When will Apple improve Facetime.app and make it multi-platform for other OS as well

[212rikanmofo]

I really love this feature and use it on a daily basis, but I haven't really seen any improvements or updates. I really hope they continue working on this app. Some features I would like to see are:

1) Group audio or video chat. Like you were able to do with the old iChat app, you could video chat with more than 1 person simultaneously.

2) Option to turn on/off your camera

3) Fix the behavior where all audio is very low while using the app. Sometimes I want to be able to let the other person here a song I'm playing in iTunes while talking to them, and I can't because the app automatically lowers the output volume for all other apps.

4) Lastly and most importantly, PLEASE consider making this a universal app, meaning it can also be used on Windows platform, just like iTunes. This will expand and make it much more accessible to a wider crowd. Unfortunately not everyone I know owns an Apple device. Would love to be able to facetime with those on non-Apple platforms.

 

[silvetti]

Facetime was supposed to be open source, then they dropped that idea it seems, so I assume never

 

[Abazigal]

There is apparently some patent issues surrounding FaceTime, which is forcing Apple to working around the problem. This costs them dearly in terms of resources, and affects the performance of FaceTime, and I think the threat of legislation is preventing Apple from releasing it as open-source anytime soon.

 

[MikhailT]

IIRC, the latest patent expiration for Facetime will be in 2020. So, Apple can only open source it in 2021.