Apple seems a bit miffed that Zoom is a verb, and now Apple is racing to add features to FaceTime that mimic those of Zoom. The upshot: Zoom can have the business, but Apple wants a big piece of shared consumer experiences.
At the WWDC keynote, Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, outlined FaceTime updates in iOS 15 that include:
- Portrait mode.
- Sharing FaceTime links and even (gasp!) connecting with those Android and Windows folks over the web.
- Screen sharing.
- Shared experiences via a feature called SharePlay where you can listen to music and watch video with others.
- An API in SharePlay that allows other apps to be integrated with FaceTime.
Sound a bit familiar? Zoom has those same features — except, perhaps, for the entertainment app integration.
Bottom line: Apple wants FaceTime to be more in the conversation along with Zoom, and the latter has encroached on developers as well as events. You can expect a business version to be in the mix as Apple evolves FaceTime.
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Here’s what Apple has in mind:
