Yep. Anyone who has an iPhone 4 and wants to try out FaceTime out and about - and doesn't already have a WIFI sniffer - is out of luck.
Facetime is WiFi only, right now, but they plan to bring it to 3G, and Apple has opened up face time to use by any other vendors.
Yes, so you cannot use it at the beach, the park, the grocery store, the kids can't use it as you drive down the road, etc. It needs to work on 3G networks to be effective.
And I don't think too many other vendors will pick it up, because it uses H.264 and you have to pay Apple a license to use it. Skype and Nokia use open CODECs and video formats that are free to use.
What’s so great about face time? From what I hear, it just works. Press a button and there you are, no setup, no logins, no app to download.
Like I said, hey, if downloading and app is too tough then yeah, it's a great thing. I know when I installed Skype on my phone I just browsed to Skype.com, clicked the link to install, and entered my user information once; it now auto-logs in any time I start Skype.
But if installing an app is so difficult, what does that say about the App Store or downloadable applications in general?
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.
You know, Puget, THIS is another reason why I have NO respect at all for you. You toss out these factoids tweaking Apple, implying pecuniary motives for various things, and there is NOT ONE SHREAD OF TRUTH IN IT!
Although I seldom use Wikipedia as a source, I'll make an exception:
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.
Good grief! Apple is backing H.264 because it IS a standard that is freely available to anyone and is highly efficient at compressing large amount of video data with little loss. They do not own it.
Skype uses the On2 VP7 codec, quite proprietary. A while back the International Telecommunication Union came out with a set of compression standards, H.264, and that's what Apple uses. H.264 is very standard, but developers have to pay license fees to the MPEG LA to use it, just like Skype pays a license to On2 (now Google).
Since Google bought On2 they've decided to open the VP8 codec. Unfortunately that is sitting under the patent cloud of H.264.