Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Love the New Facetime for Macs

Just tried the new FaceTime application for my Mac. It is very easy to use, has excellent video and audio reception. Kudos to Apple developers for a great new application that I will be utilizing with family and friends on a regular basis.

Setting up the app and installing was fast and easy and automatically connects with simply choosing person I wish to call with my contacts list that was automatically interfaced, loaded, and accessible from the app. This will be a great way for my family to communicate via our Macs and iPhone 4's.

I especially like the 'Favorites' tab, where you can use the + sign to select contacts to add to your favorites list. I set up my family in the 'Favorites' list and now can just do a simple click to call either their computer or iPhone 4 numbers to video conference with them. There is also a 'Recents' tab.

The quality is much better than using iChat. You can increase the size of the FaceTime display by using the lower right-hand corner to stretch the viewing area and the quality is still superb. Or you can use the option 'Zoom' from under the 'Window' menubar or use the 'green button' in the upper left corner of the FaceTime Screen. Under 'Video' menubar, you can also select 'Portrait', 'Landscape' or Full Screen mode and it seems to also change it on the receiving Mac as well.

Under the FaceTime Preferences, you can add additional email addresses for you account ID if you wish to give out different emails for your Contact info.

The Beta version .9 looks great and look forward to more options being added in the future.

It is amazing how far technology has come since my first experience with a video phone in 1968 when I visited the San Antonio Texas HemisFair, more than 35 years ago where I saw myself on a phone for the first time.

Can't wait to be able to use this on our new MacBook Air while traveling. What a great way to video conference with the children, grandchildren and especially the new grandson.

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