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Steve Jobs certainly didn't invent the concept of videophones; they've been dialing up the imaginations of comic-book artists and science-fiction writers and filmmakers for decades. Various companies other than Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) have actually managed to assemble working videophones -- AT&T (NYSE: T), carrier for Jobs' iPhone 4, came out with its "Picturephone" just in time for the 1964 World's Fair in New York City, and actually offered Picturephone booths for consumers.
Web videoconferencing and telemedicine are two applications currently in widespread use. Hey, Apple didn't even pioneer the concept of face-to-face video for mobile phones -- Skyping in certain countries already accomplishes that. However, what Apple may have achieved with its new FaceTime video chat technology for the iPhone 4 is reignite the question of whether or not personal videophones can finally cross the technical, psychological and financial hurdles to mainstream acceptance.
"Businesses and enterprise users have learned and adapted to communicating in a range of different ways, but the consumer is where this really begins to become more interesting," Creative Strategies Consumer Practice Director Ben Bajarin told MacNewsWorld. "It's adding a new element to our mobile communications habits. Video has never done that in the U.S. to a massive degree. You've got to start somewhere to make consumers adopt this. Apple's got the best shot to help commercialize mobile video conferencing across the board."
Back to the Future
FaceTime still finds itself shackled by certain technological limitations. You can't make a video call to just anybody with a mobile phone; both parties have to be using an iPhone 4. For the time being, it's WiFi only, although Jobs told his WWDC audience this week that he hopes to make FaceTime an open standard and wants carriers to support it on their networks.
So what is the big deal about an iPhone face-to-face video phone call? "You can certainly do this on an Android phone like the HTC Evo 4G, and you can use (the video app) Qik. You can do a video call, but it does require a little bit of set-up," Bajarin said. "It's not that terribly difficult, but extra steps are involved. Whereas what Jobs has done is integrate this into the core experience, making it easier for consumers to have that video and audio call."
Apple gives users control of when to go to video on a phone call, because "I don't think 100 percent of a call will be face-to-face. It will be visual when necessary, and that's what's interesting. If you're on a call and a situation comes up where you want to show something, you can quickly show it on Face Time."
Thanks to its market position, media influence and marketing genius, Apple could lead the way for others to make video phone calls affordable and easy to use. "What I think Apple has going for it is not so much the technology, but for lack of a better term, its thought leadership," said Pund-IT Chief Analyst Charles King. "The company seems to be in a zone right now. Even when they have warts or tough spots, they're just in kind of a Teflon space. If this catches the imagination of the Apple user group and their customer group, which is a sizable one, this could become a standard thing. Apple has the brain trust and attention of the market and enthusiasm of customers to make this fly," King told MacNewsWorld.
After all, the idea of a still camera in a smartphone went from being a \u201cwho uses that?\u201d luxury to a can't-live-without-it standard feature in the time it took Dr. Heywood Floyd to place a Bell videophone call from a space station to his daughter back on Earth in "2001: A Space Odyssey." Could mobile video phone capabilities be next?
The Psychological Divide
Another pop-culture reference regarding videophones was making the rounds in the technosphere Wednesday: snippets from David Foster Wallace's novel Infinite Jest. In that book, someone invents a usable, affordable videophone, but it does not achieve iPhone-like heights of popularity. People don't want to care about how they look on the phone and don't want to show exactly what they're doing while talking on one -- mostly due to the fact that the phones show that people aren't always paying 100 percent attention to who they're talking to while they're talking.
One person who can relate is Douglas Rushkoff, author of Life Inc., Media Virus and Get Back in the Box. "To me, it sounds fun for seeing your kid, or sex calls, or seeing what's going on at a party, but not a terrific addition to a real conversation," Rushkoff told MacNewsWorld. "In other words, it may allow for a new kind of call from a vacation or loved one without a computer, but I sure hope the majority of my phone calls won't be on camera.
"All I know is that we're being asked to do more and more in the most inconvenient of circumstances. It's one thing to have to read on a little device and type by guestimating positions on a glass plate. Now we're supposed to prop up an iPhone and videochat with someone? Meaning we can't do anything while we're on the phone, because we have to stare into the thing?"
King, whose imagination as a child was fired up at 1960s-era Disneyland by the videophone on display at Tomorrowland's House of the Future, says the psychological acceptance issues are in line with the physical phone's history. "When telephones were first being introduced, back in Alexander Graham Bell's time, there were serious questions that arose around the issue of proper phone etiquette. Everyone was trying to come up with a proper greeting for telephones since you weren't able to see the person, and in most cases you didn't know who was calling you. Bell thought that saying 'ahoy' would be the most appropriate greeting," King said with a laugh.
