At WWDC 2010 during the iPhone 4 introduction, Steve shows a list of “standards” that FaceTime is built on and then announces the plans to make FaceTime open adding that it will be shipping on tens of millions of devices this year. Most of us assumed that this meant devices not manufactured by Apple but, instead, Apple blew us away with millions of iPhone 4 and iPod touch sales in 2010 followed by millions of iPad 2s with FaceTime so far in 2011. Alright, Steve promised 10s of millions of devices and followed through on that promise.
What about those other devices?
Radvision weighs in shortly after the announcement last year:
Unlike the marketing slides above, open-sourcing the standard – which in layman terms means opening it up like Cisco has recently done with its Telepersence Interoperability Protocol (TIP) – will enable others to interoperate with Apple. This means that FaceTime users will be able to use video calling for calling their friends, family and colleagues, even if they are not iPhone4 users who happen to be located in a WiFi zone.
This can be achieved by either implementing the Apple protocol on the client side (what some have speculated Skype, for instance, might do) or via bridges and gateways that companies like RADVISION supply, which interoperate with the different standards and codecs (which is what Skype will, most probably do, just like with their Skype For SIP solution).
What I want to deal with here is a slew of open questions about the openness of FaceTime. And to start, you should read this post by Ajit Jaokar about possible meanings of open. Which ones can be covered or limited by Apple’s FaceTime?
- Open source – Apple are unlikely to open source their FaceTime code. It’s simply not in their DNA.
- Open standards – they use them for FaceTime, but as I stated already – this doesn’t mean interoperability.
- Open APIs – they have them, though you could question how open they are with all the limits to using them on a daily basis that Apple is adding.
- Open access – will Apple allow access to FaceTime from other kinds of networks and services? Will aVC240 be capable of using SIP (the open standard that FaceTime happens to use) to connect with an Apple iPhone4? Not for now, but will it be possible?
- Open choice of enablers – will Apple allow users to connect the video calling service to service providers other than their own? Probably not.
- The ability to access any application – will Apple allow 3rd party developers access into FaceTime? Will they allow them to use the video chat service in their own apps?
When Steve Jobs said FaceTime will be open, what did he really mean?
Then, Engadget reports that Skype is open to working with Apple on FaceTime integration:
“We are not considering FaceTime as a technological platform for video calling in our own products.
However, given Apple’s statement about FaceTime being an open platform, we are looking forward to see how it unfolds. We look forward to working with Apple to make sure the millions of users of Skype on the iPhone get the best possible experience when it comes to video calls on mobile devices and beyond.”
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Things cooled down after that. I did find this article posted in February that revisited the question about an open source FaceTime
Apple today released a Mac version of its FaceTime video chat feature found on iPhone 4s. The app is in the Mac App Store and costs 99 cents due, apparently, to accounting requirements.
FaceTime is supposed to be open source, encouraging developers to include it themselves, but FaceTime remains a strictly WiFi, Mac or iPhone 4 based service, slowing the adoption of FaceTime to a crawl.
There are many reasons why video chat hasn’t really caught on — the biggest one being the just-of-bed look most of us have during the course of the day — other reasons are a fear of stepping on the toes of the telecom companies.
Unlike Google Voice which lets you make free domestic phone calls from Gmail, Apple’s FaceTime is in a small box: you can only call Mac or iPhone 4 owners, and iPhone owners must be on WiFi or the service won’t work. It is, in a nutshell, not very useful under most circumstances.
But if video chat doesn’t work under most circumstances whose fault is that? Apple is to blame for limiting FaceTime to a select few users and a select few circumstances. As a result why would a developer really care if FaceTime is ‘open source’ or not?
So, when will FaceTime go open source or was the “open” remark bullshit from Steve & Company again?
