I’ve been trying to press this post for quite a while now and I haven’t had the time to get my thoughts together. Now I think I got them, even though at almost 2 am, that is doubtful.Anyhow, maybe my insomniac musings wouldn’t be that bad at the end.
After numerous complaints about the antenna problems, an expected news event and expected answers by Apple, and still a shortage and wait-lists at the Apple stores, I think everyone is convinced that the iPhone 4 is here to stay. What got my attention was the new (now already old) iPhone 4 Face Time ads. Out of the five TV spots, 4 are heavily family oriented and one related to a relationship communication (HairCut). So, after spinning the iPad as a device that family members can share and pretty much leave on the kitchen table, now the iPhone is targeting (or at least, the Face Time function) family communication and sharing. The catch here, of course, is that Face Time works only on an iPhone-to-iPhone basis, so if you want to see how your kids “are really doing” at college, you have to make sure your entire family uses the 30-pin cable to charge their mobile devices.
There definitely will be new players trying to get into the iPhone video call game through apps (which will be duly banned, with the exception of probably a couple in order to keep the app store competitive – I am assuming Fring and Skype) and Apple will definitely expand the Face Time footprint to all its devices, substituting iChat. I bet that when that happens, the Face Time ads will include a bunch of double-Windsor-knot colleagues around the world that do video conferencing to close business deals (naturally, the characters will include members of the countries that speak the UN official languages), and boom – a new business communication feature, competing with Cisco’s WebEx and Skype’s screen-sharing functions.
But it could be that I am all wrong and even though I sound a bit bitter, I have to say that I am a huge Apple fanboy, so here are my positive 2 cents. Finally, we see Face Time TV spots that make sense (as opposed to the initial blurb, where we saw a weird stream of frames showing people that wave and smile at each other, but didn’t talk). Enjoy!
What a post!! Very informative and easy to understand. Looking for more such writeups!! Do you have a twitter?
I recommended it on digg. The only thing that it’s missing is a bit of color. However thank you for this information.
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