FaceTime Group video chats and Middle-East carrie

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FaceTime: Group video chats and Middle-East carrier spats?

A couple of interesting FaceTime tidbits this weekend as it looks like group video chats might be available in the future, but only on iPod touch in the Middle-East.

First up, while FaceTime is still missing from certain Middle-Eastern iPhone 4 carriers,convert mp4 to asf, it appears to be working fine on iPod touch (2010). So it’s not a government restriction, which just leaves the carriers asking for it to be removed, or Apple worrying about the carriers and pre-emptively removing it. This begs the question, just what’s going on?

Next up, Jailbreakers have struck again and found the following string in iOS firmware:

<key>AllowsMultipleConnections</key>

<false>

Apple already provides this functionality in iChat for Mac. If they bring FaceTime to Mac having the best of both worlds makes sense. Likewise, with Skype adding multiple video calls in their Windows version, this would appear the next step for Apple to take to try and get people to start using their product over Skype. Also with the iPad 2 coming next year with most likely a front facing camera, this would be a logical feature to throw in considering the large real estate on the iPad� screen.

If you are jailbroken and have the knowledge in editing program strings feel free to try this out at your own risk. To enable it all you have to do is navigate to:

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/IMCore.framework/imagent.app/PlugIns/FaceTime.imservice/ServiceProperties.plist and change the false value to true. If you try it out let us know how it works!

[9to5Mac, iPod Touch Fans]

by Brian Tufo and George Lim
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