Iphone 4.0 official video • Hacker News Board

Re: Iphone 4.0 official video

#71

Post by bigsassy » Mon, Jun 07, 2010, 9:10 PM UTC

ugh wrote: post #39

mpk wrote: post #8

Eh, requires Quicktime. Hooray for the Open Web. I'll just take your word that it's really shiny.

They seem to be using the video-tag: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4073000/html5.png Don’t know what’s going on with QuickTime – maybe a fallback if your browser won’t play h.264? Does it work on Chrome without QuickTime? (– edit: Three people [who downvoted me] seem to think that formulating a reasonable hypothesis and asking reasonable questions because of conflicting information is already too much Apple love. Or maybe…

On my Ubuntu 10.04 system, I was asked to download codecs for h.264. Once the download and install was done the video played just fine.

Re: Iphone 4.0 official video

#72

Post by dieterrams » Mon, Jun 07, 2010, 9:11 PM UTC

SkyMarshal wrote: post #62

Is it just me, or is Jonathan Ive the only Apple exec able to convincingly recreate Job's reality distortion field? Every time one of these videos comes out, a bunch of guys are paraded out, each one trying to imp Job's style, vocabulary, and delivery, but each one coming across as some guy trying to copy someone else, rather than exude their own sense of style and originality. To be even less charitable and more cyn…

This is true. But I've always assumed that these guys were basically geeks who aren't natural speakers, and probably wouldn't be terribly convincing either way.

Re: Iphone 4.0 official video

#73

Post by lutorm » Mon, Jun 07, 2010, 9:11 PM UTC

snom370 wrote: post #67

trezor wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except you have to call first to verify that whoever you are calling is on wifi. In Europe where wifi is something you have to search for and 3G is something which is everywhere, this renders the feature absolutely useless.

I don't have to search for wifi at home or in the office, and that's where I spend most of the time. Even so, I'm pretty sure Apple has thought this through, making it quick and easy to discover if someone is online, and even invite them through push notifications. They did mention that they "had some details to work out" with the operators, which means that we will probably see video calls on 3G at some point in the…

At home and in the office are also exactly the places where I'm also at a computer which runs skype and can already video chat. No compelling advantage there.

Re: Iphone 4.0 official video

#74

Post by bruceboughton » Mon, Jun 07, 2010, 9:12 PM UTC

enjo wrote: post #14

anigbrowl wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, not if you drop it on the pavement; though how it actually behaves in that situation remains to be seen.

I have to bet that broken glass is the #1 cause of iPhone failure... I've seen it probably 10-15 times in various places.

Shocking! If you drop a complicated electronic device with a glass touch screen, it might break.

The durability of the glass is surely to prevent breakage when you sit on your phone or drop it from a reasonable distance, no?

Re: Iphone 4.0 official video

#75

Post by lutorm » Mon, Jun 07, 2010, 9:15 PM UTC

pxlpshr wrote: post #19

davidmurphy wrote: post #16

I love how Apple focuses on emotion -- those family FaceTime videos were so moving. Intersection of Liberal Arts & Technology, indeed. Well done, Apple.

They did that back in 2004 when iChat AV was introduced, and AV didn't disrupt or shift habits away from traditional audio and text. I think video conferencing is a great feature no doubt, but it's largely too intrusive for most people. Certainly making it more accessible and standardized will help some however, even amongst the most savvy early adopters (and MM+ of college students with MacBooks), video chatting has…

Both me and my fiancee uses skype video calls to our parents all the time, and they are not exactly "the most savvy early adopters".

ichat's firewall sensitivity and mac requirement means that i have yet to complete a single ichat video call. Skype just works, including video.

Re: Iphone 4.0 official video

#76

Post by crocowhile » Mon, Jun 07, 2010, 9:16 PM UTC

paul wrote: post #51

buster wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get it. Videoconferencing is insanely old and never took off. First there was ISDN video conferencing.. apart from the job at a telco i did once i've never actually seen one that was used. Second, the first UMTS mobile i got had video conferencing, that's really a long time ago (Motorola V980 btw.) and many UMTS phones shipped with the second camera for years now. Yet, noone ever used it. Atleast i've never s…

The important feature is that on the iPhone it will actually work. Also, there will be enough distribution to actually establish video calls on a regular basis (because both ends have an iPhone).

It worked on my 6-7 years old sony ericcson with 3, back in Europe. Plus, it was free for any 3 users and didn't require WIFI but 3G. I never used it. Maybe jobs will manage to change people habits, though, and times are different. When I had that (bulky) phone skype was not offering video conferencing yet.

Re: Iphone 4.0 official video

#77

Post by snom370 » Mon, Jun 07, 2010, 9:20 PM UTC

buster wrote: post #48

aresant wrote: post #41

I just walked into our office lunch room where a bunch of non-technical / non-gadget people were talking about the video conferencing capabilities of the new iphone . . . I think that feature is going to be a monster commercial success that every other phone immediately copies. Will probably be the only point that we hear about on the local news / etc rather than Steve's consolidated 8-points . . .

I don't get it. Videoconferencing is insanely old and never took off. First there was ISDN video conferencing.. apart from the job at a telco i did once i've never actually seen one that was used. Second, the first UMTS mobile i got had video conferencing, that's really a long time ago (Motorola V980 btw.) and many UMTS phones shipped with the second camera for years now. Yet, noone ever used it. Atleast i've never s…

The difference is that the quality of the 3G video calls was usually really crap, and most people thought that it cost a lot of money (well, in some cases it did).

Just look at Skype, it's really popular, also with video calls. Video conferencing for business is also big enough that Cisco bought Tandberg for $3B. It just has to be good enough and easy enough to use that people won't have to think twice about it.

The interesting thing here is that they are touting open standards (SIP, SRTP etc). If this gets traction outside of the Apple-sphere (which must be their intention), it might spell trouble for Skype as a proprietary, closed platform.

If wifi calling "just works", then this, combined with Skype being demoed as a multitasking app, _might_ be a big "fuck you" to the telecom operators. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it'll be interesting to follow.

Re: Iphone 4.0 official video

#78

Post by ZeroGravitas » Mon, Jun 07, 2010, 9:20 PM UTC

jherdman wrote: post #27

sound wrote: post #9

just wondering why video is not in HTML-5, or am i missing something?

HTML5 is a documentation spec, not a video encoder. I think you knew that, but language is surprisingly precise, so before commenting I wanted to ensure that we were talking about the same thing. Having got that out of the way, the HTML5 spec for the VIDEO tag is a bit tenuous at the moment. Though the API is laid out in full, there are essentially three competing encodings vying for the default: Ogg/Vorbis, MPEG-4,…

As noted in other comments, Apple is only serving the HTML5 video tag to Safari. Even other webkit-based browsers that support H.264 get the proprietary plugin fallback.

Also, both Google Chrome and Opera support Ogg Theora video, not just Mozilla. The only ones claiming to be worried about patents are the well known supporters of open technology at Apple and Microsoft.

Re: Iphone 4.0 official video

#79

Post by nooneelse » Mon, Jun 07, 2010, 9:20 PM UTC

adamesque wrote: post #63

pxlpshr wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did that back in 2004 when iChat AV was introduced, and AV didn't disrupt or shift habits away from traditional audio and text. I think video conferencing is a great feature no doubt, but it's largely too intrusive for most people. Certainly making it more accessible and standardized will help some however, even amongst the most savvy early adopters (and MM+ of college students with MacBooks), video chatting has…

iChat AV has always had an interesting usability / interaction issue. Because the camera is located on the display bezel, and not in the middle of the screen where the video window sits, you can't ever make full eye contact with the person you're talking to. It makes the entire conversation feel a little "off". I've always thought this was a subtle yet important reason computer-based video chat never took off, and wa…

Interesting bit there at the end. Just by being human I can say we are quite capable of telling if someone is looking at a point a couple of inches from our eyes from across a table (can usually tell which eye they are dominant in and which of your eyes they are looking at). So if your face is in the middle of other screen and they look down at that image instead of at the camera, the question becomes will the resolution of your image of them be enough to tell? I bet it will be easier to tell if they look back and forth between the camera to the image. And better video quality and distances to the phones will, of course, make it easier to see the lack of true eye-contact.

So, in addition to just holding your phone further away, maybe everyone can aim their own phone's camera so that the image of them on the other phone has their eyes as close to the camera as possible. One might just find that people start gravitating to that "off center" camera aiming without thinking about it (since it would minimize the other person's eye-jitter). Anybody reading this done much hand-held video calling? Where are the thresholds on these variables?

Re: Iphone 4.0 official video

#80

Post by roryokane » Mon, Jun 07, 2010, 9:22 PM UTC

jbrennan wrote: post #47

nihilocrat wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was wondering the same. Perhaps it's because it's a very obvious statement? Apple routinely purport its products are perfect, that every detail is a facet of the best craftsmanship on Earth, use gaping-mouth words ("sooo perfect") and giggles of joy. Apple markets its products as technology beyond cutting-edge: they are superhuman, perhaps built by aliens and bestowed upon us mortals, things that change our lives a…

Why wouldn't you try to make your new product seem as "incredible" as possible?

Because cynics would realize you are exaggerating and perhaps think less of your product for it – maybe your product can’t stand on its own, so you have to exaggerate to make up for that. Apple is betting that most of its ad watchers are not this type of cynic.