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Apple Debuts Facetime for the Mac, Beta Available Today

Small White Car said:
So an even better reason to keep it out of iChat, then. 2 different kinds of video chatting within the same app? And each can only connect to certain kinds of devices? Sounds confusing. I'd rather have those be different apps.
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How is that confusing? Ichat supports more than one text-based protocol, no reason it can't support more than one video protocol as well.
 
Small White Car said:
I disagree. I really don't care about text-chatting. What does video calling have to do with that?

Should they build face time into Apple Mail because they're both communication toools? Or should it be part of Address Book because they both involve people?

No, it makes more sense as a stand-alone app.
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Small White Car said:
So an even better reason to keep it out of iChat, then. 2 different kinds of video chatting within the same app? And each can only connect to certain kinds of devices? Sounds confusing. I'd rather have those be different apps.
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Yes, two different types of vidoe chat. But both are Apple protocols, and the integration can happen behind the scenes without the user seeing anything amiss.

Say I open iChat and try to video chat with someone. If they only have iChat, it rings them on iChat. If they only have Facetime, it only rings them on Facetime. If they have both, then it rings both. Easy.

Making Facetime a part of iChat would also mean a lot more potential users. iChat comes with every Mac. Obviously Facetime will in 10.7, but Apple is missing a chance to have Facetime installed on every Mac out there...

Right now if someone "calls" my email on Facetime, it will ring my Mac. If they "call" my phone number, it rings my iPhone. That should be integrated.

That all said, Facetime is in beta, so this should improve...
 
I assume a beta issue, but has anyone else had trouble signing in? When I put my password in it just says signing in and keeps going. and going. and going. Anybody have that too? Anybody got a fix? Like I said, it just came out an hour ago so I assume it is a beta issue.
 
chunyuen93 said:
FaceTime Activation
Unable to verify email because it is already in use.

Huh?
How is my email address used?
I tried using another email of mine and it sends me the verification link.
And there it goes
Safari can’t open the page “https://id.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects..."

Anyone having the same problem?
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yes. obviously apple's verification server is having issues, probably because of the high load.
 
Silofolous said:
I assume a beta issue, but has anyone else had trouble signing in? When I put my password in it just says signing in and keeps going. and going. and going. Anybody have that too? Anybody got a fix? Like I said, it just came out an hour ago so I assume it is a beta issue.
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Same problem here. I've just left it to see what happened. Tried it at first and thought my email or password was wrong, so made a new account with a different address. Same problem. It's probably just that the servers are busy or there's a problem with the beta. We'll have to see if they fix it in the next few hours.
 
i dont get this :S

I have never used facetime on my iphone 4 so I dont really know how it works.. I just installed it on my mbp and it tried sending me a verification email which fails when clicking the link...

Which email do I use? I have 2 emails... one is a gmail account which is my itunes/apple iD and i also have a mobileme email address which i use for everything else...

Which do I use then? and if i try facetime with either one of those addresses (to test it with my iphone) it says not capable or user is busy...
 
Silofolous said:
I assume a beta issue, but has anyone else had trouble signing in? When I put my password in it just says signing in and keeps going. and going. and going. Anybody have that too? Anybody got a fix? Like I said, it just came out an hour ago so I assume it is a beta issue.
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I just can't sign in as well. Same issue. :mad: I've been behind it for the last 20 minutes or so..
 
The only thing I need now is AT&T to allow FT over 3G. Something tells me that won't be coming anytime soon though...
 
I also could not verify my apple id for a good 10 minutes. Obviously, things were/are a bit overloaded. Even the site text appeared all forked up.

Then *poof* it worked. All is well.

It brought me back to the iphone 4 pre-order launch there for a moment.
 
I know it is a beta BUT

So I've tried FaceTime from my Mac to a Couple phones and it is working pretty well for me.

I see two things that need improvement.

#1 As far as I can see. . . There is no ability to call from the application if the person does not exist in your address book. This means that you have to add them first then call them. Not very streamlined.

#2 Having an iPhone and a Desktop client I now have two FaceTime addresses, One is my email address on my MAC the other is the Phone Number on my iPhone. It would be nice if both my iphone and Mac rang when some dials my email or phone number. This should be doable since the FaceTime protocol leverages SIP which has this ability.

Since this is a beta, I hope we will see these improvements.

Ted

phone guy
http://uc500.com
 
Demosthenes X said:
Say I open iChat and try to video chat with someone. If they only have iChat, it rings them on iChat. If they only have Facetime, it only rings them on Facetime. If they have both, then it rings both. Easy.
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That's exactly what worries me. It would happen that way a lot, even if you didn't mean it to. When I'm trying to call someone's Mac I don't want their phone to ring. I chose which device to call for a reason. That would be terrible if it worked that way.

And, yeah, it'll be optional I'm sure, but how often will people get it wrong? I dunno...I'm not saying it would ruin my life...I'm just saying that I'm happier having it be its own app.
 
Works fine on my network. But need over 3G at some point. Come on carriers!!! It not so much bandwidth on the end of the day. I wonder if jailbrake work for it. I decided to not jailbrake iPhone 4 but now I am thinking about it again.
 
For what it's worth, I submitted feedback through the FaceTime app to build it into iChat. I encourage everyone else to do so as well. As most are saying here, it makes no sense to have multiple video chat apps - the user shouldn't care whether the protocol behind the scenes is FaceTime or iChat. The same app should handle both seamlessly. It's far more confusing to the average person to have multiple apps for what's essentially the same thing - how many average users even understand the difference?
 
bankshot said:
For what it's worth, I submitted feedback through the FaceTime app to build it into iChat. I encourage everyone else to do so as well. As most are saying here, it makes no sense to have multiple video chat apps - the user shouldn't care whether the protocol behind the scenes is FaceTime or iChat. The same app should handle both seamlessly. It's far more confusing to the average person to have multiple apps for what's essentially the same thing - how many average users even understand the difference?
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So we need to sign up for ichat to use facetime? I dont see the point in this I dont use ichat so just having the facetime app is simple and works for me.
 
Small White Car said:
That's exactly what worries me. It would happen that way a lot, even if you didn't mean it to. When I'm trying to call someone's Mac I don't want their phone to ring. I chose which device to call for a reason. That would be terrible if it worked that way.

And, yeah, it'll be optional I'm sure, but how often will people get it wrong? I dunno...I'm not saying it would ruin my life...I'm just saying that I'm happier having it be its own app.
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Why do you care if the user you're calling receives the call on their phone or their computer, though? It's up to them which device they take the call on... and hopefully your friends have the good sense not to answer a video call when on the toilet.

If that is an issue, it would be easy enough to separate that out within iChat, still. Click a contact. Click "iPhone" or "Computer" (the same way you do if someone in your iPhone contacts has multiple numbers assigned to them).

I don't think any of these objections warrant it being its own app. Not to the point that they trump the simplicity of users needing to use only one app, at least.

*shrug*
 
tested it out between my macbook and my iphone 4. only thing i noticed that could cause some confusion, if you have portrait lock on your iphone and are talking to someone on a macbook and flip your phone to landscape, it will not turn the macbooks view unless you turn off your portrait lock. didnt think it would matter to the macs perspective.
 
bankshot said:
For what it's worth, I submitted feedback through the FaceTime app to build it into iChat. I encourage everyone else to do so as well. As most are saying here, it makes no sense to have multiple video chat apps - the user shouldn't care whether the protocol behind the scenes is FaceTime or iChat. The same app should handle both seamlessly. It's far more confusing to the average person to have multiple apps for what's essentially the same thing - how many average users even understand the difference?
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No.
 
bankshot said:
For what it's worth, I submitted feedback through the FaceTime app to build it into iChat. I encourage everyone else to do so as well. As most are saying here, it makes no sense to have multiple video chat apps - the user shouldn't care whether the protocol behind the scenes is FaceTime or iChat. The same app should handle both seamlessly. It's far more confusing to the average person to have multiple apps for what's essentially the same thing - how many average users even understand the difference?
Click to expand...

Why do you care what the average user thinks? You aren't confused yourself :)

Of course Apple is aware of this app redundancy. But I'm sure, there's a reason for it right now.
FaceTime and iChat will probably come together in som new way with Lion. It's still only in beta, thus, it makes sense to keep it separate.
 
So it works like this.

FaceTime on the Mac uses the same process as FaceTime on the iPod Touch 4th Gen.

FaceTime Call Mac to iPod Touch:
Call the contact using their Email Address

FaceTime Call Mac to Mac:
Call the contact using their Email Address

FaceTime Call Mac to iPhone 4:
Call the contact using their iPhone 4 Phone Number

FaceTime Call iPhone 4 to Mac
Call the contact using their Email Address
 
alansaysstop said:
if you have portrait lock on your iphone and are talking to someone on a macbook and flip your phone to landscape, it will not turn the macbooks view unless you turn off your portrait lock. didnt think it would matter to the macs perspective.
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Kinda cool, though.
 
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