At least I think WebRTC was mentioned, been dying for more fixes to issues.
https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20190716/109793/HHRG...
I've stepped away but AFAIK they're still using it. It was expensive but worked with our business model ($20 for a successfully completed self-service video call between service provider and end customer, $50 to have the virtual survey performed/recorded by our trained video surveyors around the world, $90 to also have priced).
I'd compare TokBox, Twilio Video, and Jitsi.
The usual tools for cross-device/browser testing (e.g. BrowserStack) didn't work for video chat: we could simulate network disruptions but needed actual hardware for testing and debugging video/audio issues.
So we bought/pooled a ton of devices and had a QA team in our European office methodically test across devices and browsers.
We were also contending with provider (TokBox) issues early on in '15, which were mostly resolved by mid '16. Our business model, and pivots that focused our target market, didn't enable building out that level of infrastructure in-house, and I wouldn't recommend it if making any kind of vertical play, i.e. unless your customers are developers.
And then they are stifling competition for their app - by “forcing” you to create an app that integrates with dialer and your call history?
Maybe your startup was “impacted” by not having the expertise or funding to create a native app like at least a dozen companies have done?
Facetime is a feature that helps sell their devices. If they don't ultimately make money from it, why did they spent money to create it?
They want a robust third party ecosystem.
Integrating with the iOS dialer and phone history means not implementing something else that would provide value across platforms.
FaceTime and Messages (blue bubbles) are the only strong lock-in Apple has beyond brand effect. People don't buy iPhones over Android for Maps or Mail: they do it for the camera, FaceTime, and the blue bubbles. See the comparative market irrelevance of iPads, Macs, and other Apple products.
> And then they are stifling competition for their app - by “forcing” you to create an app that integrates with dialer and your call history?
They force developers to choose / balance resources between iOS and the web. Because the desirable users are on iOS, resources must be wasted on proprietary native apps instead of cross-platform web apps that would theoretically work on any device/OS.
They specifically want to funnel apps through the App Store, so that they can gouge developers for 30%.
> Maybe your startup was “impacted” by not having the expertise or funding to create a native app like at least a dozen companies have done?
My case isn't representative: we did have the expertise and the funding, we built the native app, we found product-market-channel-model fit, and after I stepped away, they've expanded internationally and closed a Series A this year. For us, the impact was diverting tens of thousands of dollars to Swift development. At the time we saw this as merely technical reality: we also built an Android app for performance reasons.
That was years ago. By now, there should be many competitive video conferencing web apps that work across devices, and there aren't.
At this point Apple's anti-competitiveness has become undeniable. It looks like the Justice Dept is setting up to slam them for bundling/tying Safari to iOS as they did Microsoft with IE/Windows (the ruling that popped the dot com bubble).
So you think FaceTime and “green bubbles” is the only reason that people spend more than twice as much on iPhones than Androids - even though cross platform chat/video call apps like WhatsApp and Messenger are far more popular - even on iPhones?
iPads are the only tablets that actually sell worth anything and the average selling cost of Macs are twice that of the average PC.
Also, the personal computer isn’t nearly as relevant as it use to be. Apple alone sells more iPhones than all consumer PCs combined and it only has about a 13% worldwide market share.
My case isn't representative: we did have the expertise and the funding, we built the native app, we found product-market-channel-model fit, and after I stepped away, they've expanded internationally and closed a Series A this year. For us, the impact was diverting tens of thousands of dollars to Swift
So you built an iOS app because of Safari and Apple’s evil lock in but you ended up spending money on an Android app anyway. So it was irrelevant because you couldn’t go to market with just a web app anyway....
They force developers to choose / balance resources between iOS and the web. Because the desirable users are on iOS, resources must be wasted on proprietary native apps instead of cross-platform web apps that would theoretically work on any device/OS.
But you just admitted that you had to end up building an Android app anyway because the performance of the web app was unacceptable. So even though Chrome supported the standards you needed, the crappy hardware on most Android phones made you produce an Android app.
I’m sure the desirable users only choose iPhones because of a FaceTime and “green bubbles”...
They specifically want to funnel apps through the App Store, so that they can gouge developers for 30%.
Again there is an existence proof that isn’t true. Not only does Apple not force app developers to go through their store for subscriptions - there are plenty that don’t - you can’t pay for a subscription to Zoom for instance through the App Store.
At this point Apple's anti-competitiveness has become undeniable. It looks like the Justice Dept is setting up to slam them for bundling/tying Safari to iOS as they did Microsoft with IE/Windows (the ruling that popped the dot com bubble).
There is an existence proof that you are wrong about the Justice Department “forced” Microsoft to unbundle IE and Windows. IE is still bundled with Windows over 20 years later.
For us, the impact was diverting tens of thousands of dollars to Swift development. At the time we saw this as merely technical reality: we also built an Android app for performance reasons. That was years ago. By now, there should be many competitive video conferencing web apps that work across devices, and there aren't.
Swift wasn’t introduced until 2014. Any startup that was crazy enough to use Swift then was making a very bad decision. Also the performance and hardware of the average Android phone is still crappy.
The camera, blue bubbles, and FaceTime (audio as well as video). Brand and ecosystem are secondary, UI/UX are fleeting, and there seem early indications that iPhones may become seen as "grandma's phone" like Macs in the mid '90s. Scale effects and supply chain are contingent on demand.
> WhatsApp and Messenger are far more popular
Grandma only knows how to use FaceTime.
> iPads are the only tablets that actually sell
> Also, the personal computer isn’t nearly as relevant
Agreed, iPad and Mac sales are basically irrelevant compared to iPhone, because tablets and desktops and laptops are almost niche compared to the scale of mobile worldwide. No indication that any post-mobile devices (i.e. watches, glasses, goggles) will approach the size of the smartphone market.
> So you built an iOS app because of Safari and Apple’s evil lock in but you ended up spending money on an Android app anyway. So it was irrelevant because you couldn’t go to market with just a web app anyway....
Yeah, in 2016. We were contending with iPhone 4s and the first generation of Android phones that could reasonably perform browser-based video calls and overheating handsets and draining batteries after 20+ min video surveys and no WebRTC support from Apple yet and a bunch of 3G.
I didn't start thinking about Apple's potential antitrust violations ("evil lock in") until evaluating re-entering the video chat space in 2018.
In 2020, with contemporary hardware, one shouldn't still need to download some native app in order to perform a video call.
> Again there is an existence proof that isn’t true. Not only does Apple not force
I specifically said funnel, not force. The strategy is to get developers into the sale pipeline and on the radar for competitive analysis. Zoom has considered handling payments through the App Store, but decided against it because they support multiple platforms and have the resources to build their own subscription infrastructure.
> There is an existence proof that you are wrong about the Justice Department “forced” Microsoft to unbundle IE and Windows. IE is still bundled with Windows over 20 years later.
Hah, yes—but now you can delete it!
> Swift wasn’t introduced until 2014. Any startup that was crazy enough to use Swift then was making a very bad decision. Also the performance and hardware of the average Android phone is still crappy.
I should have said "native iOS development." Swift over Objective-C felt like a good decision, we worked with strong contractors who were motivated to use newer tech, perf was good, the code was clean and didn't require much ongoing maintenance, our CTO was able to jump in later and make changes efficiently. It was just a huge distraction to need to build an iOS app, go through the App Store, etc., but we wouldn't have been able to get traction without it.
So brand and ecosystem are “fleeting”. When are you predicting that the iPhone - which has been around and profitable since 2007 will fail? Better example is the Mac, while all other non Microsoft compatible operating systems have died, the Mac has been around for 35 years.
So you think all of the cool kids are going to use crappy $300 Android phones?
Grandma only knows how to use FaceTime.
So from what I see most older people are using cheap Android phones. Unless you believe that Apple’s 13% worldwide market share is only made up of grandma. If Google can’t make a decent video app after four failed attempts, whose fault is that? I thought Google was made up of all these “smart people” (tm).
Yeah, in 2016. We were contending with iPhone 4s and the first generation of Android phones that could reasonably perform browser-based video calls and overheating handsets and draining batteries after 20+ min video surveys and no WebRTC support from Apple yet and a bunch of 3G.
By 2016, the iPhone 4s was 5 years old. But you said you were forced to make an app for Android anyway. Also, 4G was ubiquitous on even low end phones by then. But as far as performance, even today most Android phones are crappy prepaid phones sold by second rate carriers like MetroPCS and Boost Mobile.
I specifically said funnel, not force. The strategy is to get developers into the sale pipeline and on the radar for competitive analysis. Zoom has considered handling payments through the App Store, but decided against it because they support multiple platforms and have the resources to build their own subscription infrastructure.
Do you realize how easy it is to build your own subscription infrastructure? ACloudGuru is definitely not a multi-billion dollar company and they have their own subscription infrastructure that you have to use - as does LinuxAcademy (now owned by ACG)
So you mean companies want to do things to funnel companies into their sales pipeline - I’m shocked - a customer acquisition strategy? How novel.
Hah, yes—but now you can delete it!
Just like you can “delete” Safari on iOS but the underlying rendering engine is still embedded in the OS - just like IE.
It was just a huge distraction to need to build an iOS app, go through the App Store, etc., but we wouldn't have been able to get traction without it.
But it wasn’t a huge distraction to build the Android app....
I said brand and ecosystem are secondary [to critical unique hardware/software features]. UI/UX are fleeting because they're ultimately a matter of style, which come in and out with the tide, to paraphrase Jefferson.
I don't see iPhones going anywhere. There are a lot of grandmas out there.
> So you think all of the cool kids are going to use crappy $300 Android phones?
The cool kids are tooling on cheap Linux devices like PinePhones which will form the basis of less general-purpose, more app/service-focused phones produced by other kinds of (not necessarily "tech") companies, for other purposes: think industrial phones from Honeywell for $200, luxury phones from Coach included in a $395 clutch, a free Tide phone with a monthly laundry detergent subscription, to the point of calculators: coveted objects in the '70s, given away as branded giveaways at Burger King and your local credit union by the '00s. Smartphones will get there.
> So from what I see most older people are using cheap Android phones. [...] If Google can’t make a decent video app[...]
Some grandmas use FaceTime, others use Skype.
As per Duo, Google blew it and no one will ever use their video chat apps again (unless under YouTube, that's their last shot).
> By 2016, the iPhone 4s was 5 years old. But you said you were forced to make an app for Android anyway. Also, 4G was ubiquitous on even low end phones by then.
Like Skype, our product internationalized well. We were doing video surveys all over North America, as well as surprisingly random European, Asian, and Australian locations by late 2016. South America and Africa in '17.
> But as far as performance, even today most Android phones are crappy prepaid phones sold by second rate carriers like MetroPCS and Boost Mobile.
Sounds true.
> Do you realize how easy it is to build your own subscription infrastructure?
Having a subscription flow doesn't mean people use it. I'm talking more about business models than technical feats. A passable video chat service + payment flow isn't so hard in the technical sense, for us the key was aligning with a viable pricing model for our customers, which sustained our development regardless of investment, which helped secure further investment.
We built a sweet automated transaction flow, and no service providers ever used it. Instead we emailed invoices and they always got paid. But we were transactional, selling to SMB/enterprise customers. Different story with different pricing models and customer base. I haven't done consumer subscriptions: that's where it seems that Apple wrings out developers, particularly game developers. Though I can see happily giving up 30% on virtual items with no marginal cost.
> Just like you can “delete” Safari on iOS but the underlying rendering engine is still embedded in the OS - just like IE.
You can run Chromium and Gecko on Windows and Mac. You can't run Chromium or Gecko on iOS.
> But it wasn’t a huge distraction to build the Android app....
If we were only targeting North America, it would probably have been a bigger distraction to build the Android app. The problems that necessitated a native app ended up seemingly being hardware deficiencies based on cost considerations. Booking rate for services after successful survey ended up being substantially lower in North America among Android app users, yet it was very high among Android users with devices capable of running the web app, which had motivated us to build the native app to support more Android users in the first place. Didn't really pan out on this continent.
Critical in Europe and Asia though.
> WebRTC for videoconferencing is not supported for third-party browsers because Safari displays a prominent UI to make sure the user knows when a website is recording using the camera and microphone. Apple does not yet have a way to make this UI work in other WebKit clients.
That's a far cry from what you're insinuating.
Safari also doesn't support service workers or the fullscreen API.