131–140 of 169 posts
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The benefit of FaceTime being an open standard.
It’s not an open standard
It was originally announced as an open standard, though. Anyone who remembers Steve Jobs would have caught on. It is easy for us old-timers to forget how long ago that was now, so I extend my apologies to the youngsters.
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Semi-related question since I'm looking to get my grandma setup. Waffling between an iPhone and iPad, maybe an iPad mini but don't know if the air would be better (lighter I think). What device does your grandma use to FaceTime? Do you know does she do anything else with it?
I think a bigger device/screen is easier for older people to use. I think they can struggle a lot with typing on a smaller phone screen, as well as the font and overall display size.
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I think it is unfair to label a platform with a two hundred dollar entry barrier as an equalizer. VoIP and allied technologies are the real enablers and ad-supported platforms like WhatsApp et al. have been true equalizers by allowing anyone to communicate with anyone at marginal costs. The ease of picking up the phone and calling somebody with no consideration of cost has enabled so many people to connect and commun…
> I think it is unfair to label a platform with a two hundred dollar entry barrier as an equalizer. Even in poor areas, lots of people are walking around with iPhones. $200-500 gadgets are not out of the range of poor people. That works out to less than a dollar a day. One time amortized expenses aren't that much of a barrier, from what I've seen. The real barriers the poor face are things like high rents, high medic…
[1] https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2018/10/17/n...
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In Brazil a new iPhone 6 costs about two months of the national average raw income, while a cheap Android alternative would be about 1/3rd to 1/4th of an average monthly salary.
Does average monthly salary mean much if the majority is really poor? Assuming you are middle class, here. Also: you probably mean iPhone 12. The 6 is quite old. I remember my 6 very well as I fell on my motorcycle and I pulled this banana shaped phone out of my pocket.
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Semi-related question since I'm looking to get my grandma setup. Waffling between an iPhone and iPad, maybe an iPad mini but don't know if the air would be better (lighter I think). What device does your grandma use to FaceTime? Do you know does she do anything else with it?
I think a bigger device/screen is easier for older people to use. I think they can struggle a lot with typing on a smaller phone screen, as well as the font and overall display size.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes but a practical new Android phone with reasonable spec (I don't mean cheap Chinese oems with 1gb ram) can be had for $100 and can run WhatsApp/signal fine. The cheapest iphone is $399 iirc, the high entry costs that disqualifies a lot of people even in the US and certainly abroad where apple tax difference compare to base currency of usd399 exceeds regional sales tax differences (mexico for example)
In Brazil a new iPhone 6 costs about two months of the national average raw income, while a cheap Android alternative would be about 1/3rd to 1/4th of an average monthly salary.
> They in fact do, a service called IDS or Apple Identity Service. Reminds me of > The four F's: fighting fleeing feeding and mating
FaceTime is amazing. I keep in touch with my entire family using FaceTime video, often across thousands of kilometers. It's also such an equalizer, allowing even the non-computer literate to use it and focus on the actual conversations. In fact, my 103 year old grandmother is able to do video calls with me, which is great because I rarely see her in person these days. I don't think there exists an alternative she wou…
Unfortunately, calls with more than two people seem to fall apart quickly if the network connection isn't perfect, even where Meets, Zoom, etc. work flawlessly.
> For those of you old enough to remember landlines, it reminds me of those [...] When we all switched to cell service audio quality took a huge hit I don't understand - are landline phones not in use anymore? I only use a landline phone to communicate with the family, because I simply cannot stand the audio quality of cellphones for calls which last longer than a few minutes. Edit: In Germany, there are about 40 M a…
Landlines have been digitized too, a distinct difference to what an analog landline offered. It was more intimate, you could hear breathing for example.
I remember back in the day when FaceTime was announced Apple made a big deal about it using standard protocols throughout the stack ( SIP and maybe WebRTC?) and dangled the hope that there could be 3rd party apps that connected with FaceTime. We were so young and naive then.