>I see alot of people looking at this from a very small, personal, individualized, "I'm an Apple hater" point of view.
I admit I'm an Apple hater. Their products are overhyped, overpriced, and no better than what I use. Actually, in my opinion, OSX is a hell of a lot more painful to use than Linux or even Windows. >As far as existing video chat software, you could say the same about iTunes. There are other MP3 players out there. Before the iPod there were others, there remain others - but Apple has a HUGE share now. You can bash them all you want and they will laugh all the way to the bank. Before the iPod there were MP3 players, true. But there was nothing like iTunes before they brought it to the market. By tying it to the iPod from the get go they made the iPod THE MP3 player to have. I acknowledge that bit of genius freely, but I'd still rather not pay twice as much just to get my player and store all integrated. >From a strategic point of view, consider this... Apple didn't bundle Facetime with iChat, or with iTunes. It's an independent app they are developing as a standalone mac app. Now, I may be totally wrong about why, but it seems that this decoupling makes it MUCH easier to port that one little app over to N number of platforms without having to drag along iTunes, iChat, and the rest. Yes, but they're entering an already large market with an already dominant player. This is more like OSX vs Windows than iPod & iTunes vs all the other MP3 players that only a few people had ten years ago. >So... Yes, there are other video clients out there. In fact iChat has had video conferencing for a number of years (since 2002/2003?). BUT.... When Apple puts it's marketing machine behind an idea, whether it be cell phones, music players, tablets, of just a laptop, that old thing is suddenly new again. *Shrug* People are lemmings when it comes to Apple products. They've always waited for a market to fail before putting their marketing machine to work before. This is different. >I think Apple is positioned perfectly to drop Facetime onto a number of platforms, make it (seem) "easier to use", and give their special spin on it, and completely disrupt what you see as a mature and stable existing video chat market. This about Facetime on Apple TV, for example. Apple TV isn't widespread enough to help Facetime. I could see Facetime helping make Apple TV something you can talk about without causing people to ask what it is, but not the other way around. >Facetime on the iPhone and Mac is the tip of the sword that they could shove deep into the market within the next 12 months if they want to. We'll see. I find it more likely that in 12 months this will be a video chat program that only iPhone and Mac users have even though it's been released for Windows. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:329510 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/unsubscribe.cfm
