention has less friction
    - the_third_wave 5y ago
      Only when you live in an Apple bubble which in practice comes down to the USA and parts of Europe. Elsewhere Apple is a margin player with the vast majority of mobile devices running Android. Telegram is available everywhere, for all "significant" devices and categories (desktop, mobile, web) which makes it a more universal option. It is growing at a rapid pace (200 million users in March 2018, 400 million users in April 2020, 500 million in January 2021 so probably around 600 million by now) with ~15% daily active users. This growth rate will probably increase with the recent brouhaha around Apple scanning devices in the hunt for illegal imagery.
      - Jcowell 5y ago
        For Telegram, your relying on the general populous caring that Apple is scanning their devices. I want this to be understood by the HN population: the general populous does not care about privacy concerns that they cannot see. They will not care that Apple is scanning for CP on their devices because they do not care that Apple scanned for Cp on the Cloud. The only time they would care is if Apple themselves were to physically send someone to their house, untie themselves in , and go through their stuff. Non tangible privacy violations outside of SSN data breaches are not on the mind of the general public.
myself248 5y ago
> They in fact do, a service called IDS or Apple Identity Service. Reminds me of > The four F's: fighting fleeing feeding and mating
- smoldesu 5y ago
  Looks like they acronym'd themselves into a corner, there.
- malshe 5y ago
  I had to read the last line twice to get the joke!
imagine99 5y ago
Can anyone recommend a similar service that provides true high-quality video chat functionality on par with FaceTime but not requiring Apple hardware (but still easily usable on mobile)? We're looking for such a service for use in developing countries where iPhones are rare and connectivity is often mediocre at best. Tests with the like of Telegram, Duo and others have been okay-ish for voice-only calls but pretty bad for video. Mostly because of lack of Apple hardware on the other end we are until now unable to conduct any comparative tests to see whether FaceTime would outperform these apps in terms of quality and stability.
- MrGilbert 5y ago
  Discord's video quality is rather high, at least on the desktop.
  - jagger27 5y ago
    With Nitro, anyway.
- nojito 5y ago
  You can join Facetime calls without apple devices in iOS 15
  - cassianoleal 5y ago
    Join, but not start if I recall the announcement correctly.
- 2rsf 5y ago
  WhatsApp does a decent job
  - cassianoleal 5y ago
    WhatsApp is usable but nowhere near the video and audio quality of FaceTime. It's also only on mobile where the screen is rather small and audio quality is never great - not very important since they seem to use very high audio compression anyway.
mosselman 5y ago
We used to use Skype with my wife's parents and it sucked: there were delays, freezes, low quality video, etc. It worked great with my mother, but she had far better internet than my wife's parents. The alternatives were even worse: Telegram, whatsapp, jitsi. Then we tried FaceTime: the difference was night and day. Everything was smooth, the sound was better, no stuttering, we could actually read things they held to the screen, etc. It is a shame that FaceTime isn't easier to use as an alternative to Slack-calls and screen sharing. At least last time I tried, or I'd use it for work as well.
- airstrike 5y ago
  I literally can't even type phone numbers into Skype on my iPhone without a massive input delay that actually makes the digits appear all at once, with their tones coming out like a musical chord. In the 21st century, this is unacceptable. The app is so clunky I loathe using it but it's unfortunately still a good (the best?) solution for dialing landlines and mobile phones abroad for extended periods of time.
- criddell 5y ago
  At one time, you could configure Skype to make a point-to-point call and the quality was great provided both endpoints had high bandwidth, low latency connections. Microsoft changed it to make all calls go through their servers and the quality took a big hit.
- raviisoccupied 5y ago
  macOS Monterey will include screen sharing for FaceTime! It should be released in a month or so.
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    Will the feature also be coming to older MacOS versions? The only Mac I have on hand runs Mojave, and I have no intentions of upgrading anytime soon.
lqet 5y ago
> For those of you old enough to remember landlines, it reminds me of those [...] When we all switched to cell service audio quality took a huge hit I don't understand - are landline phones not in use anymore? I only use a landline phone to communicate with the family, because I simply cannot stand the audio quality of cellphones for calls which last longer than a few minutes. Edit: In Germany, there are about 40 M active landlines. That is 1 landline phone for every 2 inhabitants, and this number seems to be have been fairly constant over the last 20 years [0]. [0] https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/274339/umfrage/anzahl-der-telefonanschluesse-im-festnetz-in-deutschland/ https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/274339/umfrag...
- wpm 5y ago
  Not really no. Landline calls are often worse than cell phones in my experience as well, especially if the other person is on a cordless landline.
- dahfizz 5y ago
  Everyone already has cellphones, so a landline is an extra monthly cost for something that you're already paying for.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    Unless you're of a certain age. People that already had long established landlines continue to pay for them even after getting a cell phone. And people still call them on those numbers as thats the number people know and remember vs just storing a cell number in their contacts. Also, for people getting an internet signal from the phone company (DSL), the landline was usually bundled in a package. They tried to make them viable for as long as possible.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      All the houses with grandparents in my family have lost landlines since all the grandparents have phones. Even the older grandmas who did not go past grade school who do not know a non English non Latin language like to use their WhatsApp to consume media from their cousins and other friends/relatives. And of course, FaceTiming grandkids.
TonyTrapp 5y ago
Strange preamble: I found the quality of analog landlines to be terrible. Since we got switched over to VoIP, the voice quality is crystal-clear if the person on the other end also has a VoIP connection. It almost sounds too good. Better than most online voice chat stuff.
- kkielhofner 5y ago
  Interesting human psychology note: I was involved in some early deployments of HD-ish codecs. HD codecs are considered to be anything that provides greater than the (less than) 4kHz frequency response of the traditional PSTN. At the time "HD audio" was generally 8kHz frequency response (16 kHz sampling rate because of Nyquist-Shannon[0]). This was around 2009 and many users, having not experienced that kind of frequency response/fidelity were kind of "unnerved" by it because (as you say) it can sound "too good". Users were freaked out by the extended frequency response and added fidelity. A common complaint was that previously undetectable breath sounds, etc were audible. "These days" with FaceTime, WebRTC, etc sampling rates go all the way to 48 kHz, being able to represent the entire range of human hearing (and far beyond the range of human speech[1][2]). Not only have people become more used to the extended audio range, various other parts of the stack (quality microphones/hardware, speech detection, noise cancellation, etc) has caught up and some of those early pesky issues like breath sounds, etc have been largely addressed. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist%E2%80%93Shannon_sampling_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist%E2%80%93Shannon_sampli... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_frequency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_frequency [2] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00587/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.0058...
  - myself248 5y ago
    That's funny, because I remember missing breath sounds when switching to digital cellular. That plus the added latency still makes it difficult to converse sometimes. It's weird to me how, after a century of obsessive attention to quality and latency all throughout the whole analog era, through the digital isochronous transition, and up into the first-gen analog cellular system, digital cellular was so much cheaper that we just rolled over and accepted all the terrible compromises. It's not like customers who preferred AMPS had the choice to stay on it. Only recently have I experienced VoIP calls that start to claw back some of that lost quality. Frequency range, bit depth, maybe even latency if I'm lucky. I don't think we'll ever again have it as good as ISDN, but I can dream.
stephen_g 5y ago
I just wish FaceTime on macOS would let me use virtual webcams and not do weird things to audio inputs if you you keep also using them in other apps. I have a Blackmagic converter that works to bring a high quality external camera into other software, but FaceTime won’t let me use it (it just doesn’t show up in the list, and neither does the OBS virtual camera). That and the weird stuff it seems to do to the audio subsystem on Mac (this is all in 10.14 so maybe this isn’t the case in later versions?). We were trying to use it as a back channel for podcasting/streaming but trying to send audio to FaceTime somehow messed with the input in a way I’ve never seen with any other application, and broke it in Logic and OBS. It was almost as if audio processing was happening outside the app for some reason, so you get really weird results (messed up levels etc.) in other apps sharing the audio device inputs… Goes away when you start an audio app without FaceTime active. We found a free app Sonobus that works really well for low latency audio for what we were doing in the end. FaceTime is great for just calling the family on the iPad though.
jonathanlydall 5y ago
I find FaceTime video calls really superb, but for whatever reason the audio only calls have short (sub-second length) moments where it cuts out and it's very disconcerting. This happens when calling both my parents and my brother, both of which are only KMs away and like me have 25Mb/s or faster fibre connections. Strangely I've never noticed this audio problem during video calls. So I tend to do voice only calls using WhatsApp and video calls with FaceTime.
- dylan604 5y ago
  If you have 25Mb/s connection while anyone on the other end has only 1.5Mb/s connection, then you have a 1.5Mb/s connection. Just because you pay for fiber doesn't mean you always get that speed. Most benefits of highspeed badwidth at home allows for multiple connections to reach their "full" speed without forcing other connections to lower speeds.
  - throwthere 5y ago
    Even if you have a 1.5Mb/s connection you should hear crystal clear audio.
    - FemmeAndroid 5y ago
      I wonder how much of this has to do with the speed of a connection and how much has to do with Jitter? Especially on wifi, Jitter can become a huge barrier to overcome, even if the speed of your connection is extremely high.
      - lotsofpulp 5y ago
        I wish other statistics about connections were more public, since there is much more to a connection than just bandwidth.
        dylan604 5y ago
        With that kind of information publicly available, they'd have a hard time getting people to join the network!
tumblewit 5y ago
FaceTime audio is the standard to beat. It’s just absolutely incredible.
muststopmyths 5y ago
I remember back in the day when FaceTime was announced Apple made a big deal about it using standard protocols throughout the stack ( SIP and maybe WebRTC?) and dangled the hope that there could be 3rd party apps that connected with FaceTime. We were so young and naive then.
- pfranz 5y ago
  The presentation said something like they planned for it to be "open" or something. I believe that was the first the dev team had heard of it. People have guess that patents prevented it from actually being an open standard. Coincidentally, some of those patents expired in the last year or two and the last should expire this year. But I kind of guess the window has passed for it becoming open.
  - solarkraft 5y ago
    > But I kind of guess the window has passed for it becoming open. It’s moving there. They’re adding a web interface this year.
    - ftio 5y ago
      That web interface is a customer acquisition and retention play. It enables FaceTime users to stay in the ecosystem when their friends don't use the platform they do (vs going to Zoom, which is available for everyone). And it enables non-users to get a taste of FaceTime without before they buy an iPhone. It's a brilliant move, but I wouldn't call it open. Maybe "open enough" :D
      - CSSer 5y ago
        They have a lot of work to do if that is the case. The beta experience at present is downright poor, particularly on the non-Apple end of things.
    - pfranz 5y ago
      I found the clip from the 2010 keynote [1]. Steve Jobs said, "We’re going to take it all the way. We’re going to the standards bodies tomorrow and we’re going to make FaceTime an open industry standard." I didn't watch the whole video, so I might have missed some context, but this lines up with my memory. I don't see a web client being a move in that direction. [1] https://youtu.be/eujypqKT8o0?t=5809 https://youtu.be/eujypqKT8o0?t=5809
miki123211 5y ago
> For those of you old enough to remember landlines, it reminds me of those [...] When we all switched to cell service audio quality took a huge hit As a blind person with a lot of friends in different corners of the world, audio quality is very important to me. Surprisingly enough, I've seen side projects that took a weekend to develop that had much better quality than what mainstream services offer. Part of it is probably because of bandwidth costs, but I guess effects (like cancelling echos from participants who use speakers instead of headphones, or reducing noise from crappy mics) also play a role. Facetime's quality is good, but nowhere near what your devices are actually capable of. The only mainstream solution that is actually good is Zoom, when you enable original sound, stereo audio, high fidelity mode and disable a few annoying filters. To do this, the app needs much more fine-grained control of your microphone than you can get from a web browser, so the native client is essential. Discord with Nitro is pretty decent too, but really niche, obscure, non-mainstream solutions work best. TeamTalk[1] is one great example. [1] https://bearware.dk/?page_id=327 https://bearware.dk/?page_id=327
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
  I actually don't think bandwidth costs are responsible, nor DSP effects. I suspect the lousy audio quality in modern voice conferencing software is to compensate for people with lousy internet connections or underpowered devices: someone using an older phone in the car on 3G cell service with cell tower handoffs, or a crusty laptop using lousy coffee shop WiFi, etc. It's a tough problem to solve. Everyone on a call can be affected by one person with a lousy connection if the software isn't very sophisticated. People are generally willing to tolerate lower bitrate audio if it means less dropouts, and lowering the bitrate for everyone is easy to do (if a bit lazy), and solves many problems.
  - dr-detroit 5y ago
    Sorry, no. I am an IT janitor and my brother is a audio solutions engineer for major companies so we have discussed where it breaks down. Someone who is a demonstrable idiot decides to put a wimpy cheap processor in these devices and have them do a bunch of digital processing on the audio to "improve it" and so you get very very bad quality. Idiots literally rule our society I could go on but its basically like that Kurt Vonnegut book where the rich elites are sitting around listening to Beethoven records at the wrong RPM and nobody can convince them its wrong. These audio engineering guys can do almost anything. Their requirements these days are bonkers.
tedd4u 5y ago
If you're on Verizon LTE usually if you talk to someone else on Verizon I think it uses VoLTE [1] which sounds as good to me as FaceTime audio -- excellent. Like completely uncompressed CD-quality audio. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_over_LTE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_over_LTE Edit: mdasen says more about VoLTE below: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28249217 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28249217
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
camgunz 5y ago
I'm a little irritated by all the normative assessments of the A/V quality of various communication software. I'm sure we can test latency, audio fidelity, and video fidelity in a useful way without resorting to super useful comments like "<service> audio is the standard to beat" and "<service> works fine as well". I'd legit pay money for a Consumer Reports around Google Meet, Jitsi, Zoom, and FaceTime. Load up a LAN with a packet loss/jitter simulator and gimme some charts.

196 points by r4um 5y ago

Here is a good write up on how the WebRTC implementation works for their new browser based calls. https://webrtchacks.com/facetime-finally-faces-webrtc-implementation-deep-dive/ https://webrtchacks.com/facetime-finally-faces-webrtc-implem...

sgt 5y ago

FaceTime is amazing. I keep in touch with my entire family using FaceTime video, often across thousands of kilometers. It's also such an equalizer, allowing even the non-computer literate to use it and focus on the actual conversations. In fact, my 103 year old grandmother is able to do video calls with me, which is great because I rarely see her in person these days. I don't think there exists an alternative she would be able to use.

randomdata 5y ago
Unfortunately, calls with more than two people seem to fall apart quickly if the network connection isn't perfect, even where Meets, Zoom, etc. work flawlessly.
- acdha 5y ago
  This substantially the opposite of my experience so I’d bet there is some factor for proximity to CDNs or traffic shaping done by your ISP. FaceTime is rock-solid; Zoom is also good but has noticeably lower video quality (but good noise handling). Meet’s native apps are good but their browser UI is coded to break Firefox so I don’t use it much.
  - scatterhead 5y ago
    So it sounds like Facetime's Firefox support is better in your experience?
    - randomdata 5y ago
      The benefit of FaceTime being an open standard.
      - imwillofficial 5y ago
        It’s not an open standard
        randomdata 5y ago
        Nor does it currently work in Firefox. Hence the continuation of the joke. It was originally announced as an open standard, though. Anyone who remembers Steve Jobs would have caught on. It is easy for us old-timers to forget how long ago that was now, so I extend my apologies to the youngsters.
        imwillofficial 5y ago
        Hahaha you’re right! I remember jobs saying that, or was it iMessage He was talking about?
    - acdha 5y ago
      I’d flip it the other way: Google decided to remove the benefits of portability, similar to how Zoom removed the benefits of being able to use their service without installing a client first. FaceTime is limited to Apple devices until iOS 15 allows anyone with a browser to join a call, so you’d think they’d be emphasizing the benefits of portability more.
    - blacksmith_tb 5y ago
      Facetime doesn't work in any browser, does it? On macOS and iOS it uses a dedicated app, the protocol is proprietary so no 3rd part clients exist?
      - bleachedsleet 5y ago
        FaceTime is coming to the web https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/7/22522889/apple-facetime-android-windows-web-ios-15-wwdc https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/7/22522889/apple-facetime-an...
- jwineinger 5y ago
  Agreed. For me, the hallmark of a good system is being able to forget that I'm using it. That has never happened to me with Facetime.
trompetenaccoun 5y ago
It's so great and easy to use it even works for video calls with a person in China, while all other foreign communication apps are blocked there. Isn't that interesting.
- randomopining 5y ago
  CCP doing analysis on foreigners' faces and call contents so that they can cull dissention after they take over in 10 years. But Apple wants to do business there!
throwthere 5y ago
Semi-related question since I'm looking to get my grandma setup. Waffling between an iPhone and iPad, maybe an iPad mini but don't know if the air would be better (lighter I think). What device does your grandma use to FaceTime? Do you know does she do anything else with it?
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  I think iPad Air is worth it for older people since it does not cost much more and the grandparents in my family appreciate the size of the screen, especially since they use it with enlarged text size.
- dekoruotas 5y ago
  Just three days ago I've set up my 93 year old grandfather on a Lenovo Smart Display 7. I think it has multiple benefits over an iSomething: - Always plugged in - no need to remember to charge - Shows our family picture albums that I can remotely update via my Google Photos - It is loud. Left the volume at 3/4 - Sits on a table and you're never holding it wrong™ - No settings to mess up, two previous tablets were too complicated
  - daemoon 5y ago
    You're one those who cannot let other people use and enjoy Apple products just because you do not like them.
  - acdha 5y ago
    Those are good selling points but all but the last applies equally to a tablet (e.g. there’s no law requiring you to use a tablet on battery). The key point is the single function: a general purpose computing device has more UI & management than some people want to deal with. This is something the industry really hasn’t done a great job with, especially since it overlaps with the problem of treating things as disposable because the revenue model for single purpose devices is mostly broken and so people are often forced to churn them because the device they’re used to has been discontinued or no longer works with their WiFi.
  - 5y ago
caddybox 5y ago
I think it is unfair to label a platform with a two hundred dollar entry barrier as an equalizer. VoIP and allied technologies are the real enablers and ad-supported platforms like WhatsApp et al. have been true equalizers by allowing anyone to communicate with anyone at marginal costs. The ease of picking up the phone and calling somebody with no consideration of cost has enabled so many people to connect and communicate on a more frequent basis.
- epicureanideal 5y ago
  > I think it is unfair to label a platform with a two hundred dollar entry barrier as an equalizer. Even in poor areas, lots of people are walking around with iPhones. $200-500 gadgets are not out of the range of poor people. That works out to less than a dollar a day. One time amortized expenses aren't that much of a barrier, from what I've seen. The real barriers the poor face are things like high rents, high medical cost, high cost of education, etc.
  - wpietri 5y ago
    About a quarter of the world's population lives on less than $3.20 per day. [1] $200-500 is a lot of money to billions of people. [1] https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2018/10/17/nearly-half-the-world-lives-on-less-than-550-a-day https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2018/10/17/n...
- krrrh 5y ago
  The cost of entry should be expressed as the difference between lower cost or used iPhones and iPads vs similar android devices. Even though there is a cost premium for iOS devices the proven longer longevity of arguably makes them cheaper for most people, especially light users who are happy sticking with a device for 5-8 years. The family members who do tech support for them can mostly rest happy with automatic security updates turned on.
- skygazer 5y ago
  Certainly, equality is an overloaded term, so it's useful to note the context. He's not talking about economic equality. He's talking about bringing a simplified interface to an otherwise complex and confusing process, particularly for his elderly relative. Different people will suffer from the existence of different barriers. It doesn't have to be a competition. What Apple does to simplify things (prioritize simplicity and accessibility, obsessively remove or hide options, make reasonable defaults, broaden the happy-path) can be replicated on more affordable platforms. That said, I've struggled to teach my elderly mother how to even answer her iPhone -- she finds it overly complicated. If she could get over the technical hurdle, she could stay in better touch with remote family and friends who now prefer texting and video calls to snail mail and begin to alleviate her loneliness.
LivelyTortoise 5y ago
Is there anything that sets FaceTime apart from cheaper competitors like WhatsApp / Signal video calling in this aspect of ease of use? (I say cheaper because you don't need to buy an iDevice to use those)
- xrisk 5y ago
  You can take the call on a computer?
  - reayn 5y ago
    macs come with facetime preinstalled (the newer ones at least) and you can send facetime links to people and they can join using the web client if they dont have a mac.
  - benhurmarcel 5y ago
    Only on a mac.
- masterof0 5y ago
  Don't you also need to buy a phone/computer/tablet to use whatsapp or signal? How does whatsapp is cheaper than facetime? But anyway, yeah, I noticed Facetime's both video and audio calls have better quality, in my personal experience. Also, most if not all my friends and family use iDevices, so I dont need to convince them to install signal/whatsapp/telegram etc... But YMMV.
  - thisisussbs 5y ago
    Yes but a practical new Android phone with reasonable spec (I don't mean cheap Chinese oems with 1gb ram) can be had for $100 and can run WhatsApp/signal fine. The cheapest iphone is $399 iirc, the high entry costs that disqualifies a lot of people even in the US and certainly abroad where apple tax difference compare to base currency of usd399 exceeds regional sales tax differences (mexico for example)
    - 5y ago

comandillos 5y ago

Telegram also provides this service quality, its available on all platforms and its free.

rubyist5eva 5y ago
I use both, and prefer facetime when I can (all people with iphones have it so barrier to entry is lower) - but Telegram is the next best thing for me.
nizmow 5y ago
FaceTime is also free, and Telegram’s audio and video quality is vastly inferior.
- Jcowell 5y ago
  Not to mention has less friction
  - the_third_wave 5y ago
    Only when you live in an Apple bubble which in practice comes down to the USA and parts of Europe. Elsewhere Apple is a margin player with the vast majority of mobile devices running Android. Telegram is available everywhere, for all "significant" devices and categories (desktop, mobile, web) which makes it a more universal option. It is growing at a rapid pace (200 million users in March 2018, 400 million users in April 2020, 500 million in January 2021 so probably around 600 million by now) with ~15% daily active users. This growth rate will probably increase with the recent brouhaha around Apple scanning devices in the hunt for illegal imagery.
    - Jcowell 5y ago
      For Telegram, your relying on the general populous caring that Apple is scanning their devices. I want this to be understood by the HN population: the general populous does not care about privacy concerns that they cannot see. They will not care that Apple is scanning for CP on their devices because they do not care that Apple scanned for Cp on the Cloud. The only time they would care is if Apple themselves were to physically send someone to their house, untie themselves in , and go through their stuff. Non tangible privacy violations outside of SSN data breaches are not on the mind of the general public.

myself248 5y ago

> They in fact do, a service called IDS or Apple Identity Service. Reminds me of > The four F's: fighting fleeing feeding and mating

smoldesu 5y ago
Looks like they acronym'd themselves into a corner, there.
malshe 5y ago
I had to read the last line twice to get the joke!

imagine99 5y ago

Can anyone recommend a similar service that provides true high-quality video chat functionality on par with FaceTime but not requiring Apple hardware (but still easily usable on mobile)? We're looking for such a service for use in developing countries where iPhones are rare and connectivity is often mediocre at best. Tests with the like of Telegram, Duo and others have been okay-ish for voice-only calls but pretty bad for video. Mostly because of lack of Apple hardware on the other end we are until now unable to conduct any comparative tests to see whether FaceTime would outperform these apps in terms of quality and stability.

MrGilbert 5y ago
Discord's video quality is rather high, at least on the desktop.
- jagger27 5y ago
  With Nitro, anyway.
nojito 5y ago
You can join Facetime calls without apple devices in iOS 15
- cassianoleal 5y ago
  Join, but not start if I recall the announcement correctly.
2rsf 5y ago
WhatsApp does a decent job
- cassianoleal 5y ago
  WhatsApp is usable but nowhere near the video and audio quality of FaceTime. It's also only on mobile where the screen is rather small and audio quality is never great - not very important since they seem to use very high audio compression anyway.

mosselman 5y ago

We used to use Skype with my wife's parents and it sucked: there were delays, freezes, low quality video, etc. It worked great with my mother, but she had far better internet than my wife's parents. The alternatives were even worse: Telegram, whatsapp, jitsi. Then we tried FaceTime: the difference was night and day. Everything was smooth, the sound was better, no stuttering, we could actually read things they held to the screen, etc. It is a shame that FaceTime isn't easier to use as an alternative to Slack-calls and screen sharing. At least last time I tried, or I'd use it for work as well.

airstrike 5y ago
I literally can't even type phone numbers into Skype on my iPhone without a massive input delay that actually makes the digits appear all at once, with their tones coming out like a musical chord. In the 21st century, this is unacceptable. The app is so clunky I loathe using it but it's unfortunately still a good (the best?) solution for dialing landlines and mobile phones abroad for extended periods of time.
criddell 5y ago
At one time, you could configure Skype to make a point-to-point call and the quality was great provided both endpoints had high bandwidth, low latency connections. Microsoft changed it to make all calls go through their servers and the quality took a big hit.
raviisoccupied 5y ago
macOS Monterey will include screen sharing for FaceTime! It should be released in a month or so.
- smoldesu 5y ago
  Will the feature also be coming to older MacOS versions? The only Mac I have on hand runs Mojave, and I have no intentions of upgrading anytime soon.

lqet 5y ago

> For those of you old enough to remember landlines, it reminds me of those [...] When we all switched to cell service audio quality took a huge hit I don't understand - are landline phones not in use anymore? I only use a landline phone to communicate with the family, because I simply cannot stand the audio quality of cellphones for calls which last longer than a few minutes. Edit: In Germany, there are about 40 M active landlines. That is 1 landline phone for every 2 inhabitants, and this number seems to be have been fairly constant over the last 20 years [0]. [0] https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/274339/umfrage/anzahl-der-telefonanschluesse-im-festnetz-in-deutschland/ https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/274339/umfrag...

wpm 5y ago
Not really no. Landline calls are often worse than cell phones in my experience as well, especially if the other person is on a cordless landline.
dahfizz 5y ago
Everyone already has cellphones, so a landline is an extra monthly cost for something that you're already paying for.
- dylan604 5y ago
  Unless you're of a certain age. People that already had long established landlines continue to pay for them even after getting a cell phone. And people still call them on those numbers as thats the number people know and remember vs just storing a cell number in their contacts. Also, for people getting an internet signal from the phone company (DSL), the landline was usually bundled in a package. They tried to make them viable for as long as possible.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    All the houses with grandparents in my family have lost landlines since all the grandparents have phones. Even the older grandmas who did not go past grade school who do not know a non English non Latin language like to use their WhatsApp to consume media from their cousins and other friends/relatives. And of course, FaceTiming grandkids.

TonyTrapp 5y ago

Strange preamble: I found the quality of analog landlines to be terrible. Since we got switched over to VoIP, the voice quality is crystal-clear if the person on the other end also has a VoIP connection. It almost sounds too good. Better than most online voice chat stuff.

kkielhofner 5y ago
Interesting human psychology note: I was involved in some early deployments of HD-ish codecs. HD codecs are considered to be anything that provides greater than the (less than) 4kHz frequency response of the traditional PSTN. At the time "HD audio" was generally 8kHz frequency response (16 kHz sampling rate because of Nyquist-Shannon[0]). This was around 2009 and many users, having not experienced that kind of frequency response/fidelity were kind of "unnerved" by it because (as you say) it can sound "too good". Users were freaked out by the extended frequency response and added fidelity. A common complaint was that previously undetectable breath sounds, etc were audible. "These days" with FaceTime, WebRTC, etc sampling rates go all the way to 48 kHz, being able to represent the entire range of human hearing (and far beyond the range of human speech[1][2]). Not only have people become more used to the extended audio range, various other parts of the stack (quality microphones/hardware, speech detection, noise cancellation, etc) has caught up and some of those early pesky issues like breath sounds, etc have been largely addressed. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist%E2%80%93Shannon_sampling_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist%E2%80%93Shannon_sampli... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_frequency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_frequency [2] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00587/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.0058...
- myself248 5y ago
  That's funny, because I remember missing breath sounds when switching to digital cellular. That plus the added latency still makes it difficult to converse sometimes. It's weird to me how, after a century of obsessive attention to quality and latency all throughout the whole analog era, through the digital isochronous transition, and up into the first-gen analog cellular system, digital cellular was so much cheaper that we just rolled over and accepted all the terrible compromises. It's not like customers who preferred AMPS had the choice to stay on it. Only recently have I experienced VoIP calls that start to claw back some of that lost quality. Frequency range, bit depth, maybe even latency if I'm lucky. I don't think we'll ever again have it as good as ISDN, but I can dream.

stephen_g 5y ago

I just wish FaceTime on macOS would let me use virtual webcams and not do weird things to audio inputs if you you keep also using them in other apps. I have a Blackmagic converter that works to bring a high quality external camera into other software, but FaceTime won’t let me use it (it just doesn’t show up in the list, and neither does the OBS virtual camera). That and the weird stuff it seems to do to the audio subsystem on Mac (this is all in 10.14 so maybe this isn’t the case in later versions?). We were trying to use it as a back channel for podcasting/streaming but trying to send audio to FaceTime somehow messed with the input in a way I’ve never seen with any other application, and broke it in Logic and OBS. It was almost as if audio processing was happening outside the app for some reason, so you get really weird results (messed up levels etc.) in other apps sharing the audio device inputs… Goes away when you start an audio app without FaceTime active. We found a free app Sonobus that works really well for low latency audio for what we were doing in the end. FaceTime is great for just calling the family on the iPad though.

jonathanlydall 5y ago

I find FaceTime video calls really superb, but for whatever reason the audio only calls have short (sub-second length) moments where it cuts out and it's very disconcerting. This happens when calling both my parents and my brother, both of which are only KMs away and like me have 25Mb/s or faster fibre connections. Strangely I've never noticed this audio problem during video calls. So I tend to do voice only calls using WhatsApp and video calls with FaceTime.

dylan604 5y ago
If you have 25Mb/s connection while anyone on the other end has only 1.5Mb/s connection, then you have a 1.5Mb/s connection. Just because you pay for fiber doesn't mean you always get that speed. Most benefits of highspeed badwidth at home allows for multiple connections to reach their "full" speed without forcing other connections to lower speeds.
- throwthere 5y ago
  Even if you have a 1.5Mb/s connection you should hear crystal clear audio.
  - FemmeAndroid 5y ago
    I wonder how much of this has to do with the speed of a connection and how much has to do with Jitter? Especially on wifi, Jitter can become a huge barrier to overcome, even if the speed of your connection is extremely high.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      I wish other statistics about connections were more public, since there is much more to a connection than just bandwidth.
      - dylan604 5y ago
        With that kind of information publicly available, they'd have a hard time getting people to join the network!

tumblewit 5y ago

FaceTime audio is the standard to beat. It’s just absolutely incredible.

muststopmyths 5y ago

I remember back in the day when FaceTime was announced Apple made a big deal about it using standard protocols throughout the stack ( SIP and maybe WebRTC?) and dangled the hope that there could be 3rd party apps that connected with FaceTime. We were so young and naive then.

pfranz 5y ago
The presentation said something like they planned for it to be "open" or something. I believe that was the first the dev team had heard of it. People have guess that patents prevented it from actually being an open standard. Coincidentally, some of those patents expired in the last year or two and the last should expire this year. But I kind of guess the window has passed for it becoming open.
- solarkraft 5y ago
  > But I kind of guess the window has passed for it becoming open. It’s moving there. They’re adding a web interface this year.
  - ftio 5y ago
    That web interface is a customer acquisition and retention play. It enables FaceTime users to stay in the ecosystem when their friends don't use the platform they do (vs going to Zoom, which is available for everyone). And it enables non-users to get a taste of FaceTime without before they buy an iPhone. It's a brilliant move, but I wouldn't call it open. Maybe "open enough" :D
    - CSSer 5y ago
      They have a lot of work to do if that is the case. The beta experience at present is downright poor, particularly on the non-Apple end of things.
  - pfranz 5y ago
    I found the clip from the 2010 keynote [1]. Steve Jobs said, "We’re going to take it all the way. We’re going to the standards bodies tomorrow and we’re going to make FaceTime an open industry standard." I didn't watch the whole video, so I might have missed some context, but this lines up with my memory. I don't see a web client being a move in that direction. [1] https://youtu.be/eujypqKT8o0?t=5809 https://youtu.be/eujypqKT8o0?t=5809

miki123211 5y ago

> For those of you old enough to remember landlines, it reminds me of those [...] When we all switched to cell service audio quality took a huge hit As a blind person with a lot of friends in different corners of the world, audio quality is very important to me. Surprisingly enough, I've seen side projects that took a weekend to develop that had much better quality than what mainstream services offer. Part of it is probably because of bandwidth costs, but I guess effects (like cancelling echos from participants who use speakers instead of headphones, or reducing noise from crappy mics) also play a role. Facetime's quality is good, but nowhere near what your devices are actually capable of. The only mainstream solution that is actually good is Zoom, when you enable original sound, stereo audio, high fidelity mode and disable a few annoying filters. To do this, the app needs much more fine-grained control of your microphone than you can get from a web browser, so the native client is essential. Discord with Nitro is pretty decent too, but really niche, obscure, non-mainstream solutions work best. TeamTalk[1] is one great example. [1] https://bearware.dk/?page_id=327 https://bearware.dk/?page_id=327

rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
I actually don't think bandwidth costs are responsible, nor DSP effects. I suspect the lousy audio quality in modern voice conferencing software is to compensate for people with lousy internet connections or underpowered devices: someone using an older phone in the car on 3G cell service with cell tower handoffs, or a crusty laptop using lousy coffee shop WiFi, etc. It's a tough problem to solve. Everyone on a call can be affected by one person with a lousy connection if the software isn't very sophisticated. People are generally willing to tolerate lower bitrate audio if it means less dropouts, and lowering the bitrate for everyone is easy to do (if a bit lazy), and solves many problems.
- dr-detroit 5y ago
  Sorry, no. I am an IT janitor and my brother is a audio solutions engineer for major companies so we have discussed where it breaks down. Someone who is a demonstrable idiot decides to put a wimpy cheap processor in these devices and have them do a bunch of digital processing on the audio to "improve it" and so you get very very bad quality. Idiots literally rule our society I could go on but its basically like that Kurt Vonnegut book where the rich elites are sitting around listening to Beethoven records at the wrong RPM and nobody can convince them its wrong. These audio engineering guys can do almost anything. Their requirements these days are bonkers.

tedd4u 5y ago

If you're on Verizon LTE usually if you talk to someone else on Verizon I think it uses VoLTE [1] which sounds as good to me as FaceTime audio -- excellent. Like completely uncompressed CD-quality audio. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_over_LTE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_over_LTE Edit: mdasen says more about VoLTE below: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28249217 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28249217

deleted 5y ago

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camgunz 5y ago

I'm a little irritated by all the normative assessments of the A/V quality of various communication software. I'm sure we can test latency, audio fidelity, and video fidelity in a useful way without resorting to super useful comments like "<service> audio is the standard to beat" and "<service> works fine as well". I'd legit pay money for a Consumer Reports around Google Meet, Jitsi, Zoom, and FaceTime. Load up a LAN with a packet loss/jitter simulator and gimme some charts.