FaceTime and Why Apple’s Massive Integration Advantage is Just Beginning

TechCrunch ^ | Jul 3, 2010 | Steve Cheney

[stripes1776]

The success of iPhone 4 has been astonishing to witness, despite the antenna issues, proving once again that Apple has a unparalleled ability to differentiate around design and integration, not simply “features.”

Perhaps the best example of this so far is FaceTime, Apple’s take on video-calling. FaceTime makes video-calling on the Android-based Sprint HTC EVO look silly, because the EVO awkwardly requires users to sign up and download a third-party app, then launch it every time they want to talk. Normal people simply won’t do this...

[RegulatorCountry]

Pick out all the stray, commercially unsuccessful and unviable efforts that went before and claim that the company that makes it work and succeeds with it is not the innovator? Oh, I see. You’re not interested in truth, you’re interested in hobbling the company that threatens your vested interest.

You have a happy Fourth of July in Thailand. I’m off to grill out by the foot of Cook’s Wall and Hanging Rock State Park at my childhood home in Quaker Gap, NC.

Don’t know whether we’ll go to the longstanding community fireworks that we locals put together of our own volition, with an “MC” reading off the name of each one and describing the effects from the label as they’re fired one by one (sort of funny but endearing if you’ve known them all your life and have been going since you were a kid). Or, maybe to some larger, municipal effort down toward Winston. But, fireworks are in store for my seven year old niece and myself, either way.

I hope something similar for you.

Have a great day.

[Sgt_Schultze]

HA! Thanks for the amusing exchange! Maybe if BS further narrowed the terms her point to pretty mobile devices she might win. But since the original point was mobile devices upon which she subsequently added music players and tablets, she chose to exclude other mobile devices like wristwatches. As Swatch is the world's #1 watchmaker, they too likely ship more mobile devices than does Apple.

[AFreeBird]

Now you’re just making stuff up. Apple doesn’t own h.264.

From Wiki:

H.264/MPEG-4 AVC
H.264/MPEG-4 Part 10 or AVC (Advanced Video Coding) is a standard for video compression. The final drafting work on the first version of the standard was completed in May 2003.
H.264/MPEG-4 AVC is a block-oriented motion-compensation-based codec standard developed by the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) together with the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). It was the product of a partnership effort known as the Joint Video Team (JVT). The ITU-T H.264 standard and the ISO/IEC MPEG-4 AVC standard (formally, ISO/IEC 14496-10 - MPEG-4 Part 10, Advanced Video Coding) are jointly maintained so that they have identical technical content. H.264 is used in such applications as Blu-ray Disc, videos from YouTube and the iTunes Store, DVB broadcast, direct-broadcast satellite television service, cable television services, and real-time videoconferencing........

End excerpt.

You don’t need a WiFi sniffer to use WiFi on your iPhone. Any broadcasting network will show up as available when you try to use the internet. The phone sees the availability and asks you if you want to use it, or any other listed network. Droid probably works the same way. So does my laptop.

I’m happy you’ve had an enjoyable Sqkype experience. I can use Skype on the iPhone too.

[AFreeBird]

I wonder How many of those 3G/gs phone are being handed down to a “new” user?

I’ve been thinking about a 4, and would give my 3GS to my GF who’s currently using the RAZR I had before getting the 3GS.

No, I’m sure your right, everyone upgrading is just going to trash their old phones.

[PugetSoundSoldier]

Apple has a pretty significant financial stake in the H.264 patent pool, and they are protecting it by refusing to allow Google or Skype to use their own video CODECs. It’s Apple’s H.264 or nothing.

As far as hand-me-down phones, there may be lots of them, but that market also exists for all other phones, too. I know I sold my old Samsung i760 on Craigslist for $60 when I upgraded to my new HTC Touch Pro2.

[PugetSoundSoldier]

You don’t need a WiFi sniffer to use WiFi on your iPhone.

Then why did you bring it up as something you use when finding locations to use FaceTime?

[stripes1776]

Apple is very good is giving the “dumb” user what they want and if they want or need more Apple convinces them it’s not ready until Apple tells them it’s ready.

Over the past 10 years I have seen one computer programmer after another move from Windows or Linux to Apple Mac. There people are some to the most talented programmers in the industry. Go to a trade show and look at the laptops these people are using.

They do know how to market extremely well. The question is will people ever become comfortable taking a couple steps on their own or will they be happy to wait for Apple to do it for them.

So you saying that you are one of those people who can produce the hardware, the operating system and the programs all by yourself because you know how to take the next couple steps?

[for-q-clinton]

Yes. I know how to build the system I want. Load the OS I want and install the programs I want. And when the program I want lacks in areas I’m able to modify it to work the way I want to.

But hardware is nearly a commodity now. The software is where the real difference is.

[stripes1776]

Yes. I know how to build the system I want. Load the OS I want and install the programs I want. And when the program I want lacks in areas I’m able to modify it to work the way I want to.

I also know how to buy hardware and install operating systems. But most people, even very intelligent people, don't want to spend all their time as a system administrator, which I have done in the past for a living. A C++ programmer writing financial applications for a company in New York City does not want to spend all his time tinkering as a systems administrator. He wants to spend his time writing programs on a solid system. And a Mac works very well for these programmers because it's a solid BSD Unix.

[driftdiver]

“Who started this thread who did not ping you? Paranoid much?”

So now there’s a rule you have to ping the Propaganda Minister?

[driftdiver]

So you’re saying you work for a financial institution who uses mac’s?

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

"Funny, the author didn’t mention that FaceTime is over WIFI only - it does not run on your 3G network."

That's a really interesting aspect of FaceTime. Shazam: seamlessly integrated VOIP. Pretty soon, carriers won't matter.

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

Interesting article, thanks.

Note this part: "Perhaps the best example of this so far is FaceTime, Apple’s take on video-calling. FaceTime makes video-calling on the Android-based Sprint HTC EVO look silly, because the EVO awkwardly requires users to sign up and download a third-party app, then launch it every time they want to talk. Normal people simply won’t do this."

...I agree, and more than that, "normal" people won't much like what an EVO-using, Apple-hating friend of mine noticed about that third-party app, Qik... here, clipped without edit from an email from him: "Qik records and saves everything done in that form of chat ON THEIR WEB SITE permanently! What the hell is that all about!?? It also saves the chat session as a video file on the phone. Not only that, but if you don't scrounge around and find the privacy setting, anyone can log into the Qik site and watch you in real time -- or what was saved anytime thereafter."

Whoa.

[stripes1776]

So you’re saying you work for a financial institution who uses mac’s?

I am talking about the programmers who write the applications, not the average person in a cubicle. No matter what the clerks might be using as a desktop system, the back end of those finance companies with be using some form of UNIX for their database. It's quite natural and easy for a programmer to use a BSD UNIX system like the Mac.

Lots of programmers have moved to the Mac over the past 10 years. The pace has really picked up over the past 3 years. The vast majority of the programmers who attend the programmer meetups I go to are working on Macs. They are coming from other platforms, either Windows or some type of UNIX, such as Linux. I have also noticed the young programmers fresh out of college. Many times they used some form of UNIX at college and they they sshed in to their accounts on the main UNIX system. It's a natural move to the Mac.

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

"True but consider thats half the price the previous version was released at."

Untrue. Same price point, both subsidized and unsubsidized.

[thecodont]

Many times they used some form of UNIX at college and they they sshed in to their accounts on the main UNIX system. It's a natural move to the Mac.

BSD UNIX, invented at UC Berkeley!

[Richard Kimball]

Your post got me curious, and I went to the Qik web site. It advertises as being a way to share videos on the web. It also lists iPhone as one of the supported phones.

On the site, there's a live feed of people currently recording video with their phones, so yep, it records, feeds to the web and posts it on their site. It also uses GPS to give an exact location on Google maps for some of the feeds. I wonder how many people realize this happens?

[Doohickey]

One man’s “integration” is another man’s “antitrust”.

[for-q-clinton]

I didn’t say mac sucked. It’s just inferior to Windows especially in regards to being able to do what you want and having off the shelf software available.

[stripes1776]

BSD UNIX, invented at UC Berkeley!

Thanks for the links. UNIX has a fascinating history, from its beginnings at Bell Labs, written by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie, to its fork at Berkeley by Bill Joy, who went on to help found Sun Microsystems.