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Comment by aresant | Hacker News Reader

I just walked into our office lunch room where a bunch of non-technical / non-gadget people were talking about the video conferencing capabilities of the new iphone . . .

I think that feature is going to be a monster commercial success that every other phone immediately copies.

Will probably be the only point that we hear about on the local news / etc rather than Steve's consolidated 8-points . . .

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I don't get it. Videoconferencing is insanely old and never took off. First there was ISDN video conferencing.. apart from the job at a telco i did once i've never actually seen one that was used.

Second, the first UMTS mobile i got had video conferencing, that's really a long time ago (Motorola V980 btw.) and many UMTS phones shipped with the second camera for years now. Yet, noone ever used it. Atleast i've never seen or heard of someone, although technically i could have done that with most people i know for years.

Is it that this feature was never available in the U.S.? Or why is this news over there?

Also, i've probably overread some feature that distinguishes it from the old UMTS way.

(tablet computers) are "insanely old and never took off". Same could of been said about mp3 players in 2001.

Apple's pretty good at taking old good ideas that never took off because of poor execution and doing them right.

We must remember that at the same time other computers had switches and LEDs, the Apple II had keyboard and video-out.

It had slots and you could turn it into anything you wanted (including a PC-compatible), something you couldn't do with later products but that's another story.

The difference is that the quality of the 3G video calls was usually really crap, and most people thought that it cost a lot of money (well, in some cases it did).

Just look at Skype, it's really popular, also with video calls. Video conferencing for business is also big enough that Cisco bought Tandberg for $3B. It just has to be good enough and easy enough to use that people won't have to think twice about it.

The interesting thing here is that they are touting open standards (SIP, SRTP etc). If this gets traction outside of the Apple-sphere (which must be their intention), it might spell trouble for Skype as a proprietary, closed platform.

If wifi calling "just works", then this, combined with Skype being demoed as a multitasking app, _might_ be a big "fuck you" to the telecom operators. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it'll be interesting to follow.

The important feature is that on the iPhone it will actually work. Also, there will be enough distribution to actually establish video calls on a regular basis (because both ends have an iPhone).

It was very easy on the Motorola too. And it worked with every other UMTS phone not only between Motorolas.

I mean, it's not that hard to pick a contact and instead of "call" press "video call".

I had a motorola e1000 with video chat. The difference this time might be that I will actually have other people to talk to.

Not that I particularly want video chat, and I would be surprised if it does catch on that much. A nice aside every now and again, but it is not going to replace what we have now.

This would seem useful if you could do it over 3G. As someone mentioned, that's been done in Europe for something like 5 years.

Otherwise, being able to video chat over wifi -- skype (and ichat, though ichat seems much more picky about firewalls) has done that for years, too. Yeah, true, now you'll be able to do it without your laptop (but still have wifi), but it's not like it's some kind of revolutionary leap...

Also, now that they aren't using the already existing technology UMTS, but they have been preventing Skype video calling for years (iirc).

When they do video calls, why didn't they just enable skype and instantly have a much bigger userbase and also that would potentially include videocalls between all platforms skype runs on.

Edit: Well, ok. The former iphones had no second camera.

And they _have_ enabled Skype, and even demoed it running in the background when introducing iPhone OS 4. So I'm guessing that they will allow video camera support for Skype as well, although you can never know with Apple.

ahh, ok, didn't see that, apologies! Good news, then! :)

It worked on my 6-7 years old sony ericcson with 3, back in Europe. Plus, it was free for any 3 users and didn't require WIFI but 3G. I never used it. Maybe jobs will manage to change people habits, though, and times are different. When I had that (bulky) phone skype was not offering video conferencing yet.

Except you have to call first to verify that whoever you are calling is on wifi.

In Europe where wifi is something you have to search for and 3G is something which is everywhere, this renders the feature absolutely useless.

I don't have to search for wifi at home or in the office, and that's where I spend most of the time.

Even so, I'm pretty sure Apple has thought this through, making it quick and easy to discover if someone is online, and even invite them through push notifications.

They did mention that they "had some details to work out" with the operators, which means that we will probably see video calls on 3G at some point in the future.

At home and in the office are also exactly the places where I'm also at a computer which runs skype and can already video chat. No compelling advantage there.

It's a bit easier to move around your home with a phone, so I'm guessing this is going to be used more frequently just because it's more convenient. Same with Skype now that the iPhone supports multitasking.

Not all 3G technology supports a data connection when there is also a voice connection.

I live in "Europe" (France to be exact) and wifi is extremely easy to find if you live here. Two of the three biggest ISPs here turn every customer's wireless router into an access point to share with other customers. The result is free Wifi within 500 meters of almost any residence in the country.

In addition, two of the three carriers offer unlimited Free wifi to these access points with the iPhone plan, even if you're not an ISP customer. So you're doubly covered.

I checked the iPhone plans of the UK and Germany, and they both offer free Wi-fi access with the iPhone plans.

Regarding your other point, I think it was clear from the UI of the phone call that a voice chat icon will appear when video chat is available and you can switch to it at any point.

You're absolutely right, but I think video calling is actually very tightly targeted. If you watch Apple's launch video, it's all about family members who love each other but are separated. (Eg. it's not 20-somethings video calling each other to find out where tonight's party is..) And on that admittedly narrow front I think it'll be a smash hit. Right now when my wife or I are away from home, we record videos on our iphones of the other one with the kids (JUST like in their video) and have the kids say hi to the other parent.. and then email them to each other. :)

Edit: phrasing.

Exactly. The only time I have ever wanted to use video chat was to talk to my partner and kid whilst on the road. They nailed it, as usual.

Going by the comment on "working with carriers", I believe folks in Europe will be able to video chat over 3G in the not-too-distant future.

No, you don't get it. Folks in Europe have been able to videochat since the first UMTS phones came out.

I'm sure you have. I was just referring to the iPhone 4's video chat. Carriers will determine when it will work over 3G. I expect European carriers will take the lead as they did with the tethering.

  Except you have to call first to verify that
  whoever you are calling is on wifi.

My guess is that you won't need to do that: if both sides are using Face Time capable devices and are on WiFi they will get videochat option, if not — it will be deactivated.

  In Europe where wifi is something you have to search for and 3G
  is something which is everywhere, this renders the feature
  absolutely useless.

Nobody has Wi-Fi in their homes and offices? Must be some different Europe from where I am. Sure people do have computers with Skype installed at those places, but iPhone video chat will give much more flexibility. It would be pretty tough to show "look what my cat is doing!" using iMac or even Macbook compared to just switching to rear facing camera and pointing it at the cat.

On the other hand you'll have to hold the camera in front of you for an hour instead of just looking into the camera of your laptop ;)

I think the big difference will be in experience on the iPhone. Older systems were plagued by low resolution, crappy compression and lag / latency due to network routing issues (proxies etc.).

Judging from the videos, the iPhone 4G uses hardware to encode/decode the VGA video in H.264, which makes for low latency and high quality of that part in the processing chain, and by using standards like STUN/TURN, allows for mostly direct (p2p) connections between IP endpoints, thus using the best possible path for the media, with the result being low latency.

It will be interesting to see if Apple can coax the carriers into QoS for the video, once it travels over their 3G networks.

And it's also interesting that Apple chose pure SIP, rather then the IMS SIP that carriers have been trying to cook up over the last (almost) decade.

[EDIT] Digging some more, Apple is working with the carriers to get their networks ready for video calling, which probably means that they will offer QoS, for a price. Prepare to pay for the privilege...

Wap is insanely old and never took off. Until the iphone and 3g.

Technologies need to mature and reach a level of performance and usability before they go mainstream. This is what's happening with iPhone & videoconferencing now. This is it's time.

I guess you meant UMTS, not WAP. Anyway, time will tell.

So, for those video calls people have to use iPhones at both ends although it would be easy to do that interoperable? I am wondering what the word "open" meant on one of Steves slides sigh

On the following slide, he listed a bunch of open standards (SIP, SRTP, ..), which they presumably use. If they hold true to their word (remains to be seen), other handset operators will be able to build similar support into their handsets.

Actually, i disagree to call H.264 "open" which is also on that slide. I mean, you are right, there is a list of open protocols, he could've also added tcp, ip, dns, ntp, etc. to it. It just seems so contradictory when Steve dedicated a whole slide for the word "open" and in the end presents an iphone-to-iphone technology.

As I said, it remains to be seen how open it will actually be. But at least all of these standards are either completely open or available for licensing, so unless they have added some "secret sauce" on top (for instance that iPhones will only ever talk to other iPhones through Apples discovery service) then it's a good starting point.

AFAIK, H.264 is an open standard. That it's patented and not royalty free doesn't make it closed, it simply makes it non-free. Another example is the G.729 voice codec, which has lots of open source implementations, but to use it you will have to buy a license. Open source PBX vendors like Digium provide licenses to those that need them. It's not an ideal situation, which is why G.729 is not as popular in the open source world, but it's still better than Skypes proprietary protocol.

"Open Standard" means patent royalty free. You'll find plenty of Apple pundits like Gruber who'll dispute this due to Apple getting behind H.264 for web video, but Apple themselves (and standards bodies like MPEG or W3C) don't use the term incorrectly. Apple have sailed pretty close to the wind though, using phrasing like "open and standard technologies" and then including technologies that are standard, but not open standards.

I thought I caught them referring to something that wasn't as an "Open Standard" in the keynote but I've not had time to check, but certainly they've been very careful not to previously. (I think the phrasing might have been "open industry standard").

But in, for example, Thoughts on Flash, the phrase "open standard" is used repeatedly to refer to HTML5, CSS, Javascript etc. and portrayed as a very good quality for these things to have but when H.264 is mentioned it is referred to just as an "industry standard".

http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/

Also Skype, along with Broadcom and Xiph, are working on a royalty-free voice codec at IETF and have offered their codecs and patents as the basis for that work. For video Skype use VP7 and Google hasn't made any big announcement but it's clear they're positioning VP8 as a Video Chat codec as well as for Web Video within the WebM container. I see Apple's announcement mostly as a half-hearted spoiler for that, kind of like Microsoft's OOXML versus ODF.

I guess the meaning of open can have different interpretations . Same difference as in "free speech" and "free beer". Should have clarified that i understand open as in open source, fully open, free to use by everyone for free. Half baked openness is not good enough for internet standards, IMO.

WAP never ever took off. EDGE and 3G took off before the iPhone.

Just goes to show how important it is to make technology accessible. How many people were willing to buy an ISDN line and $500+ of hardware to make video calls at both ends? The phones with video conferencing were usually very off-putting to use with bad GUIs and poor quality cameras. Even Skype, which is fairly easy to setup and use, has only really caught on in the last few years.

People want to be able to silently make screw faces when talking to each other, it's human nature.

Apple saying that it will submit video-conf stuff as an open standard indicates that it is in Apple's interest for other makers to implement this feature in a similar fashion.

Agreed. It will probably be what pushes various grandparents of my children into getting iphones (given that my partner and I have them). The reduced friction of it vs getting out the laptop, starting up skype or iChat, etc., is a huge win. The friction of wifi is a bummer but exists for our current video solutions too.

Why is videoconferencing so great? What does it add to the meeting to be able to see someone's face? Does it really add so much information that it is worth the hassle of having to stare at your damn phone while calling someone?

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