Re:The power of Apple's FaceTime commercial
by reneherse on Sunday July 11, 2010 @01:57PM
(#1505837)
You're right, the market for people who want to see and talk to their loved ones from far away isn't that big. And WiFi is hardly anywhere. And you have to hold this device in your hand and lug it around in your pocket...
Just as a counter, I’ve got a handful of friends who actively use iChat’s video functionality. Most just used it to talk to their girlfriends, but one friend in New Zealand virtually attended her best friend’s gallery opening in Minneapolis.
I’d say Facetime’s for the visual masses.
Even with the Face Time technical limitations, the lack of video calling isn't a technical problem but a social one. I've had a laptop with a webcam for 5 years and used video calling a handful of times with at least two of them being just to get screenshots for a book on OS X. It makes a great demo, but at the end of the day I almost always prefer text to audio and audio to video.