It is a widely held belief that Steve Jobs is a man to trans­form indus­tries. He’s done it before, and I think he (with his com­pany Apple) has set his eyes to do it yet again. This time, it’s tele­phony. And I can’t blame him, it is a god-awful indus­try we (as a spe­cies, glo­bally) are put­ting up with.
Take the epi­tome of modern phone tech­no­logy: the mobile phone net­work. We’re still using phone num­bers (a tech­no­logy that is a cen­tury old and was opti­mi­zed for the rotary pho­nes and their elec­tro­me­cha­ni­cal coun­ter­parts in the swit­ching sys­tem), we’re basi­cally using a net­work desi­gned to deli­ver billable events and we’re com­mu­ni­ca­ting with voice qua­lity that is actually more than awful.
Enter Face­Time.
Face­Time takes the tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion out of the old phone net­work and puts it onto an IP net­work. It makes com­mu­ni­ca­tion easy and fun. And it’s no lon­ger just tied to the iPhone (which the car­ri­ers pro­bably would have liked), but also going to IP-only devices: iPod touch and all iPads. Apple usually is known for deli­ve­r­ing good user expe­ri­ence, so phone calls are good for the user.
But now, Apple is set­ting out to be not just the media centre of the world (with music and video alre­ady going their way), but the new phone sys­tem, too. Bet­ween the new Apple TV and Face­Time, I do have some ideas why Apple needs a new data cen­ter …
[EDITED] I do not think that the video tele­phony is what makes Face­Time so par­ti­cu­larly import­ant or game-changing. I think it is the seam­less­ness in which the phone and IP net­work inter­act. Ulti­mately, redu­cing the phone car­ri­ers just to ano­ther form of data car­ri­ers. I do know that Skype also works sui­ta­bly well and has a good instal­led base. But what is dif­fe­rent here is that Face­Time is auto­ma­ti­cally instal­led on every iOS device, and inte­gra­ted well with the ent­ire Apple expe­ri­ence (think: Address book, MobileMe, …)