FaceTime Android and Windows PC Users
Group FaceTime is a great way to communicate with friends and family, but it’s always had one big flaw preventing it from becoming more widely adopted — everyone who wants to participate has to have an Apple device.
To be fair, that can be an iPhone, iPad, Mac, or even an iPod touch, but if your family members are toting Android phones or Windows PCs, they’re going to be out of the loop. This has forced many folks who would otherwise be happy with FaceTime to go with other solutions like Zoom.
Fortunately, Apple is finally fixing this with the release of iOS 15, which will make it easier to invite anybody to join a Group FaceTime call.
Firstly, Apple is taking a page from Zoom’s book in allowing you to invite users to a Group FaceTime call with a link, rather than having to call them directly. This will make it much easier to schedule calls for a later time, as you can pass the link around and people can jump in whenever they’re ready.
More importantly, however, users on Windows, Android, and other non-Apple platforms can now use these links to join FaceTime calls on the web. The catch is that they’ll need a relatively modern browser to pull this off, and it appears to be limited to Chrome and Edge for now, since others like Firefox lack the native H.264 video support that’s required by FaceTime.
While we think this makes for a nice alternative to Zoom for casual calls with friends and family, it’s a bit of an open question whether Apple is too late to the party with this one. People who are already using Zoom are unlikely to switch, especially since Zoom is still better in several ways — not the least of which is that it’s a more stable and proven platform.