FaceTime in iOS 15 and Monterey
In iOS 15 and its sister updates, you can create a link to a FaceTime conversation that can be shared anywhere. Using this link, friends and family members who do not have an Apple device can log into a FaceTime call using a web browser.
Non-Apple users can join a one-on-one FaceTime call or a Group FaceTime call, effectively making FaceTime a more platform-agnostic video service that is no longer just limited to iOS users. You do, however, need an iOS user to start a FaceTime call and send a link.
I’ll be interested to hear how the end-to-end encryption works from an arbitrary Web browser.
Apple at WWDC has announced several new upcoming FaceTime features for Apple devices, like spatial audio, voice isolation, wide spectrum, FaceTime Links, SharePlay, and more.
Previously:
Update (2021-06-29): Benjamin Mayo:
It is incredibly tempting to glibly pass off many of these new FaceTime additions as features targeting an era that (we all hope, at least) has passed, and Apple is late to the game. I’m pretty sure I tweeted a joke to that effect on keynote day. On reflection, though, it is an unfair view.
4 Comments RSS · Twitter
@Kevin Well, I was thinking how Apple’s other services use device keys and 2FA, neither of which would seem to apply in this case. But I guess those aren’t really needed for E2E. The browser could generate a session-specific key pair and send the public key to Apple to give to the other participants. Can this and the encryption/decryption be done performantly in JavaScript?
@Michael There is precedent for E2EE in the browser. https://blog.excalidraw.com/end-to-end-encryption/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jitsi#Jitsi_Meet, the latter of which is powering the web browser Brave's implementation, just launched in Nightly versions. https://twitter.com/brave/status/1265372682108846080?s=20
@Kevin Cool, thanks.
I guess I'm not sure what your comment means? It sounds like you don't think end-to-end encryption is possible in a browser. It's also not just "an arbitrary web browser," it's only the latest versions of Chrome or Edge.