Monday, June 07, 2010
Apple FaceTime and Big Brother
I watched the Apple keynote today, including the hilarious moment where the demo collapsed, working on the old iPhone but not on the new one (see, it happened to Google and then to Apple, they are in a fight!).
The main announcement was pretty obvious: a video chat application called FaceTime (BTW, I got 100% of my sure and likely predictions, zero surprises). I believe I was still in Italy when 3 launched their videophone, and I have moved to Silicon Valley eleven years ago... Can't say it is magical or innovative, in particular because it works only on wi-fi (the 3 videophone worked on the cellular network...), although the two cameras support looks cool. And their video is a gem of marketing (despite having a hard time believing the room where I saw my daughter on the ultrasound machine had wi-fi :-)).
What is new about FaceTime?
Simple: there is no friends list. None.
You look at your address book and boom, all your friends who own an iPhone 4 have the videochat feature automatically enabled. No need to log in, no need to see a list of your friends. Easy (see bye bye to Skype).
How do they do it? Well, you can only guess. Let me try (hoping to be wrong and that there is a lot more opt-in to do). NOTE: I added the mapping on the email address, because I now think it is actually what they are going to do, since they already have that information in their servers via iTunes (it is your login).
They have you connected to their servers all the time, because of push (at least). They suck out your cellphone number (or email) and put it in their server, mapping it to your current IP (did I give Apple permission to suck out my cellphone/email number??). They look into your address book and find everyone you have in there which has a cellphone/email they have in their list (mmmhhh, did I give Apple permission to map my phone number/email into your address book??). When you click for a FaceTime, they open a peer-to-peer connection from your phone to their phone over IP (wi-fi only for now).
If this is the case, it is borderline. Actually, a bit bigbrotherish. Apple collecting all cellphone numbers/email of all iPhone users (which they already do for email, since it is your login name on iTunes). Mapping them at will on your address book... I guess if this works for Apple, it is going to work for Google as well (they can do exactly the same thing on Android).
Big Brother at work. Are you willing to trade some privacy over features? Probably yes: just a small percentage of the population is scared about it.
Still, open source and open cloud look a lot safer to me.
Posted by Fabrizio Capobianco at 17:19
12 Comments:
jrep said...
Not only bigbrotherish as you describe it, but hauntingly suggestive of some "accidental data collection" hiccup, like Google stumbled upon lately!
We're all waiting to learn The Truth!
Comment Posted at 17:41
I didn't need a friends list or need to log on to a server to use video calling at the beginning of the last decade. You justcall someone with a normal 3G camera phone. Almost all are enabled for video calling.
Only Apple can create hype around a 10 year old feature. Clever marketing.
Facetime wont change anything about how we communicate, people will. It's only when people feel confortable communicating via video it will happen, until then it's going to be ordinary voice as usual. Don't forget how long it actually took for people to adapt to using a normal phone 100 years ago.
Comment Posted at 03:14
jrep said...
Reviewing the available demos, it doesn't seem necessary to assume all this BigBrotherism: you start a conversation by dialing someone conventionally. The phones could exchange out-of-band info to confirm that FaceTime is supported at both ends, either at that moment or when you actually click (oops ... "touch"!) the FaceTime button. Have I missed something? For instance, is the Address Book pre-annotated with numbers that support FT?
Comment Posted at 09:28
jrep said...
Hmm: sez here, Apple "intends to work hard to make FaceTime an open industry standard itself" (though I don't catch that in Steve's talk). So maybe we don't have to wait long for answers.
Comment Posted at 09:45
Fabri said...
Hi jrep,
the demo you are referring to is when I call you and you answer. I am referring to calling directly via the address book, which is what they are advertising on the site: "Let’s say you want to start a video call with your best friend. Just find her entry in your Contacts and tap the FaceTime button."
BTW, I believe the technology underneath is going to be the same. When you call a friend or he calls you, the Apple Big Brother cloud knows the cellphone of both and you IP address, and will connect you through that.
fabrizio
Comment Posted at 10:19
aFlemm said...
Another option is that when you tap 'FaceTime', iPhone (in the background) contacts the phone number, and asks if the phone on the other line is FaceTime enabled, (or something along that line). If it is, they share IP's, etc. and begin the call.
Apple takes privacy pretty seriously (they're certainly not The FaceBook), I can't imagine they would steal all that data without asking the user. Just listen to Jobs' interview at D8 last week.
Comment Posted at 11:49
Fabri said...
aFlemm, that could only work over SMS. It is another option, but it is expensive and someone has to pay. Since the user is not going to pay and the carrier is not going to give it away for free, it is not really an option.
This must be working over IP. The only options I see are
1. Apple asking for permission to map your phone number (or email) and link it to all the people that have your phone number (or email) in their address book
2. A FaceTime app on the iPhone which you use to map your phone numbers / email
Comment Posted at 12:05
Dr. Kenneth Noisewater said...
Will FaceTime replace the iChat video component any time soon?
It'd be nice to be able to videoconference with Skype or Pidgin people, and doing so via a FaceTime plugin would be more likely than trying to suss out whatever Apple currently uses for iChat..
Plus, iChat to folks with iPhone is an obvious win.
Comment Posted at 15:40
Albegor said...
I also remember when 3 launched their videophone in Italy :)... maybe this is the right time to launch it: on a smartphone like the iPhone it really does make sense IMO.
Great thoughts on how FaceTime could work under the hood. I bet they'll "ask" for permissions through a new modification in the iTunes license agreement.
Comment Posted at 08:20
Clark said...
What's the innovation from a normal skype video call (with whom it would share the bandwidth uncertainty quality issue) or even better with a 3G video call with both the phone number and the temporary IP address associated to the subscriber's IMSI?
My address book would then be available for me to decide if and when I want to add a specific buddy to my buddies list (in the case of skype) or to check if my friend has a video call enabled phone (in the case of 3G). I understand that a database associating the unique iphone identifier with the temporary IP address could cut one step in what described, but I fail to see how this could become an industry standard being device specific....
Comment Posted at 08:22
Hi
Now that the iphone4 is out does anyone DEFINITELY know the technical implementation of a facetime call?
How does the originating party page the terminating party? How does it know the IP address of the mobile its calling?
Thanks
Comment Posted at 11:36
I have an iPhone 4, and have been reading the comments, I have no idea, it doesn't use email or IP mapping, the facetime option is available on all contacts. Even people who don't have email address's, iphones and wifi.
Post a Comment