4 ms·

Facetime was announced as an intended open standard. Shortly, Apple realized their advantage of keeping it closed.

Uehreka 2y ago
Idk how much of an advantage this has turned out to be. Like GP said, FaceTime is not as popular outside of the US because it isn’t on Android. Even its US popularity is limited by the fact that it doesn’t work with Android/PC users, mandating that you have another app (which likely works as well as FaceTime) on hand for those situations. I think this is more of an example of them shooting themselves in the foot for no advantage, but not caring because they have like 300 feet.
Jtsummers 2y ago
A patent lawsuit kept them from opening it up at the time. I think it's only recently been resolved.
- viraptor 2y ago
  This is such a weird claim getting repeated. If they were infringing, opening the protocol wouldn't change that fact. They didn't even have to provide the client for other platforms, so their unit count wouldn't be increased for damages.
  - Jtsummers 2y ago
    Jobs' statement at the time was the intent to make it a published standard. If that standard was patent encumbered (or could be claimed to be, as the suit did) then it would be pretty hard to convince other people to implement that standard, and difficult to get a standards body to actually publish it. Why would Google, MS, or anyone else implement something if it'd get them bogged down in the same lawsuits Apple was already dealing with?
    - viraptor 2y ago
      There's lots of standards covered by patents. Gif included https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF
      - Jtsummers 2y ago
        Yes, which is a great example of a patent encumbered standard creating problems for people implementing the standard. Considering FaceTime postdates the GIF experience, I'm sure plenty of corporate lawyers understood the problem much better.
  - toast0 2y ago
    As a matter of policy, I avoid looking into details of patents, but from the title, I thought the patent was about something the server does, routing or something? In which case, infringement or licensing would scale with the number of users, not the number of shipped clients. This was around the same time that Apple was charging for OS upgrades, at least on Mac, and I think they wouldn't have wanted to pay for something they were providing for free.
    - viraptor 2y ago
      Making the protocol a standard doesn't mean they have to accept every client. They already restrict that.
      - toast0 2y ago
        Making it an open standard and then not accepting any clients but their own is an option I didn't even consider. Not sure it would help them build their network, but I guess it's an option.

Idk how much of an advantage this has turned out to be. Like GP said, FaceTime is not as popular outside of the US because it isn’t on Android. Even its US popularity is limited by the fact that it doesn’t work with Android/PC users, mandating that you have another app (which likely works as well as FaceTime) on hand for those situations. I think this is more of an example of them shooting themselves in the foot for no advantage, but not caring because they have like 300 feet.

Jtsummers 2y ago

A patent lawsuit kept them from opening it up at the time. I think it's only recently been resolved.

viraptor 2y ago
This is such a weird claim getting repeated. If they were infringing, opening the protocol wouldn't change that fact. They didn't even have to provide the client for other platforms, so their unit count wouldn't be increased for damages.
- Jtsummers 2y ago
  Jobs' statement at the time was the intent to make it a published standard. If that standard was patent encumbered (or could be claimed to be, as the suit did) then it would be pretty hard to convince other people to implement that standard, and difficult to get a standards body to actually publish it. Why would Google, MS, or anyone else implement something if it'd get them bogged down in the same lawsuits Apple was already dealing with?
  - viraptor 2y ago
    There's lots of standards covered by patents. Gif included https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF
    - Jtsummers 2y ago
      Yes, which is a great example of a patent encumbered standard creating problems for people implementing the standard. Considering FaceTime postdates the GIF experience, I'm sure plenty of corporate lawyers understood the problem much better.
- toast0 2y ago
  As a matter of policy, I avoid looking into details of patents, but from the title, I thought the patent was about something the server does, routing or something? In which case, infringement or licensing would scale with the number of users, not the number of shipped clients. This was around the same time that Apple was charging for OS upgrades, at least on Mac, and I think they wouldn't have wanted to pay for something they were providing for free.
  - viraptor 2y ago
    Making the protocol a standard doesn't mean they have to accept every client. They already restrict that.
    - toast0 2y ago
      Making it an open standard and then not accepting any clients but their own is an option I didn't even consider. Not sure it would help them build their network, but I guess it's an option.