Apple is rolling WebRTC video-chat into Safari iOS, OS X browsers

Apple is adding support for WebRTC videoconferencing to WebKit, the engine at the heart of Safari. This will allow the web browser to handle websites and apps that offer WebRTC's encrypted video-nattering. The Cupertino maker of iThings has updated its WebKit website to add WebRTC to its list of open specifications as "in …

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope it works better than FaceTime..

In my experience, FaceTime *really* likes bandwidth.

Having said that, it is at least not as blatantly intercepted as Skype..

[BurnT'offering]

Does that mean

Permission to purge the plethora of piss-poor plugins placed on my PC by poxy web conferencing software? Oh, please.

[allthecoolshortnamesweretaken]

Re: Does that mean

Prepare properly to prevent problems.

[Charlie Clark]

When the walled garden isn't working

Apple's strategy with webkit has been very clear: make it good enough to work as the frontend for the app store. Once you have enough users inside the garden you can sod interoperability.

Now that messenger apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are drawing users, interoperability with them for things like Facetime suddenly become interesting if Apple's want to keep users from switching to a different platform. WebRTC guarantees interoperability and, as Google's Hangout app (I've heard different things about the browser version) demonstrates, it also works to scale.

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember the days when IOS Safari was king of HTML 5

That was near the day when Flash was dropped.

Time stands still for Apple if it pays to do so. But new Safari is heading on a trip in a tardis to older Chrome and Firefox.

[rob-carmichael]

Now both MS and Apple have moved out of first gear

This is only a small step since they are not giving details. However its an important step nonetheless. Both MS and Apple have moved from first gear (actively ignoring important new evolving standards) into second gear (offering partial support only or offering an 'alternative' version).

The good news, from a technical perspective, is that they are not implying an alternate standard. If this is true then it would add pressure on MS' position of offering an 'alternative' standard and only supporting it in Edge, when most of their users are on IE.