Hacker News Reader

Comment by kevincox | Hacker News Reader

Wow. That is unexpected. I have to say that FaceTime in a browser sandbox is one of the few Apple products I would consider using. I wonder what made them take this path?

I also wonder if someone could build a Matrix bridge if it is available via web, that would be fairly cool.

Some questions:

- Is it phone-number based IDs? Or can I pick a username or get a random ID?

- Is spam going to be a problem? Previous Apple had the advantage that you had to buy a multi-hundred dollar advice to call someone. Will they need to implement new spam measures (or will you simply have to add a contact first)?

View on HN

> I wonder what made them take this path?

Very simple.

Video conferencing software has an anti-network effect:

If just one person in a group cannot use a particular app, nobody in the group can.

Doesn't the same apply to chat software / iMessage? Also, FaceTime isn't really conferencing software (though they added a bunch of conferencing feature just now). It's closer to Duo, which focuses on casual face to face meetings, not at desk, presenting slides kind of video meeting.

No, because it just moves to SMS for the group, instead.

Video conferencing has no ubiquitous fallback.

Neither does SMS for large parts of the world. Not everyone has unlimited SMS like US carriers do. And/or as soon as one participant is abroad you're talking international SMS prices.

This isn't a clean fallback option.

However it's a _good enough_ fallback that has been working for many groups. Yes, it doesn't solve the issue for all possible groups. But Apple likely doesn't care yet, and probably shouldn't until there are other changes it can work on that would affect larger groups (like bringing FaceTime to the web).

Most of the world uses WhatsApp though, so there's no fallback necessary if most people in the world never even open up iMessage.

> Is it phone-number based IDs? Or can I pick a username or get a random ID?

You can use FaceTime without a phone number. Just create an Apple account, then give your contact your AppleID associated email address to add to their contact card for you and you have a working FaceTime destination.

> You can use FaceTime without a phone number. Just create an Apple account

You cannot create an Apple account without providing a phone number.

Any number is usable though, it can be a landline and use automated call rather than sms.

Point is to limit false account (and I guess also having some clues about real identity in case of abuse).

So you still can't use Facetime without a phone number.

This is a honest question, so, what is so good about FaceTime? I have not used an iPhone since version 3GS, so it has been a while, but I understand it is just something similar to whatsapp video calls, google meet, or even zoom?

It's just easier to use for Apple entrenched people. You can automatically see which of your contacts you can call with it and you can do it straight from the contacts app. Plus it will ring iPhone/Mac/iPad. Otherwise it's not considerably different.

That's a bit dismissive. I use android and iOS devices regularly and of all the options facetime is what I use the most for the following reasons: 1) The latency is very good, which is critical for a comfortable video chat experience. 2) Performance and experience is reliable and consistent and it handles less-than-ideal network condition very well. It's the one that I know is most likely to give me an acceptable experience the first time.

I am not aware of anything in particular. But my threshold of "I will run it in the browser" is fairly low, so if someone wanted to do a FaceTime call with me I would join.

My Grandpa has FaceTime and already knows how to use it.

What others have said. From my experience it's relatively simple, feature limited and dead simple to use on screen/camera containing ios/macos devices. The web version won't have the same get the app nag/confusion as zoom/whatsapp/meet, at least temporarily....

In my family, it was the best video calling option back in 2010-2012 or so, and there was no competition. So all the older people only know how to use Facetime, and no one is going to go through the trouble of teaching them anything else.

I also have been embarrassed trying to teach Google's solutions and then Google messing with them over and over, so I won't ever try to introduce a Google service again.

Google Duo (the FaceTime competitor afaik) works fine and I have used it with all my family for a while now.

There's also WhatsApp video which is pretty poor quality, imo. Duo is much clearer and higher quality.

the web interface works pretty nicely as well. I've been using google messages and duo lately and they have been working pretty flawlessly

I’m sure it does - the technical aspects of Google’s products are fantastic. But I’ve been burned enough times now and I just assume anything interesting and new that Google makes will be rebranded / deleted / shunted into a new department in a few years for no reason. Google duo? What about Allo? Is that gchat? Is it related to hangouts? Or was that just a Google plus thing? Does that even still exist? Is duo it related to Meet? It’s all such a mess.

When Inbox came out I thought “huh this is great. I’d better not get used to it or I’ll be sad when it inevitably gets shut down in a few years”. And sure enough. I dread the family conversations in a few years of “wait where did the icon go?”

The Gmail app pretty much turned into Inbox. I was dreading the shutdown of Inbox but it ended up being a complete non-event.

One can understand scepticism, but Duo isn't going anywhere. If you need a FaceTime replacement, just use Duo and put all the rest of that mess out of your mind.

> One can understand scepticism, but Duo isn't going anywhere

"In August 2020, it was reported that Google was planning to eventually replace Google Duo with Google Meet, but would continue to support Duo and "invest in building new features" in the long term"

https://9to5google.com/2020/08/14/sources-google-meet-replac...

How do you know this? I don't know anyone using it so I've honestly been assuming it's the next to go. I've been using Meet with all my groups as it feels like a corporate solution and thus maybe more stable.

I totally agree. I also don't usually trust google to support their 'projects' in long term, but since messages and duo seem to be pre installed in android devices (I think?) I was inclined to try it out. Just hoping that messages and duo are here to stay

yes. i love it. i can share screen, cast to tv (on samsung devices etc). potrait mode, virtual background, blurr..its all there!

Seriously why are Google video calls SO confusing and why do they change every year?

Google video engineers gotta justify that promo to Senior Staff

I honestly 100% feel like this is the main justification for all changes happening with Google products. I swear to god Google Photos changes the entire layout every year for no reason whatsoever. Whatever they change it to isn't better, just different. But the entire website has to be remodelled and your users have to learn the entire website again because.....someone on the UI team has to justify their 6 digit salary?

The transition from Google Play Music to YouTube Music has been insane. They rebuilt apps seemingly from the ground up, only without a bunch of features. Meanwhile the actual product has, at best, stood still for about two years now. Meanwhile Spotify are running rings around them.

Are they though? I'm actually curious since I don't know the numbers but wouldn't use Spotify if you paid me. I've got nothing against the app, but YouTube Premium gets me ad-free youtube everywhere including casting devices as well as a solid music streaming app. If it weren't for the value of the bundle I'd likely not care as much though.

I’m the same. While I get ad-free YouTube into the bargain I’m not going to switch away. But friends of mine love the highlights, smart playlist stuff Spotify has (to be honest I don’t know the full details). Not to mention that Spotify has an entire API people make apps with, not having that has left me on the outside of some stuff before now.

> If it weren't for the value of the bundle I'd likely not care as much though.

Surely being paid to use Spotify would represent even better value.

Spotify has atrocious quality, their apps frequently are unresponsive and crash or won't play music often. Just about everyone I know who uses it complains about it from time to time. I haven't tried YT music so I can't compare, just saying.

I have both and really have no issues, just saying. Spotify has the crazy advantage of being on literally every device I own, my car has a Spotify app built-in directly into the dash which makes it crazy convenient, I also have it directly on my TV, on my speaker.....they have built an ecosystem and the ecosystem works great(in my case).

One complaint I have about them is that shuffle is broken. Completely broken. And I know they explained multiple times that it's not, that people are imagining things, but I just don't believe that - it's impossible that in a playlist with 300 songs I keep hearing the same 5 songs over and over and over again!

RIP google play music. They had the _best_ recommendations - my suggested new releases would often include a fantastic album by a band I’d never heard of. Since switching to Spotify, i get suggestions for new music by artists I already know I like, but I haven’t found any new artists I love in the same way.

I miss what for the same reason

I have Youtube Music (through Premium) and it's still annoying. Especially when it decides some cover version on Youtube is "for Kids" and then refuses to play in the background. Which is one of the few features actually essential for a music player.

Google Meet is a pretty solid solution and I have never had a problem with it, been using it for years.

Years? https://mobilesyrup.com/2020/04/08/google-meet-rebrand/

Google rebrands or changes entire apps at a whim. I’m shocked they haven’t ruined Google Apps (Workspace) with their changes.

Yes, it was originally named "Hangouts Meet", and was renamed about a year ago to remove "Hangouts" from the name. It's still the same app, though.

On the subject of hangouts, I miss Hangouts Dialer which was killed earlier this year. Used it to call international phone numbers.

Do you use it in Chrome? I have tried chrome and Firefox but they both make my fans spin for one video stream and four audio streams. Zoom's native app OTOH seems to handle multiple video streams with ease. This is on macOS.

Google apps use VP9 for video, and Apple didn't expose VP9 decoding acceleration via Video Toolbox up until Big Sur (on models capable doing so, so for Intel chips Kaby Lake and newer). So if you don't run Big Sur on KBL+, it falls back to software.

Duo is solid, extremely simple, and not going anywhere. But, yeah, it's been a mess.

>and not going anywhere

What is this certainty based on? Google's history shows the exact opposite likelihood.

Duo is pretty easy for the old folks on i-devices, in my experience. It's pretty much Google's FaceTime, and isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

I think it's actually a bit nicer than FaceTime.

I have only ever heard about Duo on HN. Nobody I know uses it, people outside the US use WhatsApp or Facebook and people inside the US use FaceTime.

Even Hangouts which is abandonware is better promoted than Duo and takes a prominent place in the Gmail UI along with Meet.

I thought duo was canceled. Haven’t heard of it once in all of the pandemic.

>isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

You say this like Google doesn't have a history of product ADHD where they create new products and cancel them within months. On top of that, they create multiple products for the same functions which means that people get confused about what's appropriate for a situation and what's not. At one point, Google had 3 different video solutions all active at the same time and none of them worked with the others.

I see from the responses that one thing that is omitted is the clearly higher audio/video quality. I had someone call me on facebook messenger, but had to ask them to call me on facetime purely because of quality, and its not the first time.

As with all Apple products "it just works". I wonder if that may change when it goes to the web.

We defaulted to Facetime until it became obvious that it really couldn't cope with occasional bandwidth glitches.

We switched to WhatsApp and video quality is noticeably more reliable. It does a better job when - for example - someone is outside and the WiFi isn't 100%.

Duo and WhatsApp have significantly better video quality (especially off of Wi-Fi) than FaceTime

This is demonstrably false. WhatsApp is so bad it makes my eyes bleed.

I've found WA to be more stable on the audio front, and video is great as well. But I have an ancient 6s so I'm not quite putting out the highest quality video.

The audio in WA is good, but the video quality is TERRIBLE on WA.

LINE which I use more often is far better quality than WA.

That's certainly true of Duo in experience.

More than quality, Facetime seems to have much lower latency for me than other options, and this leads to much more natural-feeling conversations.

Zoom is more like Webex, FaceTime is more like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger with less creepyness.

What people said in sibling posts was true before today. Now we'll also have spatial audio, music sharing, video sharing, controls to filter out noise (or not) in real time and other cool features. Although not on the Web I expect.

Not to be cliche but...it just works. Especially for the older generation who are used to calling people, the UX is seamless.

No links to send (Zoom), no ever-changing products and menus (Google anything), and as few taps as possible/low friction to turn on (Whatsapp is comparable).

The audio and video quality is also pretty damn good.

Atleast for me, the experience with Facetime has been less than optimal. For some reason the call option to some of my contacts is always disabled even though they can call me.

The left hand side of the window in Mac always displays recently called. No idea how to access contacts in the Mac app.

The video quality is all right.

> The left hand side of the window in Mac always displays recently called. No idea how to access contacts in the Mac app.

In the app itself AFAIK your only option is to type into the search box at the top of the missed calls list, and it will search contacts.

Otherwise you can load the contacts app and look there, and then click the facetime icon for the contact you want to connect with.

Nothing.

Works worse than WhatsApp and Google Meet. Way worse than Duo.

Functionality wise worse than Zoom but UI is maybe better than Zoom. But wait, FaceTime has essentially no UI.

Works a lot better than Signal. But Signal’s audio video and their UI around it sucks, so that’s nothing FaceTime ought to be proud of.

It’s just Apple doing Apple things and fans going bonkers over it.

I like it because it has lower a/v latency compared to many other apps, especially over long distances. I think many people don't realize how much it affects the feel of the call.

A fun way to test is counting to 10 by having one person say 1 and the other say 2 as soon as they hear the 1 and so on. You'd be surprised how long it can take to count to 10 on some apps

Privacy, and if negatives can be positives, it's not Facebook by association, not Google, and not Zoom. I won't explain why those negatives are negatives because I think it's widely known, but again it relates to privacy.

On an iPhone, the barrier to using facetime is very low, its like making or receiving a video phone call than using a video conferencing app - I'd imagine more elderly or low computer/smart phone literate would can a facetime call to their grandkids than use whatsapp/zoom to do the same

My theory is that FaceTime calls can only be initiated/scheduled from an Apple device. That prevents most of the spam problem, since you won’t be able to initiate a call through web.

This also boosts value for ios users more than the rest. It means an ios user can facetime anyone rather than only ios users while an android users still has to rely on an alternative solution.

I’m sure if they could kill global phone networks with FaceTime for everyone they would, but I think that they’re solving spam by blocking any device that spans using a serial number or secure UUID or something that iOS can’t fake, rooted or unroofed — but their web solution can’t access such data to provide a hardware-baked identifier to ban for spamming.

I worry that my contacts could feel insulted if they find out I'm contacting them via this sort of "don't call me" communications channel.

Well it sounds like they will send you the link between another communication channel. So you can always respond there and send your own video call link (using another service).

> Apple announced that FaceTime is going to be available on the web so users can call in from Android devices and Windows PCs

From the article.

“call in” means an Apple user has to initiate the call, as GP stated.

That implies, but does not guarantee. It’s my best guess, not a certainty.

Theory confirmed:

> Non-Apple users can join a one-on-one FaceTime call or a Group FaceTime call, effectively making FaceTime a more platform-agnostic video service that is no longer just limited to iOS users. You do, however, need an iOS user to start a FaceTime call and send a link.

https://www.macrumors.com/2021/06/07/facetime-pc-android-use...

Just tried and when going to the site it asks for a name, no need for an Apple Id. And on the hosts device it asks to be let into the call.

This comment likely answers your questions https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27425909

I worry that if it's anything like the music.apple.com experience, it will be frustrating to use.

I spend a lot of time on my PC for streams/gaming, and I put up with music.apple.com because I'm normally a happy subscriber using my iPhone.

But the website is just terrible.

- I get logged out if I don't visit for a day which requires a whole 2FA dance. Why not just leave me logged in?

- If I am still "logged in" after some hours, all songs become "previews" and I can't actually listen to anything. The fix is to log out and log back in, and it's a dice roll whether I'll get to do the 2FA dance again

- Songs routinely just don't play when I click them. Only fix seems to be leaving the album that I'm looking at and then returning to the same page

- Navigating away from albums occasionally makes Chrome pop up a "you have unsaved changes" warning. Why?

> I wonder what made them take this path?

Perhaps noticing that everyone was using Zoom during the pandemic?

Remember originally Steve Jobs promised that FaceTime would be an "open standard." For some reason Apple backed off on that.

Considering that it's only available to join existing calls and not to initiate calls, it's likely an email address paired with a random ID.

> I wonder what made them take this path?

it was literally an email that surface on the Epic store litigation, where one Apple exec says (quote from memory) "We can't have facetime for android because that will remove the barrier for families to buy Android phones for their kids"

So it will be crappy and have TONS of limitations (wouldn't be surprised it it only work with one apple device hosting) because it is only for legal excuse reasons.

apple PR is running around downvoting facts :D

> We can't have facetime for android because that will remove the barrier for families to buy Android phones for their kids

I might be missing something... Is there something in this that is illegal?

It seems to violate various competition laws depending on jurisdiction.

Does it? One thing going for this is that Apple is huge and iMessage has a massive amount of users. But on the other hand forcing developers to support all platforms is just not realistic.

> illegal

besides being immoral and a literal F-U to your consumers, it can bring anti trust cases when you are as big as Apple.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock-in

But other than that, well, just go celebrate your $2 gain on your APPL stocks despite the fact you were prohibited to call 50% of your friends just so someone couldn't save a few bucks when buying a phone for their teenage kid. Go you!

To be honest, it is more a F-U to your competitors' customers than to your own. I don't get why Apple creating a feature for their own ecosystem has to be made available to other ecosystems as well. It's not like Face Time is the only video calling solution out there.

The way Android users complain about the lack of Apple iMessage and Apple FaceTime on their phones, you'd be forgiven for questioning whether Android had any messaging or video calling features.

I will tell you a secret: it's not Android users who complain about the lack of iMessage or Facetime. Most of them are not even aware of their existence. They are using Whataspp, or Viber, or whatever and go on with their lives.

>To be honest, it is more a F-U to your competitors' customers than to your own.

Why? As an iPhone user, I am the one who paid for the development of FaceTime, but I can't use it because communications tools require network effects that FaceTime doesn't have. I can't even use it with my wife.

I'm not saying it's somehow illegitimate or even illegal for Apple to do this, but what it tells me is that Apple cares more about hurting competitors than about providing a useful service to its own paying customers.

I think it's funny that Android users are so angry with Apple for not releasing iMessage and FaceTime for Android. How dare Apple not make their communications platforms even more dominant! Not having iMessage on Android is immoral! Not having FaceTime on Android is "a literal F-U" to their customers!

I think it's funny because Apple left a decade-long opening for Google to build equally good Android alternatives to iMessage and FaceTime and dominate in cross-platform communication. Instead, twelve chat platforms later, I'm not entirely sure if Google has finally released something that won't be superseded next year.

In Europe at least, I'm very unhappy that neither Google or Apple has managed to create any form of standard communications platform, because now instead of one of those two, everyone uses WhatsApp from Facebook, which I personally hate using but am obliged to if I want any kind of social life. If Apple had created Android versions of their messaging products, their own users wouldn't be forced into Facebook's arms.

Before you say, "just don't use it", here are some examples. My kids parents/school group uses WhatsApp, same as my kids sports club to organize matches/training. I'm a volunteer for a local association -- WhatsApp group. I really have little choice in using it.

>I think it's funny that Android users are so angry with Apple for not releasing iMessage and FaceTime for Android.

I don't get the impression that Android users are angry at all. It's me as an iPhone user who is pissed about never being able to use any of these supposedly fantastic services.

I have never used FaceTime and probably never will if it is true that Android/Linux/Windows users cannot initiate FaceTime calls on this new FaceTime web app.

I don't really care for iMessage or Facetime, I don't use them even though I can, but

> because Apple left a decade-long opening for Google to build equally good Android alternatives to iMessage

is simply not true. No one but Apple can integrate SMS and messaging on iOS as Apple can; others do not have entitlements for that. You could do it on Android (and Google did for a brief period with Hangouts, and so did Signal), but you can't do it on iOS.

you talk like either as if facetime is a good product, or as if you love anything from apple regardless.

i think it is a closed solution that sucks just like all the others.

i think every single one of those lock-in-for-profit platform only attract idiots (in the original greek work meaning of the word) and makes true open solutions that will ultimately help everyone slower to show up. Because eventually they will.

How is it immoral to not actively support your competitor's hardware with your software and services? Of course it isn't, iMessage is not a utility, it's not a public good. You can still text or make voice calls to anyone you want, or even video calls using dozens of third party apps.

They have no moral obligation at all to extend their own first party services to Android, that's an absurd idea.

The intention behind not letting it work for their competitors is immoral and potentially illegal. They want to do it to prevent their consumers to buy their competitors products for their family, even if their competitors product are better; just because they already have a device in the Apple ecosystem.

They are not "preventing" anyone from doing anything, they are simply, until now, refraining from improving their competitors devices by releasing their software for it.

Of course they prefer people to buy iPhones for their kids, there is nothing wrong with that, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with not actively working to make the experience of mixed Android-iPhone families slightly better.

There are literally dozens of cross platform messaging and video calling apps. Banning these would have been wrong, and possibly illegal, but they are not doing that.

The email we are discussing specifically says they want to prevent customers from buying their competitors products for their friends and family.

I don't know if they use the word "prevent" or not, but we both know that they are not in fact trying to literally "prevent" anyone from buying an Android phone. They just don't want to give them some of the benefits of iOS if they do so. No reasonable person would call that "prevent".

They are specifically and intentionally limiting the ways in which their customer can use their devices unless they buy more. Is that simple enough to understand?

No they don’t, they “limit” the way people can use Android devices.

Their customers cannot use their devices to iMessage their friends or family on Android.

It is immoral and illegal that McDonalds won't serve me a Chik-Fil-A sandwich.

This is such a great rubric!

A small software company is treated differently than one of the largest companies on earth, both from a moral perspective and a legal perspective.

Anticompetitive behavior is illegal for companies with a monopoly, and based on the leaked emails, it seems Apple's intentions were clear. The "monopoly" bit is still up in the air, but it's becoming increasingly clear the "anticompetitive behavior" bit is not.

This FaceTime news shows that Apple's lawyers are probably worried.

Reasonable people may argue that they have a monopoly on iOS apps, which could be problematic, but they don't have anything even remotely approximating a monopoly on video calling or messaging apps, which is what we are talking about here.

They also don't have any kind of monopoly on TV or music streaming, so there would be nothing wrong (and certainly nothing illegal) with keeping Apple Music and Apple TV exclusive to their platforms, so clearly they believe they will make more money by making them cross platform. Presumably it's the same with Facetime.

They could have been in every school and every office by now with a cross platform solution, instead they have zoom&co eating that space. I don't think they're happy about that either.

Prohibited? There are many many other options of course. Admittedly, FaceTime is the best I ever used (no echoes, just works, works best over low bandwidth, etc.)

I agree with the arguments (usually made by Apple fans, and I don't mean that as a pejorative) that Apple is probably in their legal rights and that it makes dollars and cents business sense for them to limit iMessage to iOS as much as possible.

But it's still a shitty thing to do. I have a tremendous amount of respect for companies that do things that are contrary to business objectives because they're the right thing to do. In this case, Apple chose to do the shitty thing.

I don't have an opinion on this either way but why is that "the right thing to do" in your mind? It seems to me like making that available on non-Apple products would give very little benefit to them or their users while introducing lots of uncertainties that may actually make the experience worse for most users. The reason most Apple features work the way they do is because of the complete vertical integration of hardware and software. Introducing unknown hardware seems like a bad idea when consistency is your whole schtick.

Calm down.

That email was about iMessage, not FaceTime: https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/9/22375128/apple-imessage-an...

Facetime already has a lot of limitations . While I do love it, it's very data heavy - have you ever looked at how much data it consumes? Also, it's a fn batteryand heat hog. It freaking makes all my phones hot and uses tons of power.

You can't easily record a call (unless I am unaware) it's hard to take screenshots, and you can't take a shot of just the other party, it always will have your personal view in a corner.

The call logs suck.

And obviously the walked garden.

I'm typing this on android, but I also have an iPhone on me that's wifi only such that I can facetime and imessages.

However imessage is broken as well: I can text people but some people can't text me back.

I also have a google voice account and somehow these three platforms have confused the system, as messages constantly get lost ,,,

Reply on news.ycombinator.com