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Comment by programminggeek | Hacker News Reader

Ok, I'll throw out an "iPhone is better" counterpoint and not to say that you are wrong, but perhaps to say that "is better" at this point is subjective between the two excellent platforms.

My wife and I just had twins and my father in law couldn't make it to see them for a couple days, but we both have iPhones so we just used FaceTime and he got to see his grandchildren the day they were born.

My father in law is a pastor and isn't the most technically literate person in the world, but since FaceTime is easy to use and there is no app to install, it was a seamless experience.

In that moment, iPhone was better.

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The flipside to this is that Skype is becoming pretty ubiquitous, to the point that even tech-illiterate folk can use it...

In my experience, Skype is far more well known than FaceTime, it's just that it never occurs to people that Skype exists on their phone. Once you tell them that, a lightbulb goes off in their head and suddenly they're much less interested in FaceTime.

Until they see how fucking terrible Skype video quality is compared to FaceTime? Oh and you need to know someone wants to call in advancve, and open Skype, so its what, a phone call then a skype call?

The likes of Skype and Google Hangouts are the equivalent of a POS chev or ford. Sure everybody knows them, and a good deal use them, but not because they choose to. Because they have to.

While true, I happen to have both kinds of devices (updated, not old), and we found the Facetime experience MUCH less pixelated and less jumpy than the Skype experience over the same network, back-to-back. In further tests, the Google Hangouts and other Google video offerings were just as pixelated as our Skype calls. Skype is a solution, but here is was case where we could objectively say one approach was better.

On the other hand, I did find that Skype over 3G was conclusively better-sounding than the regular AT&T voice stuff...when it did not lag out with weird chirps.

Is Facetime easier to use than hangouts video chat? How does it accomplish that?

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