Comment by cwilson | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cwilson | Hacker News Reader

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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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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