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How can you start off saying Gruber is awful for spinning superficially supported arguments, then go on to claim "nobody is going to use video calling" as a fact.

Especially when the whole point of Gruber's article is that nobody uses video calling because it's a confusing and complex mess, and when it isn't so (e.g. skype) it gets used, and when iPhone 4 comes out it will get used a lot more.

So let's compare-

Apple iPhone 4 - instantly popular with millions of people using the exact same make and model with the same software within a few months. Video calling baked in as a single button visible on every phonecall, advertised as a primary feature, designed for easy use.

Evo 4G - Phone with camera on the front. Not such a one-off instantly popular hit. Video calling not possible until specific apps heard of, downloaded and installed, configured, then still different and more hassle to use than a normal phonecall. Other features vary by app.

And only the truly antiApple could suggest that people are calling Apple's take "done" in any final sense as if nobody believes it will ever change ever.

>then go on to claim "nobody is going to use video calling" as a fact.

It was obviously a personal opinion. See, I'm not making a grand blog entry waxing poetically on why no one will ever make video calls, carefully creating a curated (word of the month) list of support blog and tweet entries to bolster my supposition.

I offered zero supports to my opinionn. I think you're missing a big difference there. I don't pretend that I have supports for personal opinion.

>So let's compare-

Apple is big and successful (biggest tech company...yet people still pretend that they're counter-culture supporting them. Funny, that). Therefore their "we're big and successful" gives them leave to build things only for their, to use the trite descriptive, walled garden?

"You can made all the video calls you want...as long as anyone you want to call has an iPhone 4 and is currently on wifi...and so are you. Easie-peasie!"

Seriously, this pushes to the point of being comical.

>And only the truly antiApple could suggest that people are calling Apple's take "done" in any final sense as if nobody believes it will ever change ever.

Obviously it will change. Gruber considers it "done right". I think it is done absolutely horrifically, and it is done in a way that is exactly the problem many people have had with Apple's actions.

Hmm, from the hours of 9am until about 6pm I can list off about 2 dozen people who I might actually call (girlfriend, dad, best friend, etc) who I know will be on a wifi network and are planning on buying iPhone 4's. You know why? Because between those hours they are at work. Guess what? I can also bet that around 8pm until midnight I can also call them, because they are at home, where they have wifi networks. And guess what? The other times, when they are on the go (walking around out in the world, or driving) are times I wouldn't want to video call anyway. People video calling in public is going to be the new nextel walkie-talkie feature; fucking annoying. Driving while video calling, well, hopefully I don't have to comment on that one.

This is NOT a perfect solution. Of course being able to do it over 3G or 4G would be awesome. As Steve Jobs said.. that will come. They are working with the carriers to make it happen. Why does the solution have to be perfect day one? Baby steps my friend. Do you not think Steve Jobs wants it to work this way as well?

You saying it's done absolutely horrifically is comical, not the other way around. To you, what makes it horrific, is the fact that it only works sometimes, not 24/7. That's pretty ridiculous.

Also, I must point out that when Apple releases something it usually IS done right. It usually is very, very close to finished. Apple polishes before they release, it's in their DNA. Steve Jobs is insane about sweating the details.

Two dozen, eh?

>This is NOT a perfect solution.

Indeed. It's not done right. Which is pretty much the point.

Here's a exercise: Imagine that the Droid XIX came with video conferencing that was super easy -- a single button -- but it only worked on WiFi and it only worked between Droid XIX devices. How do you think Gruber would respond to that?

Do you think he would say "Yeah. That's video conferencing done right"

Yes, two dozen. At least a dozen friends, girlfriend, parents, co-workers, etc. It adds up fast.

It's done right from an experience perspective, which is the point Gruber was trying to make. Using the feature is dead easy, meaning it's done right. The example of the other phone he gave was not dead easy to use, it took the user hours to figure it out and when he did the experience was still awful.

If the feature worked over Wifi AND 3G/4G it would be EXACTLY THE SAME. No different. It's the feature itself we're talking about here, not when and where you can use it.

If you want to blame someone for the feature being held back point your fingers at AT&T. Or at least blame Apple for taking so damn long to jump ship and offer it to more carriers, but not for shipping a broken solution, as their solution is what looks to be pretty flawless.

Your exercise: I don't know what Gruber would say, but I can take a stab at it. I'd bet it would be along the lines of, "Good to see another feature in Android giving the iPhone a run for its money, competition is good." or "It's great Android can make video calls but it would have been better if they adopted the FaceTime standard so they could call iPhones as well".

>If the feature worked over Wifi AND 3G/4G it would be EXACTLY THE SAME

No it wouldn't. Having a protocol work over wifi is remarkably easier than having it work over 3G. The latter introduces clustering and latencies that you just don't have on any normal wifi. It's just as easy to assume that it is a bandwidth pig and is heavily susceptible to latency issues, which is why it is thus far limited to wifi.

Of course everyone else immediately started by making a solution work on 3G (and even edge), with wifi being a "nice to have extras" platform.

>I don't know what Gruber would say, but I can take a stab at it. I'd bet it would be along the lines of

When has Gruber ever said that? When the Android phones had dramatically better resolutions than the now almost intolerable iPhone 3GS and before, did Gruber ever commend that? In fact I believe the only time it even started to come up was when the iPhone 4 was an open secret and he knew it offered the new benchmark resolution, so suddenly competitive resolutions became a conversation point, but only from a "they're behind what is coming" angle.

How about Android notifications -- Gruber has defensively pushed back against the reality that Android has a dramatically better notification system. Yet, good for a laugh, he recently gushed that a notification expert from Palm (he was doing the "See Android was just a copy cat anyways" thing) was moving to Apple, clearly implying "So soon it'll get a better notification system than the notification system that was a non-issue just yesterday".

Gruber, to me, is like Republican talking heads of the worst kind. He filters information to see the world exactly the way he wants to see it to serve his agenda, which is to pimp Apple.

Add to that AT&T providing free WiFi at all their hotspots to their data plans and the time windows keep increasing.

Video calling, over 3G, has been available for a long time now. One of the providers I know here in Austria introduced it sometime around 2003. Nobody uses it, it's going to be interesting if Apple is able to change this but I highly doubt that.

That sounds good in theory, but you're making an assumption that people want to make a video call with you at any time during the day.

Example: you're at work and your phone rings. Do you prefer doing a quick chat and get back to work asap or showing your face and doing a nice conversation? Same thing goes when you're outside and possibly at home.

The only time when this is going to work is when two people have previously committed to do a video call.

Again, I'm making an assumption too, only time can tell.

"You can made all the video calls you want...as long as anyone you want to call has an iPhone 4 and is currently on wifi...and so are you. Easie-peasie!"

Yes.

Seriously, this pushes to the point of being comical.

No.

This pushes to the point of being useful. It's not like WiFi is something you only have access to on Thursdays and in big cities, or that they think WiFi-only is what they want because that's best. WiFi only is a compromise.

For now you can have iPhone4 to iPhone4 via wifi, in future it will also be for 3/4G cellular, and for anyone else who implements their standards when that's available. Which I'm very interested to see what they've done about firewalls and NAT and central servers.

> in future it will also be for 3/4G cellular, and for anyone else who implements their standards when that's available

Did Apple say at anytime that it will be available over 3G or that the standard will be open?

> Did Apple say at anytime that it will be available over 3G

Strongly hinted at it during the keynote. If you're a jailbreaker, 3G Unrestrictor might also work already (though not recommended on AT&T)

> or that the standard will be open?

Clearly said it during the keynote, and then proceeded to list all the existing open standards it's built on.

To complete my other answer, as to the first part, I just checked on the keynote video (~1:33:30 on the official stream), I'll quote:

slide appears with "Wi-Fi only in 2010"

> FaceTime is going to be WiFi only in 2010, we need to work a little bit with the... cellular providers, get ready for the future [...]

>(biggest tech company..

Good grief. I assume you must be talking about Market Cap and that just happened. If you look at how much money they make they are still dwarfed by MS and probably IBM, etc. as well.

You were complaining about spin?

>I assume you must be talking about Market Cap and that just happened

Indeed. Market cap is what gives companies weight to throw around. Apple is in a position where they can acquire a large portion of the industry, and where their actions cause tremors of fear. That's the impact of market cap.

Again with the spin. Apple didn't get where they are by throwing their weight around, causing "tremors of fear". They got there by out-doing everyone else 3 or 4 times in a row now.

Where do you come up with this stuff? You think Apple was "throwing their weight around" with the iPod? Before they released it, I think most people didn't even realize Apple was still around. With the iPhone? The smart phone market was barely worth paying attention to before they reinvented it.

Talk about "reality distortion field".

EDIT: I took the troll's bait and got caught arguing with someone apparently arguing in the mirror, so apologies for adding to the noise. loewenskind has a long history on here for attacking strawmen instead of actual positions, polarizing their position (everyone not pro-Apple is a part of the anti-Apple hoardes, in loewenskind's opinion), and just generally acting as hero for the defenseless Apple. I didn't know that before being trolled.

>Again with the spin.

What spin? Are you for real?

I said that Apple is the largest tech company. Yes, the normal measure is market capitalization.

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=apple+...

You then go off about how that just happened (so? Are we supposed to be talking about the past), but how it doesn't matter anyways. To which I mentioned that being so large allows them to throw their weight around. See the panic when there were worries that Apple would consume ARM.

Your whole argument is against nothing I've actually said, and you seem to be arguing for Apple of 2003. Well guess what, loewenskind, it's 2010. I'm here with reality, you're not.

And quit calling everything "spin" after you've thoroughly misrepresented the point.

sigh

>I said that Apple is the largest tech company. Yes, the normal measure is market capitalization.

And given that is a very recent development what possible relevance could it have on anything?

You seem to be claiming that Apple is doing an "old school Microsoft" when they literally just beat MS with market cap in the last couple of weeks. Things are going Apple's way right now because they're executing. No other reason.

>See the panic when there were worries that Apple would consume ARM.

I've seen rumors but no panic. Maybe panic from people who are desperate to see Apple fail (which at some point they will, as everyone does).

>Your whole argument is against nothing I've actually said, and you seem to be arguing for Apple of 2003. Well guess what, loewenskind, it's 2010. I'm here with reality, you're not.

No, I'm arguing about you calling people out for "spin" and then serving up a double helping of it yourself. With every post.

>And given that is a very recent development what possible relevance could it have on anything?

Extraordinary.

>You seem to be claiming

No. I'm not. You are extraordinary.

Look, I'm sorry that I looked at your sacred cow the wrong way. Yet everything you have said has been against a strawman. It's a bit sad, really, but I'm sure you'll have another go declaring that the slant of the apostrophe there means that I think Steve Jobs eats baby blood.

>Extraordinary.

As much as executing so well that they've changed the industry several times? Surely even you realize how bias you are.

>No. I'm not. You are extraordinary.

Then what was the relevance in mentioning it? Throwing in random, unrelated facts into the conversation... just because?

>Look, I'm sorry that I looked at your sacred cow the wrong way.

My sacred cow? I don't even own an iPhone! I'm just not going to sit back and watch you blast others for spin that doesn't stroke your bias and spew it out yourself as fact.

>It's a bit sad, really, but I'm sure you'll have another go declaring that the slant of the apostrophe there means that I think Steve Jobs eats baby blood.

More spin from you. I've never seen a post from you on this site that wasn't taking some kind of cheap shot at Apple.

If you don't like Apple, I don't care. Don't buy their stuff. But don't vomit nonsense and misrepresentations all over the site that someone has to correct.

You are a moron. I'm sorry, but it's true.

Video calls are available in any UMTS network (read 3G, without any extension) since they were deployed (i.e. early 2000). They do not involve any setup, just selecting "video call" instead of "audio call" when choosing contact and the phone number. To this day, any 3G phone with front-faced camera does support it.

Despite this, the adoption is near zero. I remember that I tried it once, just for the novelty and have quickly forgotten about it. Most people didn't even try it, despite the ad campaign by mobile companies.

So what makes you think, that when Apple comes with some features decades later, with many more limitations and complications (Am I on the wifi? Does the contact have iPhone? What it was called? Face-what?), that it will be more popular than zero-setup and seamless compatibility in billions of Nokias, Sony-Ericssons, Samsungs and LGs already shipped and used daily?

> Imagine, if you will, that Motorola just introduced their latest Android device, front-facing camera and all, called the iDroid. The iDroid comes with an easy to use, ultra-simple video conferencing solution, but it only works on wifi, and it only works between iDroid devices.
How, I ask, would John Gruber respond to that? Imagine that it's been tightly polished and all.

Would he post a praise-filled entry lauding their innovation, heralding this great new functionality? Maybe I'm just being a jerk, but I think he would viciously attack it.

----------

I love how you're using a hypothetical scenario in which Gruber would very plausibly praise the implementation in question in order to undermine his credibility. He has often pointed out when a competitor does something better than Apple does, or otherwise markedly improves on the status quo.

All you've done is create a gestalt which people who don't know any better will interpret according to their biases. Talk about arguments that don't bear any scrutiny.

>I love how you're using a hypothetical scenario in which Gruber would very plausibly praise the implementation in question in order to undermine his credibility.

Most who reads DF would come to a common prediction about how Gruber would have responded to that hypothetical. It doesn't undermine his credibility, but simply puts into context that he is, failing to have a better word, a fanboy.

A technology fanboy.

> Ignoring the fact that nobody is actually going to use

> video calling (it has come so many times on many devices.

> The Evo was far from the first device to implement it),

> let's humor his point.

I just discussed video calls with some of my friends (we all work/have worked with mobile phone software). We agreed that it is one of the biggest technologies that the manufacturers have specified and implemented that _nobody_ has _ever_ used.

Now this article was the first time I read about iPhone 4 and video calls. I wonder if Apple is going to be the first one to have people actually using the feature. I mean it's not that odd a feature, people chat on Skype with webcams all the time.

Also kind of interesting that video call was one of the main arguments to spend billions to build 3G networks (at least here in Finland).. what.. almost 10 years ago? And IF this works for Apple, it's not going to use any of the technology built back then (not the 3G network and not the software specifications).

> Apple's completely new, completely non-standard protocol.

It uses a standard Internet protocol (SIP+SRTP) as they said in the keynote.

Skype actually does use a proprietary codec (On2 VP7, which Google hasn't released) in their Skype<>Skype video chat. Does Fring use that, or does it support 3G too?

In any case I'd see not using 3G as a major advantage for FaceTime, since H.264+AAC is much better than low-bitrate H.263 used in 3G.

>It uses a standard Internet protocol (SIP+SRTP) as they said in the keynote.

While it draws from a lot of existing standards, it embraces and extends. It isn't interoperable with anything currently deployed.

Which is interesting because one alternative world would have seen them introducing the standard a year ago, to be met by broad acceptance and compatibility at release. They chose not to do this, meaning that early adopters enter a very scarce world.

That would have given away their game with respect to the new iPhone. Also, until iOS 4 is released we can't really say how it's implemented/what it will interoperate with.

He has commented on Droid features in the past, vicious attacks like:

"The email client adds support for Exchange and, moving ahead of the iPhone’s MobileMail, adds support for a combined “all accounts” inbox view." (http://daringfireball.net/linked/2009/10/27/android-20)

"Interestingly, browser scrolling in Android 2.0 seems to have far less “friction” than the iPhone — flick the page and it seems to scroll until you stop it." (http://daringfireball.net/linked/2009/10/28/engadget-droid)

"The best thing that could happen for iPhone users would be for the Android and/or WebOS communities to start shipping apps that make iPhone owners jealous. Google Voice for Android is the best example so far." (http://daringfireball.net/linked/2009/08/10/torrez-android)

I think it's a shame that you're attacking him for a counterfactual.

You went searching through the DF archives to find some damning praise and that's the best you could come up with. In each case you selectively chose what you thought was a compliment (protip: His friction comment was not a compliment), yet if you quoted the whole entry you would see that it's damning praise. A compliment sandwich wrapped around a "it's a second class platform" filling.

It's also interesting that the best you could find was from over a half a year ago.

Most criticism of Daring Fireball has to do with how it has turned so rabidly one-sided over the past few months. Gruber has somehow taken up the battle as a personal mission, now valiantly defending Apple against the evils of Google or Adobe. While before he did the whole "compliment sandwich around an insult" thing, now he doesn't even bother with that and it's instead just all criticism.

I expected you to move the goalposts. "Would he post a praise-filled entry lauding their innovation, heralding this great new functionality? Maybe I'm just being a jerk, but I think he would viciously attack it." He has complimented innovation, and in all those cases he did not "viciously attack it".

I'm disappointed that many of the comments on this thread have to do with the version of John Gruber in your head, and are attacking his character instead of his real arguments, as opposed to the arguments he makes in your imagination.

I didn't move the goalposts. We're talking about the now. Gruber is on a personal mission now to act as a one-man army against Google and, strangely, Adobe (the guy has a real hate on for Adobe that he suddenly developed once Jobs got his anti-Flash lean). The whole point of most DF complaints are that he went from being an Apple fan that wrote on technology to being an Apple fanatic that wrote critically about anything that threatens Apple.

> the guy has a real hate on for Adobe that he suddenly developed once Jobs got his anti-Flash lean

That wasn't sudden, Adobe and Macromedia have always been famous for slow programs and inconsistent UIs (although I hear Lightroom is good).

http://daringfireball.net/2005/04/adobe_translation

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2009/01/26/adobe-ui-gripes

I agree. Gruber is full of shit. Forward facing cameras on Nokia phones have been working on non-3g telephony networks for a while.

Saying that "it works right" between two iPhone 4Gs and limited to a wifi network, is like saying the AMC Gremlin is the greatest car in the world on a local track.