Apple Facetime

I have a iPhone 4, but have never had anyone else who had another iPhone 4 that I wanted to call with Facetime.

Now my Mum has an iPod Touch 4th gen, I spent two hours on Skype yesterday talking her through setting iTunes and the iPod up (quite a feat given that my Mum first used Windows six months ago).

I thought it would be fun to have a quick Facetime call with her. So I had her open the Facetime app, sign in and add me as a contact (with my email address that I use for iTunes and my iPhone 4's mobile number).

When she tried to call me it failed, saying something along the lines that she needed to upgrade to iOS 4.1 which is odd (I suspect the message might have been that the person she was trying to call needed to upgrade).

I'd try to call her, but I can't see how I can. My contact entry for her has her email that she uses for iTunes, but crucially there is no Facetime button on the contact record.

Is there some step that we missed on the iPod end to make this work ? I have no way of knowing because I've never seen the Facetime app on the iPod and the iPhone doesn't have the same app.

When ever I have used facetime it started with a phone call between the 2 devices, clearly this can't happen with the iPod and as I am typing this I realise how useless any information I have is to you

Cheers

Cris.

How does it differ from a video call in Skype?

I don't know, I haven't got to use it yet

But as far as I am aware it is very similar to a video call in Skype.

Skype on the iPhone (and Android I think) doesn't do video calls yet.

Facetime only works on wifi at the moment, though I fully expect Apple have plans in place to resolve that in the future. I suspect it isn't technology that is holding them back on that, no doubt the carriers want some way to charge us again for the data it uses...

Edit:

And to be honest, I don't expect to make use of it really. I was just wanting to try it out of curiosity. I've made about half a dozen Skype video calls ever and one of those was last night so I could see the screen of my Mum's iPod to try and work out why Facetime wasn't working

Gotcha. Must admit I've hardly ever used Skype for video calls

Do you have iOS 4.1 on your iPhone 4? That should be the only requirement. From what I see here, the iPod touch users should be able to use the phone number, and e-mail addresses for other iPod users.

Yes I have 4.1 on my iPhone.

Honestly, I think the way that Facetime is implemented is great. It looks very simple and easy to use, and I love the way you can flip the camera around to the back of the phone.

Now Apple just needs to get the technology in more places. It's a little too limited right now. People need to be able to use it on their computers, where the majority of webcams live. I don't even care if it stays on WiFi (the performance will be better), being able to talk to computers seems more important to me.

Is there anyone working to build something that will do this? I know Apple said their platform was open. I just wonder if anyone's working on it.

I'm expecting OS X 10.7 will probably bump iChat to support Facetime, since most of the features are already there with their earlier video chat attempts. Or possibly sooner with an update delivered in iLife. Hard to say for sure though.

On Windows, not sure what they would do. They may bring iChat over similar to their work on iTunes and Quicktime, but hopefully do so in a way that doesn't make it a really bad experience. iTunes cross platform support so far has made an app that just feels bloated and sluggish on either side.

I saw the same message the only time I tried it from my new Touch.
The Touch is up to date IOS wise. Haven't tried to find out why yet.

As my brother was visiting my Mum we finally got to work out what was wrong with Facetime.

Turns out on the iPhone there is a global setting to turn Facetime on and off. I wasn't aware that the setting existed and mine was set to off.

Fixed.

Ah... the old PEBCAK error.

I've several times had people come to the helpdesk with broken wifi on their laptops, only to have forgotten that the external switch was turned off.

I'm not sure I would call that PEBCAK. How did that get turned off, and if it was and he was trying to use the app, why didn't it tell him that it was turned off.

I understand why a the software on a laptop doesn't always know about that external WiFi switch, but Andy's Facetime issue was all software, all from the same company.

Andy, have you tried any phone-to-computer calls yet? That's what I was hoping for more, even more than opening it up to 3G. I think it's far more important for people who don't have iPhones to be able to video chat with people who do.

I certainly don't remember turning it off, I wasn't aware that the setting was there.

On the iPhone there is no separate Facetime app that could warn you. When it is on a Facetime button appears on every contact. What it should probably do is show the Facetime buttons all the time and prompt you to turn it on if you press the button.

My iPhone was setup from a restore, maybe Facetime gets set turned off in those cases ?

I haven't tried any Mac to iPhone calls. I have made one iPod to iPhone call which worked fairly well, though my picture did start freezing at the other end at points.

Can't say I'll be rushing to use it.

I certainly didn't mean to imply that Andy was incompetent. Just that there wasn't any hardware or software bugs (other than questionable design) that led to the issue. My apologies Andy if you were offended.

And my apologies if it seemed I was accusing you of doing so. I just meant that at the moment we didn't know if Andy had turned that feature off or not. If it's off by default and you don't know the setting is there, I don't usually consider that a user issue.

But I also didn't know how Facetime worked. I had assumed it was a standalone app or something like that. I'm not sure how the phone would alert you that it was turned off the way it works now. Perhaps if someone tries to initiate a Facetime call with you and yours is turned off, it could alert you to this fact and either continue in regular phone call mode or give you the option to take you to the settings page to enable it...

Don't worry, I was in no way offended.

Alerting the user the Facetime was turned off when a Facetime call to them was attempted would be a very bad idea. You'd then need a setting to tell the phone not to alert you for people who really wanted Facetime turned off...

I guess if it only notified you the first time it wouldn't be so bad.

I think they should definitely do what I suggested and add a Facetime button to contacts even when you had Facetime turned off that prompted you to turn it on when you tapped it. Otherwise Facetime is completely invisible in the UI unless you notice the single option in Phone settings. Facetime is very much 1.0 at the moment, I expect these bits will improve with time.

If you restore a non iPhone 4 backup to an iPhone 4, Facetime defaults to off for some reason. If you instead setup an iPhone 4 as a new device, it defaults to on. I'm not sure if this same behavior occurs on the newest iPod Touch.

This may have changed with factory units coming with something newer then 4.0, but that was the experience I saw when I set my iPhone up new, and a friend restored his with his 3G backup.

Oh, and since it hasn't been linked here:

http://apple.com/mac/facetime - Location of the beta for OS X. I did a limited test with it this weekend, Mac to Mac, and it seemed to work fine. It is a little weird that Facetime will ring even when the app is not open, as Apple added a push message receiver to OS X. I'll have to do some testing to see if an incoming Facetime call will wake a sleeping Mac on a Wake on Demand network.

I've been that guy. My mother-in-law's laptop has the switch on the front, where it can accidentally be pressed while it's sitting in your lap. I had no idea that there was an external switch...

Is there a preference to control that? If not, Apple won't be able to put that app in their new Mac App Store.

Just one of the signs of a piece of junk computer...

- Physical WiFi switch - and/or bluetooth, etc..
- More than 2 LEDs anywhere (immediate fail for a WiFi LED)
- Tiny touch pad - optionally deeply recessed from the palm-rest area - immediate fail if it's ROUND
- Touchpad off to the left, not centered with the width of the notebook
- One or more stickers anywhere on the keyboard/palm-rest surface, or the display housing (either side).
- Rubber IBM-style nib to control the mouse on anything after 2002
- Buttons above *AND* below the track pad
- VGA port after 2005

Those are merely your own personal preferences, not necessarily everyone else's.

For example, I really *like* having keyboard soft RF switches (but not separate physical switches), and am especially fond of the Wifi/BT leds on the notebook here.

And the touchpad, especially smaller ones, MUST be centered on the main keyboard, not the chassis. Otherwise it gets hit with the heel of the hand far too often for my liking.

VGA connectors are (still!) incredibly useful on notebooks for business use, as even in 2010 a VGA plug is the standard for connecting to a conference room projector. Having to carry an extra dongle for that is very inconvenient. But it could also be useful for the notebook to have an HDMI port in addition to the VGA port.

I'm with you on the rest, though.

Haven't you learned yet that Bruno is the arbiter of everyone's preferences, and anyone wanting anything else is, at best, a heretic?

I said they were signs of junky computers, not that they weren't popular computers or features not enjoyed by (or simply irrelevant to) some people. Most people don't care about any of the stuff I mentioned one way or the other.

They're all items that can be eliminated with thoughtful design, it's just that most makers of these machines don't employ any such rigors in their process.

I can give very good reasons, and some very good ons have already been mentioned by others, for everything I mentioned. Though of course my post was meant to be humorous.

And having the ability to toggle WiFi/BlueTooth from the keyboard is fine - I was expressly referring to extra buttons or switches. The most egregious offenders will put these along the periphery of the case so that you inadvertently toggle them at least two or three times a day just using the machine "normally." Since these guys run their call centers cheaply in India, they consider it more expensive to rectify the problem with design. And don't.

Oh, okay.. kinda like chicklet keyboards (flat, unsculpted keycaps, with large gaps between keys), non-serviceable batteries, and lack of an eSATA or USB3 port. Right?

Kinda. Although, if you think about it, real chiclets aren't flat at all.

I do find it strange that Apple hasn't jumped on USB 3 yet. They weren't the first with USB either, but they were definitely the first to mass-market it. That reminds me, I do want to get an eSATA ExpressCard adapter for quick local backups.

BTW, the battery in my MBP is more "serviceable" than the one in my previous PowerBook. After removing a few screws I can access the battery which is wrapped in essentially a plastic sheet, versus having to break open a battery pack to access the cells inside the old packs. If you saw the battery in this system you too wouldn't want to carry around an extra one.

I have sku.28899 from DX here. Fits flush with the case, and works very well: AHCI, full 2.5gb/sec PCIe-x1 speeds, NCQ, port multiplier support, hot plug (drives and card), etc..

If JMicron chips work with Mac computers, then this is a good one to consider.

Edit: This thread suggests it should work just fine with Leopard and later. Or maybe not?

Edit: I just clocked sequential, non-NCQ throughput of 155MBytes/sec here, with a 240MByte/sec SSD plugged in at 3gb/s.

Cheers

Those guys are talking about using it on a hackintosh, so they might be experiencing errors that anyone with a real Mac may not.

Some real Mac notes here (but not many): http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/feedback/Cheap_SATA_cards_inOSX_10.6.htm

And here: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=699955

I think I'll give it a try, thanks Mark!

I thought they were getting all cozy with Intel over Lightpeek, which I'm sure will be available to consumers in no more than ten years...

Matt, I thought the same thing. I also thought they might have had something to do with its development.

Apple would still need to adopt USB 3. Lightpeak is just a common cable connector and setup for sending data around, it however doesn't specify a protocol. You would still need to send USB, or DisplayPort, or whatever signals down the cable to the devices. One possible use for this is a computer that only has a single power plug and lightpeak plug. That lightpeak connection could run into a monitor, that then the monitor provides USB, eSATA and audio plugs for devices, and a downstream lightpeak port for extra monitors or other devices.

Apple hasn't adopted USB 3 yet because Intel and NVidia haven't. Apple only uses Intel chipsets in their higher end systems with Core i series processors, and NVidia ones in their Core 2 Duo based systems.

Any motherboard that does support USB 3 today is doing so using a 3rd party USB controller currently. Intel is supposed to have support added to their core chipsets in 2011.

Doh! That's right. Forgot that Apple is no longer producing their own IO chips and therefore has to move at least as slow as Intel.

Frustratingly, Facetime still isn't open as promised.

I tried yesterday to find a common way to do video chat to a Nexus S user, and ended up unsuccessful. Below is what we looked at based on what we could think of on each platform:

iPhone 4:
Facetime
Skype
Tango

Nexus S:
Google Talk
Skype
Tango

Facetime is only Apple, and video support for Google Talk is only Android, so both of those are out. Skype seems to be ideal, until it was discovered the Android version lacks video support, so it too is out. Tango also seemed promising, but it's a pretty bad app, and doesn't support the front facing camera on the Nexus S.

Fring

Apparently the Facetime engineers found out it was supposed to be an open standard during Steve's WWDC keynote. Oops. I expect we'll see some news about this at the next WWDC.

Ahh, right, we forgot about Fring. Initially it didn't support the Nexus S front camera either when he initially got the phone, but it appears to now.

Also found Qik still exists as a separate app, even though Skype bought them in January.

Seems strange to me that Android apps aren't seeing multiple cameras properly. On the iOS side, every app I tried that could use the camera automatically had support for the front and rear cameras without needing a specific update.

I was going to make an open platform joke, but I can't think of anything really really funny right now. It's just another example of how Android software, for the most part, sucks a bit worse than the majority of iOS software. Which is pretty painful because there's a lot of really bad iOS software out there.

Here's where I threadjack and say that I love Facetime. It's the only video/voip software that I've found to work great over both my high latency satellite and my abysmally slow (128k?) DSL connections. Sometimes there's a short delay, but video stays good and audio doesn't get choppy or break up.

I really wish they'd spend some time making it a bit more robust. At minimum, I'd like to have a way to see a user's status. Also, for the Mac version, a quicker way to add users than going and starting address book and adding a new entry.