“Quietly, gradually, but clearly Apple is building platform lock-in into its iOS products, with some features that are deeper than just a rich third-party software ecosystem,” Darrell Etherington reports for TechCrunch.
“FaceTime Audio is the latest of these, VoIP calling built on the back of its FaceTime video chat service, which is tightly integrated to the phone app to make placing free international calls almost a pleasant surprise for those looking to connect with far-flung loved ones,” Etherington reports. “FaceTime Audio joins iMessage as another reason to sign on with the Apple camp and get an iPhone or iPad device, and then never to depart again. It’s a little odd to see it arrive so much later than FaceTime’s video calling feature, but the reversal of feature rollout makes a lot of sense ; audio-only calls are uncomfortably close to standard phone calls, which is still one of the sole remaining areas that carriers control.”
Etherington reports, “Critics will say that services like Google’s Gmail calling and Skype have offered free international or long-distance calling for years, but Apple’s service is integrated directly into a user’s Phone, Contacts, Messages and FaceTime apps, which they’re already comfortable using, and doesn’t require having a separate account or third-party app open. That makes an immense difference in terms of barriers to usage for people who may not be all that technologically savvy. My less expert family members are already extremely comfortable with FaceTime Audio and how it works, not even a week into the feature’s launch, even if they’d never managed to make a habit of using Skype in the past.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: FaceTime Audio is currently only available between Apple devices.
Apple said they were going to make FaceTime a standard, unless something has changed recently that hasn’t happened. Facetime (audio/video) will never take over from phone calls until everyone uses it. By virtue of the fact that Apple don’t make cheap phones, but people do use cheap phones, iPhone users will still need to make phone calls.
I hope Apple doesn’t make FaceTime an open protocol. I don’t want to get calls over FaceTime from telmarketers.
Being open won’t change that, people won’t magically know your contact address/number any more than they do now. If it’s only set up to accept calls from people you know the system is irrelevant.
Companies won’t have Facetime as part of a switchboard system, so you’re still going to have to make phone calls, there the phone companies will still have control, albeit they’ll likely be seeing less revenue – but they’d no doubt make it up on data charges.
If the argument is that facetime could kill phone calls then it has got to be an all or nothing solution in that regard.
imagine if Victoria’s Secret got into the FaceTime telemarketing game…
Making Facetime an open standard could still easily be Apple’s long term goal. They already expanded from just iOS to Mac, and they keep building and refining it – clearly they haven’t given up on it. I’m sure they can deploy it to any platform whenever they think the time is right.
Apple might be carefully planning each move and taking its because it’s not enough for Facetime to be an open standard – it has to be THE open standard for personal communication.
If I remember correctly it was based on standards like SIP, which is used by most VOIP systems around the world now. In that case, Apple is only needed to tell a calling device where the other is. Once they are hooked together, the conversation is P2P.
Of course the iPhone is a phone and will continue to make calls to non Apple/iOS users. But for family, friends, colleagues and so on using iOS devices anywhere on the planet, this is awesome. From early reviews and testers, the quality is impressive. Much better than rival 3rd party free audio calls apps.
I believe some of the FaceTime internals got into legal issues, either, probably it was the VPN thing within Facetime, Apple is paying small royalty, but i dont remember well
Facetime audio is very handy for calling friends and family who are not on ATT. I have unlimited mobil to mobil minutes for ATT which covers most of my friends and family, but my brother’s on Verizon.
I have a 450 minute plan, and it may as well be unlimited because of stuff like iMessage and FaceTime…
FYI… The unlimited mobile to mobile program covers all mobile calls, even those to Verizon and other competing networks.
Yes, it does, but it adds an additional $20 or $30 /month to your bill. (gives you free mobile to mobile and also unlimited texts
It was a reasonable add on for me (have teen aged kids ) but many might not want to bump a $70 plan to a $100 plan.
mobile – bleedin’ keyboard 🙂
There are free voip apps in the App Store, TextFree is one. This is very old tech.
Gave a high school friend an old I pod touch and now were talking
Facetime does not connect in IOS 7 …calls don’t go through.
Facetime on IOS 7 works fine for me…
pr,
the reason FaceTime is not working for you is because you have an android phone. Besides being a piece of crap your ‘roid phone can’t run FaceTime.
Get a real iPhone (rather than a cheap knock off) and you will find that in fact FaceTime works fine in iOS7.
http://publications.usa.gov/USAPubs.php
If I’m connected to wi-fi and call someone with ios7, will the iPhone default to a FaceTime audio call similar to how it sends an iMessage rather than an SMS? Or do I need to somehow select FaceTime audio?
Next to the face time listing on their contacts card you should see both camera and phone icons. Click on the phone for voice only FaceTime (camera for A/V FaceTime)
I don’t think it just automatically bypasses normal calling though (but I don’t know that for sure just my experience thus far)