Back when the iPod With Video debuted, a tech blogger — who was notable for his coverage of non-iPod audio players and bias — was at a trade show talking to a representative (probably Samsung) about the new features of their latest iPod-killer*. The rep explained all the ways that their unit matched last year’s iPod Nano, so the blogger asked about their plans for video and the newly announced iTunes Movie Store.
The representative was at a loss for words, and the blogger realized that the competition was stuck in a one-year-plus cycle of catch-up with no sign of shortening the gap. His next post** was a screed explaining why he was giving up and buying an iPod.
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FaceTime. We knew videochat was coming, but we assumed it would take the form of Video iChat, not a new protocol. But this makes sense. Video iChat is dependent on AIM, and it works like crap on wonky routers. Video iChat doesn’t always Just Work (a good motto for the iPodPhoneTouchPad, er, iOS platform).
And they’re publishing an open spec, too, which is necessary because an iPhone that can’t do videocalls to non-iPhones would be as lame as an iPhone that can’t voicecall non-iPhones. Will the “Apple likes closed platforms” folks notice?
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Today you can buy a non-iPhone that has a front-facing camera, but it won’t do FaceTime (and probably doesn’t do videochat at all).
You can wait until summer 2011 to buy an Android with a frontcam and FaceTime.
You can wait until Christmas 2011 to buy a Windows Series 7 Mobile CE Phone with a frontcam and FaceTime.
Or you can be using an iPhone 4 with FaceTime, that Just Works***, in three weeks.
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* “iPod Killer” is now in the history books next to “unsinkable Titanic,” soon to be joined by “papal infallibility”
** Google failing me, going on memory
*** caveat: over Wifi; that’s gotta be pissing off Steve like whoa
