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Comment by jm4 | Hacker News Reader

I'm genuinely curious why it even matters whether it's open or not. I get that he said it would be open and now it's not. But beyond that why does it even matter? I can use Tango, Qik, Skype, etc. I think there's an iOS app out there that does Google Talk video. They are even easier because I don't have to explain to my parents how to connect the phone to wifi.

Maybe with the proliferation of all these other video chat apps opening up Facetime became a lower priority?

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None of them inter-operate. So, when you have a friend on Tango, a friend on Qik, and a friend on Skype, you have to install Tango, Qik and Skype.

We don't have a single protocol for everyone to standardize on, and we don't even have enough access to the various protocols to build a Trillian-like client that supports everything.

That makes sense, but opening up Facetime doesn't necessarily solve that problem. It has to be open and all these video chat vendors have to decide to embrace it, possibly abandoning years of investment in their own protocol.

In general, I prefer open protocols and standards. I'm just not sure opening Facetime meets any pressing demands of consumers. I suspect this is a matter of not wanting to allocate resources to something no one is asking for. I can't say I'd blame Apple for that decision if it is, in fact, the case.

I'm a new iPhone user so I haven't necessarily kept up to date with App Store developments until recently, but I believe that prior to Facetime Apple was a bit reluctant to approve video chat apps. Maybe that played into the announcement to open it up.

If people start clamoring for open video chat standards I'm sure someone will step up to the plate.

Obligatory xkcd link: http://xkcd.com/927/

We don't have a single protocol for everyone to standardize on, and we don't even have enough access to the various protocols to build a Trillian-like client that supports everything.

I thought both XMPP and SIP were supposed to solve that problem. What happened?

XMPP won. See Facebook, GTalk. The problem is, that you can (ab)use XMPP and disable some of the open parts (federation). The protocol is still the One True IM Protocol imho, but the biggest hosters suck.

I'm less familiar with SIP, but my take here is:

SIP seems to be a good thing, but then you notice that it doesn't do thaaat much and end up in hell afterwards (Okay, we've got a session. Which (open?) codecs are we going to use now?

What I'd have loved to see is jingle taking off. Give me XMPP based voice/video. The problem? For a long time Google fucked that up. There were lots of problems because of differences between the 'standard' and the implementation on GTalk. Til today the clients don't support video or audio conferences (unless you're counting the G+ hangout feature. I wonder why it is possible there, but not elsewhere. Why can't I just video call two of my friends, G+ or not?) and they still fail to support mobile phones.

Android 2.3.4 supports audio and video, but only for a limited set of hardware, because their support is tied to a specific platform. Using a different chipset (although in a powerful phone, with all hardware capabilities and Android 2.3.4? Bad luck).

So - I'd love to see XMPP win. But for now the implementation is mediocre. There's not enough support to push it, from what I can tell.

Defaults are very powerful. You won't get a button in the middle of a call that takes you directly into Google Talk on an iPhone.

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