The FaceTime thing is epic. That said, it just gets more and more dangerous to go out and get hammered and start drunk-dialing people . . . The number of post-bender apologies that I usually have to make will probably go up by at least 50%.
The reason it is epic is because this is the first time it'll actually work. Who cares about N900s? Does my grandma know what an N900 is?
My father has an N900, and he video calls europe every day. I didn't need to show him how to use it or anything.
Hooked up to Wifi? Is that hard to do? Or are you making the point that it's wifi only for now. Jobs specifically stated that they are working with carriers to support it. That means it's coming. Baby steps. This is what Apple does. We don't always get the full package with iteration 1, but when it does come they do it right (see copy/paste, see multi-tasking).
I don't know a single person who owns an N900, and I don't know a single person outside of a very small group of tech friends who knows what one is. I'd guess that 80% of the people in my friends/family/work circles have Apple devices, most of which are iPhones.
Likely, Apple will do a better job of it, but "first time it'll actually work" is hyperbole. For a bit of hyperbole of my own, let's try "first time Americans, who have been the laggards in the mobile phone space until the advent of the iPhone, will take note of it".
When I was in Sweden last (some 5 years ago) I was blown away during a bus journey by watching a deaf person signing into a bog standard Nokia with her friend on the screen signing back.
Now that's epic.
5 years ago. Commodity mass-market phone. Watching a deaf person video conference on public transport.
I've owned "dumb"phones that could do this five years ago as easy as regular calls.
Except for the father videocalling mother + baby use case I can't think of a single instance where I would want the other person to see what I am doing OR where I would want to see what they are doing.
Should be interesting.
Of course, we'll see what they mean by "open standard" after the recent debacle with Safari's "HTML5 Demo", but I'd like to remain optimistic. Webkit was a nice gift, and hopefully this will be something similar.
I'm quite surprised that it's not at least compatible with the video calls in iChat. 3G will definitely happen, but they have a built-in base of millions of users on iChat that could have helped kick things off.
I'll leave this chat to chummy family and spousal conversation and celebrities, because there are only so many times of the week where I look good.