Apple Tip of the Day: FaceTime and Wifi

Here's a small FaceTime fix for those of you that may be having connectivity issues over your home WiFi connections.

If you recently upgraded to a Wireless N capable router (the older ones were B and G) you may have suddenly noticed erratic behavior when making or receiving FaceTime calls.

It's a bit technical, but it has something to do with the "Channel Width" feature found in the newer routers. If you're not comfortable going into your wireless router's menu, then ask someone to help you out.

Now your particular model may not have an identical menu as mine, but try and look under the Wireless settings for something that will show a "Channel" function with 20MHZ/40MHZ as the options. Either disable this, or set it to 20MHZ only.

Another thing, if you no longer have any legacy Wireless B devices (older laptops, etc) then disable the B function on the router all together. This limits the number of conflicts your wireless network will have scanning and searching for older devices.

Original Source: Apple Support Forum

Goodbye iChat... Hello FaceTime!

Today's Tech Gospel is about the FaceTime for Mac Beta.  Finally.  I think everyone found it odd that the iPhone 4's FaceTime app couldn't make video calls to Apple's iChat Video system.

Thankfully Apple reacted quickly and has released a crude FaceTime Beta for Mac.

Now, understand that this is still in Beta, so a lot of features are still a bit buggy, and there is a known security flaw.  Not a big deal unless you frequently allow other people to use your computer.

This, however, is a Snow Leopard only program.  If you haven't upgraded yet, now would be a good time to do so.

For those with Mac Minis, or a Mac Pros, you can use Apple's LCD monitors w/ the built-in camera, iSight camera, or any Firewire video camera lying around.  If you want to buy a webcam, make sure it's the newer UVC compliant webcams.  But I prefer using a proper Firewire video camera w/ a boom mic to eliminate room echo and much better audio quality.

My FaceTime rig is my old Canon DV cam w/ a Rode shotgun mic connected to my Mac Mini.

IN YOUR FACE...TIME!!!!!!!

A while back, I posted an entry on the possibility of FaceTime for Android in the form of Apple's new iPod Touch.  Finally got to test and confirm it using Barnacle Wifi Tether and an iPhone 4.  Signal is fairly stable although it's more dependent on your provider's 3G/EDGE network... GPRS is too slow to give decent performance and will most likely drop the call all together.

Barnacle's only shortcoming is the inconsistency of it's connection to the iPhone/iPod Touch.  Hopefully those running 2.1 Androids don't experience dropped signal when the screen saver kicks in.  So far, those on the Sony Ericsson X10 Mini/Mini Pro will need to run something in the background to keep Barnacle from switching to standby.  Some users have reported firmware updates fix this, but not all regions have the same firmware.  In this case, the screen saver/power saver is usually the culprit since it disables the wifi antenna to conserve power.

To make a FaceTime call, go to your contact list, tap on a contact and scroll all the way down and click on the FaceTime button on the bottom left.

A menu will pop up to show the possible ways to connect to the contact via FaceTime.  A caveat, just because FaceTime will attempt to connect, doesn't mean that contact has FaceTime.  You have to know which phone number or email that particular contact is using for FaceTime, and that contact has to already be online when the call is being made.

The iPod Touch has effectively given FaceTime to Android.  Although those with a 2nd jailbroken iPhone and tethering should also be able to use FaceTime on their iPhone 4 while on the move.

Finally! FaceTime for Android!!!!

Today's Tech Gospel: Apple announced an entire new line-up of iPods today.  Among them was the highly anticipated upgrade of the iPod Touch.  As Jobs put it "It's the iPhone without a contract"... which is what everyone wants.  HAHAHAHA!  Was this Apple's way of circumventing their deal with AT&T? Hmmm...

Has Apple unintentionally given something to Android users that iPhone 4 users don't have yet (and possibly never will)? ... FaceTime... anywhere.  All Androids running FroYo, or Barnacle Wifi should have FaceTime capabilities while on the move with the new iPod Touch.

Will keep posting details on this possibility as soon as real-world testing can be done...

**Click here for the follow up post on using FaceTime on the iPod Touch while tethered**