FaceTime Not Working for Many iOS 6 Users

[samcraig]

So rather than them immediately suggesting you upgrade to iOS 7, which you evidently don't want to do, they made you 'jump through hoops for 90 minutes' -- read: spend ages patiently trying to fix your issue on their last-gen mobile OS -- and only suggested upgrading when nothing else worked.

I'm amazed at some commenters' level of self-importance and insistence on whining about every little thing. If it's so bad, jump ship -- and you'll be lucky to get more than a 'tough ****' when things go wrong.

I wonder what gems and nuggets of wisdom you could have brought to the table had you been in that tech guy's position. Grow up.

Sorry - but you're completely out of line. I didn't get the sense from his 2 line post that he felt any self-importance. Only frustration that something that was working fine one day is now broken. And that tech support had him going through several attempts at fixing which furthered his frustration. Clearly he was on the forefront of the known issue or they would have told him immediately that he had two choices - wait it out or upgrade.

I'm amazed how quick you jumped on his comment as if you were the guy on the other end of his phone call. And suggesting he "jump ship" just because he voiced his frustration? Wow - I guess you think most of the people here on this forum should jump ship given that the forums here are riddled with similar people.

 

[Jambalaya]

FaceTime and in particular FaceTime Audio is terrible, it just DOESN'T work. Once again today after numerous failed attempts with FaceTime video and audio we switched to Skype which worked fine. I was in a 4S via cellular and the GF was on her 5 over wifi.

FaceTime is poor, the only app which is worse is maps.

 

[Parasprite]

FaceTime's video and voice quality is far superior to Skype in most cases.

People still use Skype frequently?

Hmm

Interesting

 

[Menel]

Facetime requires iPhone 4 or better, right?

Why wouldnt said device have the latest update to iOS7. Non issue.

 

[bbbb4b]

If you are running iOS 6, For ANY JUSTIFIABLE REASON that one may have, why would you not be running iOS 6.1.6?

 

[MentalFloss]

Funny enough, it was iOS 6 that killed Facetime for me. We bought an iPad for my parents-in-law specifically for Facetime. When iOS 6 came out, they made the mistake to upgrade - ever since then, Facetime has been broken. No "fix" has ever worked and it has never worked again. I hadn't even thought about upgrading to iOS 7 to try and fix it. Perhaps then it will work, and iOS 8 will break it again.

Magical.

 

[SusanK]

If you are running iOS 6, For ANY JUSTIFIABLE REASON that one may have, why would you not be running iOS 6.1.6?

Justifiable reason, personal preference.

Why not 6.1.6? Only Mr. Cook knows why Apple can write the SSL bug for iPad but not the patch, 6.1.6 for iPad.

Mr. Cook in an interesting character. He knows we can be forced to purchase new hardware. Does he know Apple is not the only game in town?

----------

Image

Not since Apple was widowed.

 

[Rogifan]

Justifiable reason, personal preference.

Why not 6.1.6? Only Mr. Cook knows why Apple can write the SSL bug for iPad but not the patch, 6.1.6 for iPad.

Mr. Cook in an interesting character. He knows we can be forced to purchase new hardware. Does he know Apple is not the only game in town?

----------




Not since Apple was widowed.

How can Apple force anyone to do anything? Is Cook holding a gun to your head or something?

----------

Aqua was at least innovative. iOS 7 is just a shoddy and uninspired fashion statement.

Well I guess if you say so. Amazing how Apple could sell 51 million phones running a shoddy fashion statement.

 

[Stella]

FaceTime and in particular FaceTime Audio is terrible, it just DOESN'T work. Once again today after numerous failed attempts with FaceTime video and audio we switched to Skype which worked fine. I was in a 4S via cellular and the GF was on her 5 over wifi.

FaceTime is poor, the only app which is worse is maps.

Sorry it doesn't work for you. In my experience both voice and video quality are great, even over cellular. Perhaps you have slow cell connection?

It seems that FaceTime does require more bandwidth than Skype...

 

[groovyd]

Facetime really shouldn't even be a feature anyone has to know about or use consciously ... It should just seamlessly and invisibly step in when both users trying to communicate have the software installed, in place of using your minutes. Use the phone to dial up someone who is on iOS and it should just step inline. Once it all gets to that level of fluid is when it has really proven itself as an 'it just works' component of the 'ecosystem', until then it is just a fragmentation of something like skype but badly needing to be merged into something better.

 

[SusanK]

How can Apple force anyone to do anything? Is Cook holding a gun to your head or something?

No. The gun is not pointed at my head

 

[sebastian...]

I'm amazed at some commenters' level of self-importance and insistence on whining about every little thing. If it's so bad, jump ship -- and you'll be lucky to get more than a 'tough ****' when things go wrong.

I wonder what gems and nuggets of wisdom you could have brought to the table had you been in that tech guy's position. Grow up.

In my mind, people should stop whining about all of it - embrace change.

So much whining and hatred toward the people who like to choose things. Just because you accept whatever is given to you, and let someone else choose the colour of your house, car and so on, doesn't mean that everybody is like you. Some people like to choose and personalize their things. Shocking I know.

 

[7thson]

If you are running iOS 6, For ANY JUSTIFIABLE REASON that one may have, why would you not be running iOS 6.1.6?

The only devices eligible for 6.1.6 are the iPhone 3gs and the iPod touch 4th generation. So it's not an option for many of the people still using iOS 6.

 

[chirpie]

Chalk me up as a user who hasn't had Facetime working the past week or so and all of my devices are running 7.1...

 

[ElTorro]

For me, Skype over FaceTime any time. I use Skype for all my conference calls as the quality is better than it is on my phone. I use Skype's ability to call land lines or mobile devices constantly and it is a feature that is not available in Facetime and this is what makes Skype a much more suitable option.

 

[macs4nw]

Image

You went to all this trouble searching for, and uploading that image, just to launch a cheap shot at Apple ….. wow ….. my various Apple equipment generally speaking, works very well, with a lot less headache than the stuff I used before, but keep in mind that no tech is going to work flawlessly all the time.

 

[53kyle]

The only thing that I don't understand is the fact that there are still tons of 4th gen iPod touches, and IF apple is purposely trying to disable facetime on iOS 6, they will lose a major functionality because apple is trying to get people on the iOS 7 boat.

 

[Thunderbird]

You're holding it wrong !!

 

[darkplanets]

I'm probably in the minority, but I have yet to use Facetime. Never really saw the need for videochat on mobile, and I use Skype for anything business related.

Also, iOS7 isn't that bad -- I promise. As far as I'm concerned Apple is under no obligation to support or ensure reliability for a previous generation OS. If it's really that bad, go to Android. You can customize anything you want, and introduce as much skeuomorphism as desired.

 

[bigfatipod]

explains today

I use FaceTime to get help from friends or parents on stuff around the house. I tried to call my wife today (she's on iOS 6) and couldn't connect.

I'd be surprised if this wasn't fixed. While iOS 7 is the latest, many people including my wife, haven't upgraded. iOS 7 was only released in September. If it was 12 months old, I might have less sympathy for iOS 6'rs. To lose a feature that big shouldn't be accompanied without some type of official notification.

 

[coolfactor]

Funny enough, it was iOS 6 that killed Facetime for me. We bought an iPad for my parents-in-law specifically for Facetime. When iOS 6 came out, they made the mistake to upgrade - ever since then, Facetime has been broken. No "fix" has ever worked and it has never worked again. I hadn't even thought about upgrading to iOS 7 to try and fix it. Perhaps then it will work, and iOS 8 will break it again.

Magical.

Exactly *how* is it broken? Can you elaborate on that?

The most common problem that I've seen for confusion around how FaceTime works is setting up contacts. If someone doesn't have anybody in their Contacts list, they can't use FaceTime. So put your contacts in. And then makes sure you don't have the same phone numbers and email addresses across multiple contacts. That just confuses FaceTime and Messages big time.

----------

The only thing that I don't understand is the fact that there are still tons of 4th gen iPod touches, and IF apple is purposely trying to disable facetime on iOS 6, they will lose a major functionality because apple is trying to get people on the iOS 7 boat.

Apple has not intentionally disabled FaceTime for certain user groups. I can guarantee that. It's not in their DNA to make such a bold move unannounced.

 

[SolarShane]

Since I ungraded to iOS 4 my ipod touch has never worked properly.
Battery life plummeted from 20 h to "4h".
I admit I am an applefanboy of long standing but stuff like this makes me

It's called Planned obsolescence, welcome to reality.


Planned obsolescence: The deliberate practice of shortening a life of a product, thus forcing the user to upgrade to a newer model.

 

[coolfactor]

Sorry it doesn't work for you. In my experience both voice and video quality are great, even over cellular. Perhaps you have slow cell connection?

It seems that FaceTime does require more bandwidth than Skype...

Yup, most likely the guy has poor bandwidth through his carrier, and yet he wants to blame an app on his phone. There's a lot of factors that come into place for this magical stuff to happen and connect people around the world. We're all become desensitized to just how much is happening under the hood because it's all around us.

----------

It's called Planned obsolescence, welcome to reality.


Planned obsolescence: The deliberate practice of shortening a life of a product, thus forcing the user to upgrade to a newer model.

Oh, give it a rest. Apple recently released major iOS and OS X upgrades that work on years-old hardware. Why would they go to that effort if they _planned_ to force people to upgrade? I'm running the latest Mavericks on my 7-year old MacBook Pro!

 

[Rogifan]

It's called Planned obsolescence, welcome to reality.


Planned obsolescence: The deliberate practice of shortening a life of a product, thus forcing the user to upgrade to a newer model.

So Apple just decided one day that April 17 would be planned obsolescence day? Did they throw darts at the wall to decide what service/feature they would intentionally break so iOS 6 users would have upgrade their software/device? I'm just trying to understand how this planned obsolescence actually works.

 

[kingtj]

No, but I get his point to an extent ....

Why are so many people still on the previous version of iOS? The upgrade is free, so it's not a financial issue. It's been out long enough now that we all know it's fairly stable too.

I don't think the guy's comments sounded "self important" either ... but I do think it's one of those things where it's not worth a lot of frustration. Ok ... clearly *something* changed or broke with Apple's servers handling Facetime calls. The fact iOS 7 is still working fine would be good news, IMO. That would tell me I have a solution staring me right in the face, if I needed to use it right away. Just upgrade the device and move on. (Most outages are out of people's control completely.)

IMO, the people who act like they have a right to stay on outdated versions of software and still receive full support for them are being unrealistic. When a company spends hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars working on a major software update and pushes it out to its devices at no charge to the user -- you can bet they want everyone using it! I know I have a Sony Playstation 3 over here and almost every time it has a firmware update available, my option becomes "Do this update, or lose all ability to play games online over the Internet." They don't mess around with supporting the old code whatsoever....

Sorry - but you're completely out of line. I didn't get the sense from his 2 line post that he felt any self-importance. Only frustration that something that was working fine one day is now broken. And that tech support had him going through several attempts at fixing which furthered his frustration. Clearly he was on the forefront of the known issue or they would have told him immediately that he had two choices - wait it out or upgrade.

I'm amazed how quick you jumped on his comment as if you were the guy on the other end of his phone call. And suggesting he "jump ship" just because he voiced his frustration? Wow - I guess you think most of the people here on this forum should jump ship given that the forums here are riddled with similar people.