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Group FaceTime
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32 people is a really stupid idea. I think they did it out of spite and shut preople down. “Hey Apple get group chat, other apps can do upto 8 or 10 or 16.
Apples reply “ ok, you know what, here’s 32, now I hope you keep quiet for the next ten years”
Apples reply “ ok, you know what, here’s 32, now I hope you keep quiet for the next ten years”
Well, given that it keeps silent participants’ feeds 'sidelined', and only active participants are in the foreground, I don't think having a large number of people will be all that unwieldy. Unless it's a chaotic shouting match, in which case you get what you get. But, having the option, for people that can be relatively ordered, to have more is never bad.
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Not sure how it’s a stupid idea, having up to 32 people, so as long as the app doesn’t get laggy with more people on the FT call...
Just because there's some upper limit that's high doesn't mean it needs to be used. The main idea here is that group chat is there and supports enough people for the need of the vast majority.
FaceTime depends on the Internet speeds. It barely works in areas where there isn’t good speeds. Even 1 person convos cannot go through properly. Also, it gets difficult to see a person when the number of people in the group chat increases more than 4 also, on the iPad it’s okay. Also, in the new FaceTime , since more people can come in, your internet speeds will determine whether you can use FaceTime with so many people, or even 2 people or not.
Also, it’s next to impossible to look at so many people. Anything more than 4 will be unintuitive on an iPhone. Anything more than 6 on an iPad.
Apple first needs to improve the quality of FaceTime for 1-1 calls, and then go on to handle group chat.
I actually thought 32 was brilliant. Perfect for classroom use.
I have a hard time believing that many simultaneous video feeds is going to have decent quality. The auto-switching is cool though but will it detect people who are using sign language and put them in the foreground? My deaf mother in law is visiting right now and she was wondering about that. Hopefully Apple’s focus on accessibility will have some ML to pick up on that.
I'm glad they set limitation if not some one with an iPhone 4 would launch a class action lawsuit because group chat is slow on their phone
Why is it stupid? Will be fantastic for businesses, classes, etc.
The majority of the time, FaceTime works just fine for me.
And it's so unnecessarily pointless for Apple to put a low, arbitrary limit on the number of people that can do something like Group FaceTime just because not everyone can realistically live in places that support that kind of bandwidth. If that were the case, we'd all still be using tin cans and strings to communicate.
The reality is, there are quite a few people that can benefit from/use a Group FaceTime with a large number of participants, why tell them "no. you can't. there are some people that might find the bandwidth use onerous, so we're not going to give you the option"?
So... don't use it with 32 people?
I can think of a bunch of use cases where 32 would be helpful. Why put an arbitrary limit on it if you can make it larger so people that want it can use it that way?
Im testing iOS12 on an iPad Pro12, iPad Mini4 and iPhoneSE. The Mini4 and SE were unable to use the feature.
Its a shame because such high system requirements will block a whole lot of families and business users from making FaceTime their default Group Video client.
I imagine if they're using older devices as a whole, they don't really have a default group video client to begin with, and probably weren't shopping for one anyway. Like any other 'new' tech (mobile group video chat, for example), it'll start with the more capable devices, and as today's top end hardware becomes tomorrow's budget hardware, that same tech will enjoy wider adoption.
Us ‘older tech’ folks have already been using WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger for group video calling for ages. No big deal if FaceTime isn’t supporting us, it would’ve been just another option in a sea of others
I can see a use case for 32 people...maybe like a company meeting or something. It's not like it's something that will never happen. If you don't want to use it with 32 people, no one is telling you you have to. But the ability is there for those who may want it.
Well, a year and a half max with Facebook, and about a month with WhatsApp.
It’ll be interesting to compare the features/call quality/etc between them once iOS 12 gets ready for launch (I’d be hesitant to do those sorts of comparisons with the first beta release).
It doesn’t matter.
The software and hardware is capable of it, and it doesn’t confuse the UI for those that are just going to do 3 or 4 way FaceTime, so why cap it unnecessarily just because someone else can’t come up with a scenario for it?