Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Will Facetime ever come to Mac OS X; desktops & laptops

M

MrMister111

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Jan 28, 2009
3,900
382
UK
Hi

I now have a iPhone 4. Cant use Facetime as yet, and only a few people have an iphone 4, and they are workmates.

It would be great to be able to use Facetime on an iMac or even a Win PC with an integrated webcam, as I understand that Facetime is "Open format" for others to implement?

I would love to be able to use it with a Computer so eg I could use Facetime for my daughter when Im out and about on my iPhone 4, and she at home on Win PC/iMac?

Will this ever come? I know its only WiFi so far, but surely for it to work it has to go over cellar network and use Computers?

comments? thoughts?
cheers
 
MrMister111 said:
Hi

I now have a iPhone 4. Cant use Facetime as yet, and only a few people have an iphone 4, and they are workmates.

It would be great to be able to use Facetime on an iMac or even a Win PC with an integrated webcam, as I understand that Facetime is "Open format" for others to implement?

I would love to be able to use it with a Computer so eg I could use Facetime for my daughter when Im out and about on my iPhone 4, and she at home on Win PC/iMac?

Will this ever come? I know its only WiFi so far, but surely for it to work it has to go over cellar network and use Computers?

comments? thoughts?
cheers
Click to expand...

No one knows for sure except the folks at apple, but if I were a betting man, I'd put my money on it being one of the 'big' features of 10.7, with iChat being upgraded to do facetime calls.
 
Satori said:
No one knows for sure except the folks at apple, but if I were a betting man, I'd put my money on it being one of the 'big' features of 10.7, with iChat being upgraded to do facetime calls.
Click to expand...

I think Satori is spot on. It is a natural transition where all of Apple's platfroms-laptops, desktops, iPhones, iPads, etc will be intergrated even more so. It is a natural feature for an iChat upgrade.
 
Why wait for 10.7, which would be one year away from now?

I would think that Facetime for OS X will appear in iLife 11 soon.
 
norsemen said:
Why wait for 10.7, which would be one year away from now?

I would think that Facetime for OS X will appear in iLife 11 soon.
Click to expand...

I hope its neither of these, means you have to pay for the "upgrade" to get Facetime on Mac then. I have Snow Leopard, and iLife 09, so dont really need either yet.

Also I was hoping as Facetime is supposed to be an open app, that Windows PCs would get it too?
 
MrMister111 said:
Also I was hoping as Facetime is supposed to be an open app, that Windows PCs would get it too?
Click to expand...

Yes, Jobs said that FaceTime was going to be an open standard, but I doubt it going over to the Windows platform. It seems integrating it into OS X via iChat seems more likely, but the only people who'll know for sure are the folks at Apple.
 
This brings up another issue... Why is iChat not on the iPhone? The iPhone could benefit a lot from having IM capability built-in rather than having to use third party apps.

Apple should standardize iChat across all its platforms.
 
zorinlynx said:
This brings up another issue... Why is iChat not on the iPhone? The iPhone could benefit a lot from having IM capability built-in rather than having to use third party apps.

Apple should standardize iChat across all its platforms.
Click to expand...

Good point, and I agree. iChat is really a 'forgotten' app on the Mac, sadly. All the attention's on Skype for video calling services.
 
zorinlynx said:
This brings up another issue... Why is iChat not on the iPhone? The iPhone could benefit a lot from having IM capability built-in rather than having to use third party apps.

Apple should standardize iChat across all its platforms.
Click to expand...

They really should, having recently enter college, I use iChat quite a bit, some prefer iChat, but I prefer iChat. Its a same Facetime doesn't support iChat(or Apple doesn't release an iChat app for iOS)
 
R94N said:
Yes, Jobs said that FaceTime was going to be an open standard, but I doubt it going over to the Windows platform.
Click to expand...

If it were an open standard Apple wouldn't be able to prevent someone from making a Facetime client for Windows.

It's pointless anyway since, despite Jobs saying during the keynote that they would be approaching standards bodies that day, there still hasn't been any news on it actually being submitted as a standards proposal.

I suspect that Apple realised how poorly thought out the design of Facetime is, which is why they bolted-on the ability to use email addresses as identifiers in iOS 4.1 (and it's still poorly thought out).

What they should have done is used existing standards for Facetime; XMPP for presence and Jingle for audio/video. That way Facetime could interoperate with existing clients that already support standards and Apple would have an easy avenue for adding IM in the future should they want to.
 
FaceTime will definitely come to OS X; the question is: when?

Middling said:
I suspect that Apple realised how poorly thought out the design of Facetime is, which is why they bolted-on the ability to use email addresses as identifiers in iOS 4.1 (and it's still poorly thought out).
Click to expand...

What aspect of the protocol do you dislike?
 
you guys forgot one very important thing!
the 10.6.5 betas out there are asking developers to focus on ichat amongst a few others.
 
mulo said:
you guys forgot one very important thing!
the 10.6.5 betas out there are asking developers to focus on ichat amongst a few others.
Click to expand...

mmm didnt think about this, I wonder, I hope so! at least one more app, then just need a release for Windows, if Facetime really is "open".
 
The ichat camera camera can handle better resolution than vga but is software restricted now to the lower vga resolution. I don't think it's good enough for the facetime resolution and frame rate though.

Selling point will be "purchased a mac? Here's a new one with a better camera for facetime!"
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back