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by smmnyc 2696 days ago
Apple has disabled group FaceTime on their end. https://www.apple.com/support/systemstatus/
5 comments

Haven't seen this page before (although admittedly I only have a mac, I don't use any of Apple's other services/devices) but I like how it feels... "Apple".

First of all they convert the time automatically as someone already posted, which is a very welcome surprise.

The second (and most surprising for me) thing was that they only have 2 statuses: "Available" and "Issue". And while most status pages have trained us to expect that the antithetical of green is red that it immediately catches your eye, in this case it is a simple yellow diamond which is much less alarming. I sense the PR department had its saying in how to present service availability issues.

Oh damn, they can do it just like that?

I thought FaceTime was a P2P thing... but it appears group FT requires Apple's servers?

Very few communication services are truly P2P; it's way more likely to have syncing issues and is virtually impossible without at least a handshake. Even Signal, which does have syncing issues due to being mostly P2P, requires a server for the initial handshake.
Especially on mobile, where you want to conserve battery life.
Each person only uploading one copy of video in a multiparty situation is a huge win for quality on mediocre connections.
Skype used to be "P2P" where one party would act as the host in a group call.
True for audio, not video.
IIRC, this was because of a lawsuit with VirnetX.
It never was (or only was for a short period) thanks to patent trolls.
P2P calls and video calls are patented. I don’t think anyone offers them anymore since the Virnetx cases.
Even for completely P2P things, you can still have server-driven feature flag, which Apple definitely makes extensive use of.
Amazing, a status page that automatically converts to the local timezone.
It’s showing me ‘AM’ and I’m on a 24 hour clock locale
The only sane thing to do.
I wonder how they're going to re-enable it. Can they disable group FaceTime only for people who aren't on the latest iOS version once it's patched?