Yes, this is an(other) iPhone4 post. Yes, like everyone else I was following Steve Jobs’ keynote at WWDC. Yes, the iPhone4 seems to be a very interesting evolution for smartphones. Yes, Apple make the greatest marketing campaigns in the world.

iPhone4 Commercial, directed by Sam Mendes

But with all due respect to Steve Almighty, and the long-awaited iPhone4, I have to admit I was far from impressed with the “one more thing…” presented last week – video calling. Sure, I was the one saying Apple is lagging behind. Yes, I was the one hoping Apple will do for video calling what it did for mobile web browsing. But I was also the one warning about the future video calling service (when it was practically announced a few months ago):

If apple was to launch a video calling service on the iPhone, it wouldn’t be amazing, it definitely wouldn’t be ground breaking and forget about any revolution.

Still I hoped, I really did, that the lords of user experience, the kings of consumer electronics, would come up with something that would change the video conferencing market for the better.

Face The Facts: FaceTime

To make a long story short, here’s what FaceTime, the new video calling service from Apple, is all about:

Yes, no mistake they’re – iPhone4 to iPhone4 only, Wi-Fi only. And Steve Jobs knows exactly why:

• iPhone4 to iPhone4 only means no interoperability problems for Apple. They control the system end-to-end, and can guarantee a decent experience. This reminds me of what Cisco did with Telepresence.
• Wi-Fi only means no real limitations on bandwidth and line quality.

But, with all due respect to iPhone4, which will probably sell like crazy in the coming months, this makes as much sense as the recently announced dating service for Apple fans only. And here are a few reasons why:

• Limiting who I can call practically makes the service a failure. You wouldn’t think of limiting your voice calls to AT&T only, or iPhone 3GS only, would you? But why go so far – Cisco learned that same lesson with Telepresence.
• iPhone to iPhone4 means no video conferencing. And this happens at a time where video conferencing blooms, and Skype, Google and others are going exactly there.
• Wi-Fi only means that you are limited as to where you can take it; as the Apple commercial suggests (where the hell did that soldier find WiFi in his barracks?). It means that in areas where there’s no Wi-Fi, or where Wi-Fi costs a lot, the service will be useless.
• Wi-Fi only also means that if there are lots of people using it, like last week at the WWDC keynote, you would have to be Steve Jobs to holler to the crowd to turn off their WiFi so that your call can go through.

The one good thing about Wi-Fi? I am just dying to see the YouTube clip of an Apple fan making a transatlantic video call from an airplane with his shiny new iPhone4 device. Will Robert Scoble be the first one or will it be Gizmodo’s Brian Lam to achieve this feat?

Crouching Steve, Hidden Marketing

Add to that the fact that Apple’s user interface is pretty much the same thing that’s been out there for almost a decade, and I have to say that what started off with a big bang ended up with a very lame crouch:

Is Steve enjoying himself while video chatting?  Would he sit like that for an hour?!  I doubt it. And that’s where I was really disappointed – with Steve, with Apple, and with a marketing babble that is technically impaired.

But don’t disrespect marketing – Apple plans on shipping tons of FaceTime-enabled devices this year. Steve also stated that this “open” service (it definitely re-defines “open”) will become an industry standard for video chatting. If and when this will happen, I might change my mind about all of this and maybe give it a bit of face time.

In the meantime, I invite Steve and all of you to watch this funny clip, showing video calling on the mobile using RADVISION’s technology. Looks pretty much the same, doesn’t it?  The only catch is… it was produced 5 (!!!) years ago:

Some giant leap, huh?!