hey guys it's greg with apple explained
and today
we're going to explore the history of
facetime because although apple's video
chatting service is simple and
straightforward
it has quite a complicated and dramatic
history that i've never really seen
discussed in great detail
so that's exactly what we'll do in this
video now this video topic
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now facetime has become a quintessential
part of apple's ecosystem
it seamlessly works between ios and mac
os and for many people it's hard to
imagine living without
but facetime wasn't even around until
the iphone 4
which means the service is just eight
years old and only recently adopted
features that many users wanted years
ago
like group video chats but let's start
from the beginning
before facetime was even revealed to the
public and follow its development to the
present day
so when apple decided they wanted to add
video calling capabilities to the iphone
back in 2009
it was actually quite an ambitious idea
because although computers had been
capable of video chatting for years
the feature was relatively new to mobile
devices and therefore
very underdeveloped in fact one of the
first cell phones capable of making
video calls was the 2003 sony ericsson
which was in part made possible by
faster 3g network speeds
but the experience was far from ideal
the front-facing camera was very low
quality by today's standards at a
resolution of just
176 by 144 and the 3g network's data
speeds were still not fast enough
resulting in motion blur lagging and
dropped video calls
but those were the early days of mobile
video calling and year after year the
technology was improved and refined
until we saw a more modern
implementation of the feature on htc's
evo smartphone
which took advantage of sprint's faster
4g network
in its 4.3 inch display with a 1.3
megapixel front-facing camera
and i think this is when apple saw the
opportunity to offer a desktop class
video calling service
to millions of iphone 4 users across the
globe so the company began to develop a
mobile video calling application
codenamed venice
that would have a leg up on its
competition by offering unrivaled video
and audio quality
but that led to apple's first problem
because delivering high quality video
and audio would require
fast data speeds that 3g networks
couldn't support
and considering the iphone 4 and 4s
would both be 3g
phones apple had to make a tough
decision either delayed the release of
their video calling service until they
introduced a 4g phone
or restrict the service to wi-fi only
and as we all know
apple decided to introduce facetime
alongside the iphone 4
and did in fact require a wi-fi
connection and although some journalists
considered the service to be crippled by
its inability
to work over cellular getting facetime
out to ios users sooner
allowed apple to be even better prepared
to launch the service on mac os later
that year
and on cellular with a 4g enabled iphone
5.
but before we get into that it's worth
mentioning that when apple decided to
name their video calling service
facetime
they actually had to buy the name from
an existing company called facetime
communications
who then changed their name to act
giants and we got an even closer look at
how facetime was developed during the
apple's samsung patent trial
since samsung asserted that facetime was
based on their video calling technology
and that apple was infringing on their
patents but based on apple's evidence
a large portion of facetime's technology
was borrowed from game center
since both services shared features like
networking for seamless user interaction
complex audio back-end and advanced
video codec
so although game center wasn't wildly
successful it did provide the
technological foundation that made
facetime possible
and in june 2010 the public finally got
to see facetime demoed by steve jobs and
jonathan ive
and it set a high bar for other mobile
video calling applications on the market
now there were many reasons why apple
was able to make facetime so much more
advanced than its competition
interestingly enough one of facetime's
major disadvantages was also one of its
greatest advantages
you see facetime was only available on
apple devices
the iphone 4 was first with support for
the 4th gen ipod
touch and mac in the same year but this
actually made things a lot easier for
apple
because creating a video calling service
that only runs on their own hardware
is a lot easier than trying to create a
service that supports dozens of
operating systems and hundreds of
different devices
also apple was able to leverage video
encode and decode technology that wasn't
available for third-party applications
like skype
and basically what this meant for users
was that facetime wouldn't drain their
battery as quickly or slow down their
device's performance
now when users were able to try out
facetime for themselves most found it to
be incredible
a mashable review written by christina
warren said i've had several subsequent
chats throughout the afternoon and i
have to say
each time it seems less and less like a
novelty and more and more like a really
natural way to communicate
she went on to praise facetime for being
extremely simple and straightforward to
use
which is a major improvement from other
video calling services that require the
user to manage
specific settings to ensure a smooth
experience
and while the front-facing camera didn't
provide the most high definition video
there was hardly any lag and the audio
was always in sync
which brings me to the most impressive
feature of facetime the audio quality
many users remarked that they felt like
they were in the same room with the
person they were facetiming
thanks to the audio that came through
loud and clear so i think the release of
facetime marked an important moment in
video calling history
since it helped make mobile video calls
accessible to even non-tech savvy users
and made them feel more natural than
ever before but despite facetime's great
performance video quality and sound
quality
apple failed to deliver on the promise
that facetime would be open source and
cross-platform
by utilizing something called
peer-to-peer connection and that means
we should have been able to dial a phone
number and initiate a phone call
just as easily as making a traditional
voice call and apple supposedly had this
technology ready to go
until a patent troll named vernet x
brought a lawsuit against apple
claiming facetime infringed on their
patents vernet x ended up winning the
lawsuit and apple was not only ordered
to pay 368.2 million in damages
but facetime had to be completely
re-engineered to use a central server
managed by apple
instead of utilizing peer-to-peer
connections in which each device acted
as a server for the other
this meant maintaining facetime's
operations would become much more
expensive for apple
and prevented any chance of the service
becoming open source or cross-platform
since hosting extra connections to
facetime server from android devices or
pcs
would have cost apple way too much money
especially considering the service
doesn't directly generate any revenue
for apple to begin with
this patent lawsuit is also the reason
why it took apple so long to implement
group facetime
calls which was a feature they intended
on introducing much sooner
now that may seem like enough legal
trouble for one application but apple
ran into another problem in 2011
when facetime left beta and was ready to
be delivered to mac users through a
software update
apple intended on providing the facetime
app for free but there's an obscure
accounting law called the sarbanes-oxley
act
which prevents companies from providing
a free unadvertised feature to a product
that has already been sold
so in order for apple to deliver
facetime to mac users they were required
to charge for it
as a result facetime was made available
on the mac app store as a one dollar
download
this law is also the reason why apple
charged two dollars for a software
update back in 2007
that enabled 802.11n technology on
select max
but apple has since circumvented this
law by including facetime as an
advertised feature on their new products
now in 2011 apple finally allowed
facetime calls over cellular
but it wasn't that simple for users
because carriers were very tricky about
how they allowed access to this feature
for example a t only offered facetime
over cellular for customers on their
mobile shared data plan
so if you were already on an unlimited
data plan and switch to the mobile share
plan to access facetime over cellular
you'd lose the perk of having unlimited
data so therefore you could only use
facetime if you had
limited data and video calling just so
happened to be a data hog
so att effectively discouraged the use
of facetime over cellular
by only offering it to customers who'd
rather not waste their limited data on
video calls
and if this sounds a bit
anti-competitive to you the fcc would
agree
because they eventually find at t for
violating net neutrality
laws that prevents companies from
blocking apps that compete with their
own voice and video services
so shortly after att's facetime
restrictions were lifted
and i should mention that both verizon
and sprint allowed for facetime over
cellular without any restrictions
from day one so since all the drama
surrounding facetime's initial release
had settled down for a few years
it was about time for another round of
controversy by 2019
because that's when apple released group
facetime and with it a serious bug
a teenager discovered that when you made
a call you could hear audio from the
recipient's microphone
even if they didn't pick up apple made a
statement saying they'd release a fix
later in the week
but that's when things got even worse
because then 925 mac discovered
that if someone calls you when you push
the power button to dismiss the call
facetime will begin sending an audio and
video feed to the caller
without you even being aware of it so
right when the first round of negative
press surrounding facetime began to
taper off
this second bug was found and landed
apple in even hotter water
and you can imagine how frustrating this
was for apple since they've repeatedly
argued that they're the most trustworthy
tech company when it comes to protecting
their users right to privacy
but it is important to remember that
this was a bug and has since been
fixed so apple definitely handled this
situation appropriately
i just hope they can implement a more
effective quality control protocol
to squash these kinds of bugs before
reaching the public
now today facetime is at an incredible
place with support for up to 32 people
in a group call
the ability to chat as your memoji and
even take
live photos of something special
happening during a call it's incredible
to reflect on how far facetime has come
since 2010
despite some hang-ups along the way and
i'm looking forward to see where apple
takes it in the future
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off your order alright guys so that is
the history of facetime
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video topic don't forget to subscribe
thanks for watching and i'll see you
next time
you