Originally published at: https://tidbits.com/2018/08/13/ship-or-slip-apple-delays-group-facetime-until-later-this-fall/
A developer has noticed that Group FaceTime, one of the marquee features of iOS 12 and macOS 10.14 Mojave, won’t make the initial release of those operating systems. Missed ship dates are starting to become a habit for Apple.
“At some point, we’re going to have to take Apple’s pronouncements about new features with the proverbial grain of salt. We’ll see if Group FaceTime actually ships “later this fall” or slips into a 2019 release.”
My thoughts exactly.
I might add I am still also waiting for Visual Voicemail, 11 years after launch…
Mark, I get VV on my iPhone 10 - it’s OK but does have problems changing some speech to text.
“At some point, we’re going to have to take Apple’s pronouncements about new features with the proverbial grain of salt.”
In my experience, it has always been wise to have a salt cellar handy when it comes to such Apple pronouncements. However, I am one of those users who is willing to wait on features when Apple discovers it needs more time to deliver robust new features.
In the case of multiuser FaceTime, I suspect the distance between a usable prototype running on new equipment over a reliable high speed network and a release version that would have to run acceptably on a wider range of devices with varying quirks over a farrago of networks of varying quality and dependability was larger than Apple may have hoped. The delay does not surprise me.
If you search Youtube you will fInd a video of Steve Jobs demonstrating a 4 way video conference using iChat on a Mac. It was launched in 2005!
This is pretty much a non issue to me. A beta feature isn’t released in an update that was to be about quality. Meh.
It’s a fair point that Apple seems to be slipping on many dates. Human behavioral psychology makes this more likely. The trend is disappointing indeed but I for one am happy if Apple stops releasing things that barely work. Ahem, Apple Watch S0…