For no obvious reason people buying Apples 3GS over the next year will not be able to receive such calls, nor make them with their back mounted camera.
Since you can't even call to the vast majority of other iPhones, you can guess how this competition would go if you had to show pictures of your newborn to your parents who only had a laptop computer.
So a big hurrah for Apple's sudden embrace of "open standards", as now maybe a 3rd party will bring this to us. Shame 3rd party software is by definition not as good as Apple stuff but I guess we'll just have to cope.
Why would the lack of a camera prevent you from wanting to receive a video call and see your newborn grandchild?
Why, when switching between the two cameras is highlighted as a useful feature for videoing your child playing, would only having one of them kill the deal completely. Am I missing something here? I did explicitly spell these reasons for why you don't need a front facing camera for video chat out in my previous comment but you appear to have missed it.
On open standards, are you really telling me that section of the keynote didn't seem odd? Did you consider that it perhaps was a shot across the bow of Google introducing an actual open standard using an actual open standard video codec rather than H.264? And that its implicit message didn't clash horribly with the fact that it won't work even with some iphones or any macs, even those bought after the introduction of the feature?
> Why would the lack of a camera prevent you from wanting to see your newborn grandchild?
Nothing, but then again it's already perfectly possible to collect and send videos using the current 3GS. What is not possible is video chat, because there is no frontal camera making chat not video. You might want to notice that Fring has support for video calls on the iPhone yet it's one-way only due to lack of front camera...
> Why, when switching between the two cameras is highlighted as a useful feature for videoing your grandchild playing, would only having one of them kill the deal completely. Am I missing something here?
That the main point of video chat is to see each other? The ability to switch to the back camera is a feature to temporarily show something to your correspondant. It's a nice feature to complement voice chat, but on its own it's pretty damn pointless and building a video chat application for a back camera makes no sense.
> On open standards, are you really telling me that section of the keynote didn't seem odd?
No.
> Did you consider that it perhaps was a shot across the bow of Google introducing an actual open standard using an open standard video codec rather than H.264?
h.264 is an open standard. And it's in fact part of the open standards used for facetime.
> And that its implicit message didn't clash horribly with the fact that it won't work even with other some iphones or any macs bought in future?
No and no.
First one, because older iPhones do not have frontal camera making video chat not an option. Second one, because it piggybacks on the 3G network for the establishment of the connection, macs don't have builtin 3G access so how could they have facetime?
Second one, would it be nice if iOS4 also had a regular iChat A/V client? Definitely, shame it doesn't. But it will likely get one, and there will more than likely be a Skype or Fring update using the front camera soon, but it's quite a far cry from the seamlessness apple demonstrated (and probably wanted to build) with facetime.
Obviously we're going to miscommunicate about open standards if you think standards like H.264 are open standards when they're not. Even Apple and Steve Jobs usually makes this distinction e.g. in Thoughts on Flash H.264 is referred to as an "industry standard" while all the web tech is repeatedly called "open standards".
Regarding video chat, we don't seem to be moving forward here. Do we agree that Apple has intentionally limited the software available to older iPhones? That it is actually physically possible to receive(!) video calls on a phone without a front facing camera, and that there is a market demand for it, both demonstrated by Fring having this feature on iPhone? (A quick google reveals many commenters first reaction to this feature in Fring is: why can't I use the camera on the back of my iPhone?)
> Obviously we're going to miscommunicate about open standards if you think standards like H.264 are open standards when they're not.
They are, by most (if not all) industrial definitions of open standards.
> Do we agree that Apple has intentionally limited the software available to older iPhones? That it is actually physically possible to receive(!) video calls on a phone without a front facing camera
Of course, why wouldn't it be?
> and that there is a market demand for it, both demonstrated by Fring having this feature on iPhone?
Not so sure about an actual market (other than fringe) on the subject, no.
