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Why use Zoom with all it’s security flaws when you can just FaceTime on your iphones? True, all the people would need to be on an iPhone...but my whole family is and my friends are. So for me, it’s an easy choice.

Work. Not everyone has an iPhone, nor can you share screens or share a whiteboard.
 
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Apple could end this right now an assume the mantle of king of quarantine videoconferencing.

FaceTime has already become a proprietary eponym in the way that you make a xerox of a document or ask for a Kleenex after you sneeze. FaceTime has become even more popular during this time but people have to seek out alternatives when just one member of the call you want to place is an Android user.

1. Offer an Android FaceTime client without all the bells and whistles. Allow Android users to join in on a call. Limit it to just cameras. No Animoji or any of the fun stuff. It’ll make Android users want to get an iPhone.

2. Allow FaceTime to broadcast online with a link that anybody with the link can join. Allow the leader to control who, if anybody, can speak.

3. Optionally, Apple can also go after the work from home, corporate market by adding desktop sharing and whiteboard features.

Apple is missing a huge opportunity to make FaceTime mainstream.
FaceTime a proprietary eponym? Only if one is surrounded by Apple customers perhaps.

Apple is primarily a hardware company that is venturing out into services. There is no financial benefit to Apple to expend the resources to make FaceTime mainstream.

FaceTime is the top, or near-top, reason why people who want to move off of iPhones continue to stick with iPhones. Making FaceTime cross-platform makes it easier for those people to leave Appleland.

There's also a question as to how robust FaceTime's architecture is to be able to handle cross-platform traffic. Apple can keep things lean and tight on iOS and MacOS because they're in complete control of them... but how well will they be able to create native clients for Windows, Android, Linux, and the Web?

The industry is quick to slam on Zoom because they came into the mainstream's consciousness overnight. The competition was caught flat-footed and so, off goes the clickbait articles about Zoom being "hacked". Zoom-bombing is not hacking, and is no different than a person having an email account without a password.

Leave videoconferencing to the tools best designed for that, and FaceTime for personal communication and messaging.
 
Apple could end this right now an assume the mantle of king of quarantine videoconferencing.

FaceTime has already become a proprietary eponym in the way that you make a xerox of a document or ask for a Kleenex after you sneeze. FaceTime has become even more popular during this time but people have to seek out alternatives when just one member of the call you want to place is an Android user.

1. Offer an Android FaceTime client without all the bells and whistles. Allow Android users to join in on a call. Limit it to just cameras. No Animoji or any of the fun stuff. It’ll make Android users want to get an iPhone.

2. Allow FaceTime to broadcast online with a link that anybody with the link can join. Allow the leader to control who, if anybody, can speak.

3. Optionally, Apple can also go after the work from home, corporate market by adding desktop sharing and whiteboard features.

Apple is missing a huge opportunity to make FaceTime mainstream.
When Steve Jobs first introduced FaceTime it was promoted as an eventual open, cross-platform standard. IIRC, patent trolls prevented that from happening.
 
FaceTime has already become a proprietary eponym in the way that you make a xerox of a document or ask for a Kleenex after you sneeze. FaceTime has become even more popular during this time but people have to seek out alternatives when just one member of the call you want to place is an Android user.

I never heard someone say let’s FaceTime. People here say let’s Skype, even though nobody uses Skype anymore. LOL. We all use WhatsApp because everybody in Europe has it.
 
Apple could end this right now an assume the mantle of king of quarantine videoconferencing.

FaceTime has already become a proprietary eponym in the way that you make a xerox of a document or ask for a Kleenex after you sneeze. FaceTime has become even more popular during this time but people have to seek out alternatives when just one member of the call you want to place is an Android user.

1. Offer an Android FaceTime client without all the bells and whistles. Allow Android users to join in on a call. Limit it to just cameras. No Animoji or any of the fun stuff. It’ll make Android users want to get an iPhone.

2. Allow FaceTime to broadcast online with a link that anybody with the link can join. Allow the leader to control who, if anybody, can speak.

3. Optionally, Apple can also go after the work from home, corporate market by adding desktop sharing and whiteboard features.

Apple is missing a huge opportunity to make FaceTime mainstream.

Where do you get the money to support the service? FaceTime is being supported by Apple device sales. Suddenly increasing their service load by 10x without increasing revenues is going to make this a huge money loser for Apple.
 
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Why use Zoom with all it’s security flaws when you can just FaceTime on your iphones?

Many students were issued Chromebooks when schools closed so they could continue their education. Many teachers are using Zoom to conduct their lessons. FaceTime doesn't work on Chromebooks.
 
When Steve Jobs first introduced FaceTime it was promoted as an eventual open, cross-platform standard. IIRC, patent trolls prevented that from happening.

They've since rebuilt FaceTime’s code. The only thing stopping Apple from porting FaceTime to Android is marketing. I get that Apple wants to keep FaceTime exclusive to Apple but it’s an app that would benefit from being universal. Excluding Android users hurts Apple users and diminishes the function of FaceTime.

Apple could hold back popular FaceTime features or at worst make FaceTime on Android incoming calls only.
 
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They've since rebuilt FaceTime’s code. The only thing stopping Apple from porting FaceTime to Android is marketing. I get that Apple wants to keep FaceTime exclusive to Apple but it’s an app that would benefit from being universal. Excluding Android users hurts Apple users and diminishes the function of FaceTime.

Apple could hold back popular FaceTime features or at worst make FaceTime on Android incoming calls only.
It's a good idea, but how quickly could they do it, though?
 
I’d say it’s the perfect opportunity for Microsoft to throw money behind Skype again for the retail world and push Teams for enterprise.
 
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Apple could end this right now an assume the mantle of king of quarantine videoconferencing.

FaceTime has already become a proprietary eponym in the way that you make a xerox of a document or ask for a Kleenex after you sneeze. FaceTime has become even more popular during this time but people have to seek out alternatives when just one member of the call you want to place is an Android user.

1. Offer an Android FaceTime client without all the bells and whistles. Allow Android users to join in on a call. Limit it to just cameras. No Animoji or any of the fun stuff. It’ll make Android users want to get an iPhone.

2. Allow FaceTime to broadcast online with a link that anybody with the link can join. Allow the leader to control who, if anybody, can speak.

3. Optionally, Apple can also go after the work from home, corporate market by adding desktop sharing and whiteboard features.

Apple is missing a huge opportunity to make FaceTime mainstream.

Not anybody has an iphone or macbook, or imac.

Major issue right there.
 
Apple could end this right now an assume the mantle of king of quarantine videoconferencing.

FaceTime has already become a proprietary eponym in the way that you make a xerox of a document or ask for a Kleenex after you sneeze. FaceTime has become even more popular during this time but people have to seek out alternatives when just one member of the call you want to place is an Android user.

1. Offer an Android FaceTime client without all the bells and whistles. Allow Android users to join in on a call. Limit it to just cameras. No Animoji or any of the fun stuff. It’ll make Android users want to get an iPhone.

2. Allow FaceTime to broadcast online with a link that anybody with the link can join. Allow the leader to control who, if anybody, can speak.

3. Optionally, Apple can also go after the work from home, corporate market by adding desktop sharing and whiteboard features.

Apple is missing a huge opportunity to make FaceTime mainstream.
I'd love to see cross-platform FaceTime, but there are a couple of barriers to what you suggest.

One, what you're describing is not a weeks project, it's at best a many months project, or a year project (to get it to a level of polish where Apple is willing to release it). So, getting "the mantle of king of quarantine videoconferencing" seems like a fairly unrealistic goal. The existing players in the cross-platform conferencing marketplace aren't going to be standing still for those months-or-year.

Two, if I understand correctly, Apple was originally intending to open-source the communications / transport code for FaceTime, which initially had a distributed user-to-user architecture. They got hit with a copyright suit for that, and ended up rebuilding it to use a more centralized architecture, where lots of data has to flow through Apple's servers. The lack of open-source code has kept there from being compatible clients up to this point (so all that code for other platforms would have to be written from scratch starting now), and also means there's a cost involved in supporting all those non-Apple users (server costs and such). Apple users have already paid in for this (they spent a bunch on iPhones / iPads / Macs - the so-called "Apple Tax"), but with non-Apple users (Windows / Android), Apple would have to either eat the ongoing costs, or charge up-front for use, which would cause most of the potential userbase to say, "but Zoom / Messenger / Hangouts / whatever is freeeee!, why should we pay for FaceTime?" (yes, with those other "free" soluctions, they are the product, but they either don't know or don't care).
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I never heard someone say let’s FaceTime. People here say let’s Skype, even though nobody uses Skype anymore. LOL. We all use WhatsApp because everybody in Europe has it.
As a counterpoint, not only do I hear people request to "FaceTime" here (barely ever hear requests to "Skype"), but I've been surprised by hearing the officials presenting the county's daily COVID-19 briefings recommend staying in contact with friends/relatives "by FaceTime" - not because they think everybody uses iPhones, but because many do and it's such a common term for such small-group videoconferencing.
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Easy solution to that.
You have a funny definition of the word, "easy".
 
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Apple is missing a huge opportunity to make FaceTime mainstream.

This is all wishful thinking. If I recall, the last consumer friendly move by Apple was getting Airplay on select non-Apple devices. I would expect them to not care about this at all.
 
My investment guru is shorting Zoom stock. Sent out guidance to clients late last week. He is not so much focusing on the privacy issues that are starting to become known about Zoom. Rather, he thinks that as soon as we get past the virus nobody will use Zoom any longer. Way, way overpriced at the moment in his analysis, oh and by the way the investment guru is very, very highly regarded. BTW if you have never shorted stocks before maybe get some professional help with this, it's very easy to make a costly mistake if you do not know what you are doing when shorting stocks. Cheers to all!
 
My investment guru is shorting Zoom stock. Sent out guidance to clients late last week. He is not so much focusing on the privacy issues that are starting to become known about Zoom. Rather, he thinks that as soon as we get past the virus nobody will use Zoom any longer. Way, way overpriced at the moment in his analysis, oh and by the way the investment guru is very, very highly regarded. BTW if you have never shorted stocks before maybe get some professional help with this, it's very easy to make a costly mistake if you do not know what you are doing when shorting stocks. Cheers to all!
Good luck, hope it doesn't turn out to be a costly mistake. My very well regarded investment advisor thinks once things get back to normal (whenever that happens and whatever that means), Zoom usage and paid accounts are not going to go down.
 
It's a good idea, but how quickly could they do it, though?

I would suggest that they already have. 99% of what Apple works on never sees a consumer release. Apple had Mac OSX running on Intel chips from the very first version. I bet there’s an Android and online version of FaceTime in Apple’s labs. Heck, I’m almost sure of it.

Perhaps the easiest way to do this would be to add FaceTime to iCloud.com. Android, Windows and ChromeOS users could simply create an Apple ID and get in on a FaceTime call in their browser. It would keep the native app experience exclusive to Apple while still allowing Apple users to invite others from other ecosystems. Excluding them is hurting Apple users more than anyone else really.
 
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Luckily I didn't even make an account for school. I just join my meetings when necessary... that being said, I've just recently started covering my camera. Can't wait to uninstall zoom
Do you actually think theres a human being looking at you? Oh dear..
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1. Offer an Android FaceTime client without all the bells and whistles. Allow Android users to join in on a call. Limit it to just cameras. No Animoji or any of the fun stuff. It’ll make Android users want to get an iPhone.

That last sentence, oh my, lol, messenger and WhatsApp and skype have video calling covered, with as many bells and whistles as you do or dont want!!! Messenger is mental with the fun things it can do... explain why someone would change platforms for one locked down piece of software that replicates what they already can do?
 
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