> But in many of the verticals in these sectors—such as banking or mobile phone services—no single company dominates the market.
I don't think that's true of video-conferencing either. Zoom is probably the most popular (and technically superior), but there is also: Microsoft Teams, Webex, Google Meet, Slack, and many others, including open source options like Jitsi. And they all pretty much do the job.
And unlike many other services, the network effect is quite low because I can easily install multiple video conferencing software or even run some in the browser. If someone organising a meeting asks to use something unusual, I'm normally not that bothered.
My wife sees doctors at four different clinics. Each has chosen a different remote meeting solution. It's non-negotiable - to see your doctor remotely, you need to use their software. And that's just in one field.
With COVID my grandfather has been doing telepresence visits with his doctors, for COVID among other reasons.
Mostly they were using a 3rd party solution like webx/zoom/etc but one doctor (automated in an online form) noticed his number was tied to iMessage and offered to just FaceTime him at his appointment time. Super easy for him (at 94) to self-manage vs any other solution where we (my mother or myself) need to be around to set things up for him.
Not sure how they are doing this exactly, if this is something Apple specifically enabled for healthcare or whatever, but its a fantastic experience.
Whatever solution they were using did have an "no I have an android and a 'use my computer' option" not sure what path they led down.
It’s a shame there isn’t seamless ability to Facetime with Android users like there is to make a voice call or text with them. We (read: tech community and/or society) should fix this. It’d be in society’s interest if a video call between android and Apple was as easy as a voice call is. (and I do think Facetime between Apple users is this easy... I sometimes use Facetime purely because my WiFi is a little better than my cell signal).
Google's built-in app (Duo) is made available on iOS, but Facetime isn't made available on Android.
Apple could easily open up Facetime and iMessage, and they've evaluated doing exactly this, but they ultimately determined that keeping these pieces of communication software exclusive to Apple devices is a big part of why the devices themselves are so sticky.
There are countless ways of making it happen by installing apps. And the user experience and integration has improved. But I mean out-of-the-box, universal functionality. So your 94 year old great grandparent can use it without anything.
Duo integrates into the latest Android like FaceTime integrates into iOS, it would be nice if Apple made FaceTime / iMessage available on Android (lol, never gonna happen) or allowed Duo to integrate into iOS like 3rd party apps can in Android (like WhatsApp video calling does). Probably the biggest feature I miss from Android since moving to iOS.
Apple is probably doing more harm than good at this point for themselves by keeping iMessage/FaceTime so locked down to their hardware since their revenue stream is trending more towards services and less weighted in hardware.
I'm not sure if Apple ever explained why they didn't open up FaceTime? I seem to remember that when they presented it they said it would become an open standard?
If they were texting the doctors messages would be blue if recipient had iMessage and green if normal SMS. Most likely how he found out he had an iPhone he could FaceTime.
I think this was your point but yea, I'd be more concerned that access to your doctor is contingent upon installing a specific proprietary software and accepting that software's terms of use. That's like a doctor saying you can only visit them if you drive there in a Chevrolet.
I can call my doctor using any phone I like, and E-mail her using any E-mail client I like. It is beyond unreasonable to require a patient to install specific client software in order to access care.
Working for a company that deals with security, I have definitely run into customers that would think I was crazy if I asked them to use anything other than Zoom or Webex. Some are even limited to webex only.
It goes in many combinations. Where I work now, it's Teams internally and Webex externally, with Zoom being explicitly banned, with at least two strongly worded e-mails reminding us to make it double plus sure we don't have the Zoom client installed.
At the same time, outside of work, I was videocalling people on Skype, and my wife had classes delivered via Zoom.
Not sure what' worse, Zoom or Teams. Seems like "pick your poison". A coworker once looked at Teams console. I had logged over 700 errors. Often we cannot hear people, although their tech is completely fine. It's just Teams being bug ridden and excluding people.
Not just that - in general, Zoom is just a videochat; Teams is an office productivity tool. It's pretty good at its function (I'm using it at work and I don't really have much to complain about, except the weird handling of code blocks in chat).
Really? If you want to one-click-add a Zoom meeting to your Google calendar, Zoom requires read history to your full Google Calendar (including all history!) That seems incredibly intrusive.
How do corporations even allow access for this particular features?
Most people in companies are not IT people or IT security people. The ones raising concerns are often only heard, when it is too late.
How often have I heard silly arguments against safer tech like: "The people are not IT people, they want something simple!"
This is possibly so Zoom can show other Zoom meetings you have been invited to. This is a useful feature as it means I can directly join a Zoom meeting without having to go through the Calendar.
New webex sucks for remote support. It forces me to re-request control every time I paste something. Yes I could manually type everything out but that is a pita when dealing with long Linux commands pulled from documentation.
Is it every time you paste something, or every time you leave the program and focus on another to copy something?
If the latter, and you're using X, it should be possible to write a program that takes the selection buffer and provides a different response to each SelectionRequest in turn, letting you walk through a script pasting a command at a time without having to leave the current window. I don't know whether such a thing already exists.
We've tried Jitsi multiple times (as recently as a month ago) and the experience has been uniformly bad at anything beyond a handful of people. When we scaled to > 20 it was completely unusable (feedback / echos, delays, stuttering, dropouts, you name it).
Were you self-hosting, or using the free service? If self-hosting, I'm curious what resources you were devoting to your VPS, and which hosting provider?
Was it with a self-hosted version or the meet.jit.si public instance?
Around 20 we had the same problem on the public instances but I wonder how much is server side or limitation on the client side.
It also definitely worked better in Chrome, it seems that the Firefox situation is much better now though.
On Safari echo cancellation was just not working.
Would you say the same if the user was compiling software or rendering video?if your computer fan is interfering with audio, that's an audio setup problem not a software problem.
Microsoft Teams has improved quite a bit since the pandemic started also. They added things that were missing, like a tile view (max 9), raise your hand, and blurred or custom backgrounds.
Zoom is still better, but Teams now seems "good enough" to me.
I don't think that's true of video-conferencing either. Zoom is probably the most popular (and technically superior), but there is also: Microsoft Teams, Webex, Google Meet, Slack, and many others, including open source options like Jitsi. And they all pretty much do the job.