APPLE PRETENDS TO INVENT: Video calling
Remember video calling? It was a minor fad in the year 2005, when a few high-end mobile phones came with two cameras on them because the mobile networks wanted to make billions of pounds out of us video calling each other for ﾂ｣6.99 per minute.
It didn’t catch on because we’re all actually quite ugly.
That’s not a problem in Apple’s MENTAL PRETEND LAND, where everyone’s got acceptable faces.
filed in ACTUAL PRODUCTS, PROMOTIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY on Jun.08, 2010
June 8th, 2010 on 11:03 am
It would appear they’ve also just invented the mirror, going by how those people’s faces are reversed on each phone.
More importantly, when are they going to hurry up and invent fire? I’m fed up with having to eat cold food and raw meats.
And how about some form of transportation device while they’re at it? I’m thinking of something round and maybe wheel-like but they’ll probably have a much better idea, they’re the genius innovative types, after all.
June 8th, 2010 on 11:08 am
“People have been dreaming about video calling for decades”.
I realise that Apple probably don’t write their own copy but haven’t the media studies graduates down at the agency noticed that every 3G phone ever made (with the exception of the Iphone) does this already?
“Phone calls like you’ve never seen before”…Well not if you have an Iphone, no.
Apparently they’ve also invented a feature that enables people to receive an SMS too, but you probably still have to run the SMS “app”.
June 8th, 2010 on 11:11 am
Sorry, I forgot to mention “FaceTime”(tm).
Cunts.
June 8th, 2010 on 11:14 am
“People too stupid to use skype have been dreaming about video calling for decades.”
Fixed.
June 8th, 2010 on 11:43 am
Wow, over wifi only. Other companies have been messing around with 3G for years and Apple seem to have forgotten that bit. If I’m at home I might as well use my camera on my laptop with skype.
June 8th, 2010 on 1:51 pm
Surely if you were to put two iPhones case to case, there would just be an infinite number of reflected iPhones? Looking into that would be like looking at Steve Jobs’ soul.
June 8th, 2010 on 7:22 pm
Are those brown, warped Dreamcast swirls behind the twat on the right?
June 8th, 2010 on 8:37 pm
And as we all know, Skype is the real face of video calling. Low quality video, some speech delay and the phone call to ask someone to turn on their Skype. Rather than the pixie-make-believe image above.
Remember Alien 2. That had some real video calling in it. Sleep addled, confused and far too close up for comfort.
June 9th, 2010 on 1:06 am
Aw, skype’s not that bad. But I choose to live 7,000 miles from the people who hate me least, so I use it a lot.
I think it’s very important that not only can I hear my mum talking about the weather, I can also see the dog when she holds it up and makes it wave at me.
June 9th, 2010 on 7:33 am
‘It didn窶冲 catch on because we窶决e all actually quite ugly.’
Singularly the best line ever this month
June 9th, 2010 on 8:32 am
Right, 7000 miles away from a woman with a dog?
That helps narrow down the location of the (alleged) female readership. Anyone care to collate any other information ThreeOliveMartini has let slip in the past?
June 9th, 2010 on 12:51 pm
Somewhere, somebody is writing an app that will use motion capture to render to an avatar so that instead of your face, people will see (for example) Batman, or Del-boy or Alan Partridge or the Crazy Frog or Cream the Rabbit.
This could revolutionise telephone sex as we currently know it.
June 9th, 2010 on 1:04 pm
Video Calling only on Wifi because, they want to make a 3g Video Calling a feature in a future release. All the apple fanboys out there think WOW at that time. Apple restricts features only to make them sound as a new awesome feature in a future upgrade.
June 9th, 2010 on 1:38 pm
Regarding Paul’s avatar idea above, I forsee a lot of women buying their partners the Johnny Depp avatar ‘for a laugh’.
I can’t see a Sex in the City pack of avatars selling anywhere near as well.
Will they still be making Little Britain merchandise in this future world? If so, maybe it’s best this idea is smothered at birth now?
June 9th, 2010 on 3:36 pm
As usual, the haters miss the point entirely. Apple didn’t invent the idea. They just made an implementation that works the way the average consumer expects it to. This is zero configuration video calling – no buddy lists, just a phone number. Call the other person over the cell network, then seamlessly switch to VOIP over WiFi in mid-call.
To make this work properly is very hard to do. It involves about 10 layers of network address translation to reliably make it through all of the routers and switches on the net. Oh yeah, and it’s f***ing free :-)
BTW, Apple has made the specification open and submitted it to standards bodies for ratification. That way all of you Symbian, WinMo, Android, and BlackBerry sufferers can participate in a few years when the other guys get around to copying Apple.
June 9th, 2010 on 3:59 pm
That’s all well and good Patrick, but what makes you think I (or anyone else here I’d suspect) want anything to do with the ‘average consumer’ or what they expect?
The average consumer’s a bloody idiot for a start, which is why big companies like to target them so much.
June 9th, 2010 on 4:12 pm
@GigerPunk,
I don’t know about you, but I’ve got better things to do than d**k around with the settings on my mobile phone to get video calls to work. I’d like to just push a button.
And yes, the average consumer is a bloody idiot. So, if you want to make video calling a viable alternative to voice calling, you have to make it “just work”. That’s Apple’s strength.
If you’ve ever owned an Apple product you know what I mean. Their stuff works very well, doesn’t degrade in performance over time, and lasts for years and years. I’m willing to pay a little extra for sh*t that actually works as advertised.
June 9th, 2010 on 4:50 pm
Oooh, an actual live Apple fanboy. Can we keep him? Huh? Huh? He’ll be easy to impress (“Look, this phone does 3G video calling straight out of the box! And it’s five years old.” “NO! NOT POSSIBLE! WHAT WITCHCRAFT IS THIS?? BURN IT!!”), and we only have to by a few skinny jeans, GAP T-shirts and lattes a year to keep him clothed, fed and watered.
Seriously, though, Patters, thanks for the demo of smug, preening arrogance which is the hallmark of exactly why everyone hates market-dominating megacorp Apple and their no-longer-able-to-be-elitist disciples. Appreciated.
June 9th, 2010 on 5:09 pm
MrMoth,
Guess ignorance is bliss. Ever even use a Mac? Your frustration and possible jealous rage is evident in your schoolboy reply to Patrick.
Windows has it’s place in the world and so does Mac. In my line of work a Windows machine just can’t handle the load. And I can say that because I actually use both.
June 9th, 2010 on 5:53 pm
Oh look! Patrick spelt his name John this time. Or is this my jealous rage speaking? No. You’re a twat.
June 9th, 2010 on 6:01 pm
Yay! fight! fight! fight!
Schoolboy fight time! Macs r poo!
Jobs smells of jobs!
Macs are for people so scared of technology they wouldn’t know which end of a soldering iron to hold (hint, the hot end, muppets)
Ahem, on a slightly more serious note – shit, it appears the buggers are multiplying.
John and Patrick. Hope they’re not a breeding pair, we could be in trouble then. It’ll be asymetrical fringes and ironic plaid shirts as far as the eye can see.
Btw, cracking way to hide the arrogance John, MrMoth was obviously completely wrong on that front, wasn’t he?
And as for your “works as advertised”, Patrick, when are they going to advertise that they must have internals made from sweety wrappers and disprin? Going by the amount of water damaged/utterly smashed ones I’ve seen for bitbroken, your “lasts for years and years” quote may need some revision too.
I have better things to do than dick around with settings on anything to get video calls to work as they’re a bloody pointless thing that’s being hyped as being the next shiny new thing for idiots to pay more money for (and before you say “it’s free” again, iphones aren’t free are they? In fact, I think the correct term is ‘stupidly expensive’?).
I’m guessing you’re thinking it’ll work like it did in Demolition Man – if you’re thinking you’ll get naked women accidentally video calling you, think again. Back in the real world it’ll be Chatroulette and people like this. But then, maybe that’s your thing.
In fact, I don’t dick about with settings on my phone at all. I make calls and send the odd txt. I don’t even play games on it. But then my phone’s not a status symbol to show off I have more money than sense. I’m not sure if it even has snake on it. It’s lasted for years and years and didn’t come with an inflated apple pricetag.
Likewise, my pc was built cheaply and does the job (and has done for years now too)
Oh, and I have a mac too – a grey G3 iMac dv that I picked up cheap from a carboot from a couple who’d obviously decided they’d just finished paying it off so it was time to take out a 2nd mortgage to fund a newer shinier one.
I bought it mainly to remind myself of what a pain in the arse they were when I had to support the blasted things a decade ago. Yes, 10 years later it still technically works but it’s unusable in any real sense nowadays as it’s too slow, no current browsers work on the o/s, it’s too slow to run a more up to date o/s and there’s no way to upgrade the fecker. Still, it looks nice and that’s the important thing, eh?
So yes, I am a mac owner as well, (One that had to use the sodding things on a regular basis too, not just someone who bought a broken one for a laugh) and I agree, kinda, that they both have their places in this world. But there’s no place for video calling/’facetime’ in a sane world. The only real-world applications for such technology are a) video conferencing for big business to save on international travel – this is already covered by proper industrial-strength tech and
b) Porn. But then porn’s always looking at new ways to use technology to milk peoples wallets (by which I mean nutsacks) dry, so that’s hardly surprising.
Rather annoyingly, my boss’s boss’s boss is a mac owner too. And seeing as he’s in charge of the whole IT dept that’s a very depressing fact indeed.
Oh and the first person to say macs don’t crash or get viruses is only proving what an idiot they are.
June 9th, 2010 on 6:10 pm
Srsly, John/Patrick, this is great stuff. Please do keep it up.
Of course I’ve used a Mac. I used one all through university for design work and it was fine. It was fine. As is my Windows box, both my home and work one. They’re tools*, like all computers. Zealotry is ridiculous in these circumstances, which is why Apple kids are so funny. It’s like someone saying “Yes, but until you’ve used an actual STANLEY knife, you’re not really cutting. John F. Lundgren gave this amazing presentation, he’s introduced a safety lock so you won’t cut yourself. Your lame Black & Drecker never thought of that, did they?”.
Eee, I remember t’first time I commented here and someone accused me of being an Apple fanboy.
*You may have this for free.
June 9th, 2010 on 7:28 pm
Today the Health and Safety executive warned that too much FaceTime can lead to arm fatigue and users should limit their calls to less than a minute.
Apple responded with news of a new patented strap on telescoping iPhone holder. The device is strapped around the waist and shoulders and pressing a button will extend a holder to place the iPhone at the correct position to conduct FaceTime video calls.
June 9th, 2010 on 7:52 pm
So it’s been confirmed that iPhone users need a strapon, then?
June 9th, 2010 on 7:57 pm
Apple’s marketing lately has really gone off the tracks. The iphone 4 promotional videos almost make me sick. Excessive marketing when the actual product fails to be anything special really is stupid. It almost seems that the speakers in the videos don’t really believe themselves what they say aynmore.
Just as stupid as calling the ipad ‘ipad’ without the article.
I think this type of marketing bulls*hit only makes people turn away from the brand (it did so for me).
June 10th, 2010 on 9:27 am
I was making video phone calls on my N95 a couple of years ago over the 3G network. My contacts showed who else had a video phone and it was a one button operation to make it work. I stopped using it pretty quickly though because you either have to have an ear piece in, or hold the phone out in front of you and shout in public, while everyone hears both sides of the conversation.
It’s a stupid idea for public use, and at home we’ve all got skype if we want it.
June 11th, 2010 on 11:39 am
YOU TOO CAN HAVE A JAPANESE GIRLFRIEND
August 18th, 2010 on 12:54 am
iChat, facetime.. it’s all useless carp promising to help weird-folk save their marriages.
Does anyone else think of Steve Jobs when they watch QVC?
April 26th, 2011 on 9:12 pm
Revisionist history is grand ain’t it?
October 27th, 2011 on 8:04 am
@patrick
http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_6630-811.php
this was invented seven years ago, you can call anyone that has a phone with an attached front facing camera and is 3g able here in the philippines, without buddy list and everything that you have mentioned. come on, stop being a fanboy for a minute and see what you’ve been drinking. iFAG
October 27th, 2011 on 8:17 am
and to reiterate my point, IN THE PHILIPPINES, a 3rd world country with people living in shacks along the railroad that knows how to do a video call in their primitive nokia 6630 phone by just going to their contacts, pick their friend’s number, press option and select video call. damn!