If you ’re placing your bets on announcement at next week ’s Apple consequence , you ’d do well to heed the predictions of my colleague Chris Breen : an update to the iPod contact seems like a trusted thing . That model will also likely gain a front - face tv camera ( and in all probability a rearward one as well ) , along with support for Apple ’s much ballyhooed FaceTime video recording chat feature film .
aboveboard , the veridical question is n’t whether or not the iPod touch will get supporting for FaceTime , but whether or not the touch ’s borrowing of the technology will in reality bolster FaceTime ’s usefulness and popularity .
With a few exceptions , FaceTime seems to for the most part be restrain to the realm of trinket at present . I ’ve used the feature a handful of time myself , but mainly for the saki of try out it out . ( I did , however , give one television set interview over FaceTime , which solve surprisingly well , except for my arm get tired after half an minute of holding up the phone ) .
Apple CEO Steve Jobs and chief designer Jonathan Ive demo FaceTime at WWDC.
FaceTime ’s niche service program is n’t a huge surprise : existing methods of video chat , such as Skype and iChat , have n’t exactly found mass appeal yet either . ( I say that as someone who spend part of his recent holiday set up Skype for several congener , in club to communicate with a household member who ’s move to Australia . ) The casual chatting with farflung relatives and friends is a skillful alternative , but it has n’t yet precipitated the kind of gyration in communicating incite by the telephone or e - mail .
Apple CEO Steve Jobs and chief designer Jonathan I ve demo FaceTime at WWDC .
Still , the simplicity of FaceTime and the reverence with which Jobs and Apple design top dog Jonathan I ve demoed it on stage at this yr ’s Worldwide Developers Conference made it light that Apple sees this as one of the iPhone 4 ’s most substantial features , if not a technological gyration in its own right . “ I grow up here in the U.S. withThe Jetsonsand withStar Trek … just stargaze about this , dreaming about video calling , and it ’s rattling now , ” said Jobs during the introduction .
Apple CEO Steve Jobs and chief designer Jonathan Ive demo FaceTime at WWDC.
During that same presentation , Jobs also promised that Apple would ship “ tens of million of FaceTime devices . ” It ’s not operose to take between those lines : both the use of “ devices ” and the routine of units imply that FaceTime wo n’t be limited to the iPhone 4 . The iPad and the iPod hint would seem to be premier candidates for the characteristic , since they both run on the same package as the iPhone . The only major hold - up : neither of them presently have a front - face tv camera — oranykind of camera .
Beyond that , though , there ’s no rationality that FaceTime ca n’t go on these machine . Jobs ’s onstage demo showed switching from a standard phone call to a FaceTime session , but FaceTime itself only swear on let a Wi - Fi connection ( Jobs say support for cellular networks might come in in the time to come ) and you caninitiate a FaceTime session without ever calling anybody on the phone .
It ’s unclouded that Apple is intrust to driving adoption of FaceTime , at least for a while . The companyset up a 1 - 800 serviceallowing rum iPhone 4 user to test out the lineament . And Jobs himself say that the company intended to make FaceTime , which was built on an alphabet soup of standards , an open industriousness standard itself .
That ’s a chic move , as it expands the potential difference of FaceTime chatting beyond the Apple ecosphere . While video chatting has been around for a while in a variety of forms , even on mobile devices , it ’s punishing to debate that Apple ’s solution is n’t the most elegant and elementary to appointment . afford up possible interoperability to platform like Android or Windows Mobile puts the testicle in the court of not just Google or Microsoft , but also third - party developers for those platform , who could conceivably drop a line FaceTime clients on their own . While contender might balk at adapting an Apple - backed standard , the potentially immense number of the company ’s democratic devices which support it may thrust their hands .
In the close , it may flex out that most people just are n’t interested in video chatting for a variety of understanding — it ’s hard to multitask , for illustration , and it can sense inept at time . But Apple plain mean to make certain that any failure will not be for want of stress . flock of technologies take time to catch on , and there ’s no telling how FaceTime might change our life once it ’s available to more than just the users of a individual gimmick .
