A) it's easy enough that people will use it.. Apple's implementation has ZERO set up.. just dial another phone.. if your feature is too hard for average users to use and no one uses it it's a non-feature..
B) you have to have enough installed base such that you have another phone to video call... i.e. remember Zune's squirting feature.. well it's really a non-feature because no one ever had anyone to squirt too right?
So Adrian, have you ever done a phone to phone call with that Nokia? if so how many.. 1? 2? maybe 3 times?
by the end of the year Apple will have millions of these phones out there and millions of people to do video calls too.. and it will be SO easy to do so that they will actually use it.. therefore it will be Apple that makes this a real feature.. it's not enough to have a feature.. what's important is doing it in such a way that it actual becomes an everyday feature used by everyone.. that hasn't happened yet, but it will with Apple.. that's what counts.. making an actual impact on society with your device..
Here’s an aspect of Apple that annoys me - trying to claim it invented something that’s clearly been around for years.
What’s worse is when normally sensible tech pundits seem too suffer collective amnesia and go along with the deception.
Take video calling, or FaceTime as Apple is calling it. Watch this video, and pay attention to how the company describes the FaceTime feature:
OK, it seems easy to use, and being able to flip between the front and rear camera is nice, but video calling isn’t new. Heck, my Nokia E71 can do a video call … in two clicks … to any other video-enabled handset … over 3G …
Get my drift? What Apple is doing here is rewriting history. And what’s especially annoying is that a year from now people will associate video calling with Apple and the iPhone 4, think it’s something new and something that wasn’t available to anyone before.
This is what big bucks ad money buys a company like Apple - the chance to rewrite history. Second best thing to having an iTimeMachine!
