How Does FaceTime Work? • Hacker News Board

Re: How Does FaceTime Work?

#161

Post by lostlogin » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 9:43 AM UTC

LivelyTortoise wrote: post #63

sgt wrote: post #3

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…

Is there anything that sets FaceTime apart from cheaper competitors like WhatsApp / Signal video calling in this aspect of ease of use? (I say cheaper because you don't need to buy an iDevice to use those)

> Is there anything that sets FaceTime apart from cheaper competitors like WhatsApp

Not signing up to anything Facebook is the first criteria in any service I want to use.

Re: How Does FaceTime Work?

#162

Post by oarsinsync » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 2:08 PM UTC

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #153

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but I guess effects (like cancelling echos from participants who use speakers instead of headphones, or reducing noise from crappy mics) also play a role. I wonder if there is a market for a meeting app that has the best quality of them all, by not trying to poorly work around bad environments, but simply booting people out of meetings until they fix their setup. Yes, it would suck if you or someone you really need…

I spend 70% of Zoom meetings with "Original Sound" enabled. I have a good microphone and I want to be as easy to hear as possible. However, I also have an air conditioner. You can hear it. I try to keep it turned off during meetings, but sometimes it's just too hot. and so Original Sound goes off and the air conditioner goes on. What else am I supposed to do? Leave the meeting?

Push to talk solutions make a pretty good middle ground.

Have all the background noise you need to have, as long as I only ever have to hear it when you're actively trying to speak. If I still can't hear you over your noise, then you have a bigger problem.

If I have to listen to your noise even when someone else is speaking, then we all have a problem, which PTT nicely solves.

Anyone who spend the 90s / 00s competitive gaming likely already has their preferred PTT key, that they can push while continuing to still be productive in whatever activity they're already engaging in.

Some tweaking may be required, given the different input methods used depending on the job vs the game, but that was true of different games back then too.

Re: How Does FaceTime Work?

#163

Post by Jcowell » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 5:04 PM UTC

the_third_wave wrote: post #114

Jcowell wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention has less friction

Only when you live in an Apple bubble which in practice comes down to the USA and parts of Europe. Elsewhere Apple is a margin player with the vast majority of mobile devices running Android. Telegram is available everywhere, for all "significant" devices and categories (desktop, mobile, web) which makes it a more universal option. It is growing at a rapid pace (200 million users in March 2018, 400 million users in A…

For Telegram, your relying on the general populous caring that Apple is scanning their devices. I want this to be understood by the HN population: the general populous does not care about privacy concerns that they cannot see. They will not care that Apple is scanning for CP on their devices because they do not care that Apple scanned for Cp on the Cloud. The only time they would care is if Apple themselves were to physically send someone to their house, untie themselves in , and go through their stuff. Non tangible privacy violations outside of SSN data breaches are not on the mind of the general public.

Re: How Does FaceTime Work?

#164

Post by imwillofficial » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 5:26 PM UTC

randomdata wrote: post #131

imwillofficial wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not an open standard

Nor does it currently work in Firefox. Hence the continuation of the joke. 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.

Hahaha you’re right! I remember jobs saying that, or was it iMessage He was talking about?

Re: How Does FaceTime Work?

#165

Post by sgt » Sun, Aug 22, 2021, 8:20 AM UTC

npteljes wrote: post #142

andrecarini wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hungary: Cheapest iPhone: 120000 HUF Cheapest Android: 9700 HUF Cheapest reasonable Android: 21000 HUF Minimum wage after taxes: 111000 HUF

Thought Hungary had Euros.

Re: How Does FaceTime Work?

#166

Post by npteljes » Sun, Aug 22, 2021, 10:05 AM UTC

sgt wrote: post #165

npteljes wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hungary: Cheapest iPhone: 120000 HUF Cheapest Android: 9700 HUF Cheapest reasonable Android: 21000 HUF Minimum wage after taxes: 111000 HUF

Thought Hungary had Euros.

Unfortunately we don't, the first target date was 2007, and the numbers looked like we're getting there, but it just never happened. Nowadays there's no target date and the propaganda is eurosceptic, so I'm not holding my breath.

Re: How Does FaceTime Work?

#167

Post by yunohn » Sun, Aug 22, 2021, 11:30 AM UTC

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #146

miki123211 wrote: post #100

> 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 As a blind person with a lot of friends in different corners of the world, audio quality is very important to me. Surprisingly enough, I've seen side projects that took a weekend to develop that had much better quality than what mainstream services offer. Part of it is p…

> but I guess effects (like cancelling echos from participants who use speakers instead of headphones, or reducing noise from crappy mics) also play a role. I wonder if there is a market for a meeting app that has the best quality of them all, by not trying to poorly work around bad environments, but simply booting people out of meetings until they fix their setup. Yes, it would suck if you or someone you really need…

One of the advantages of remote work, is to enable people to be flexible about their working environment.

Your solution is to setup a streaming rig in everyone’s house, and force them into a home cubicle? Sounds absolutely painful to me.

Re: How Does FaceTime Work?

#168

Post by shuckles » Mon, Aug 23, 2021, 8:53 PM UTC

LivelyTortoise wrote: post #63

sgt wrote: post #3

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…

Is there anything that sets FaceTime apart from cheaper competitors like WhatsApp / Signal video calling in this aspect of ease of use? (I say cheaper because you don't need to buy an iDevice to use those)

It integrates well with your mobile phone number as identity. Add a SIM to an iPhone and you can FaceTime it in the same way you’d call it.

Re: How Does FaceTime Work?

#169

Post by miki123211 » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 11:52 AM UTC

Const-me wrote: post #141

rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually don't think bandwidth costs are responsible, nor DSP effects. I suspect the lousy audio quality in modern voice conferencing software is to compensate for people with lousy internet connections or underpowered devices: someone using an older phone in the car on 3G cell service with cell tower handoffs, or a crusty laptop using lousy coffee shop WiFi, etc. It's a tough problem to solve. Everyone on a call c…

I’ve opened facebook.com with browser dev.tools open. The 3 largest java script files are using 1 megabyte to download. Facebook is able to do that because even globally, vast majority of people have internet way faster than 64 kbit/sec. 1 megabyte takes more than 2 minutes to download at 64 kbit/sec. It’s similar story with CPUs. Modern CPUs are insanely fast these days, smart phones included. What once required pur…

There's much more to an internet connection than the average speed per second.

If we're talking about downloading files (and loading websites), you're mostly correct. However, temporary slowdowns, disruptions in wireless connectivity and wireless-specific packet loss affect audio quality a lot, while not having much impact on your download speed. Even when streaming audio or video, you don't feel them as much, as your device usually keeps at least 10 seconds of buffer that it can rely on. When in a call, though, 10 seconds of buffer would mean 10 seconds of latency, which is simply unacceptable.

You can have a 1.2 mb/s connection that sometimes goes down to 64kb/s for two to three seconds. Even if your download speed is still 1 mb/s, you can't really receive more than 64 kb/s when in a call, or you will get dropouts.