Apple today removed Group FaceTime from the latest iOS 12 and macOS Mojave betas, which were released this morning, and has instead decided to release the feature at a later date.
This is an interesting twist in the upcoming release of both operating systems. There must be a technical reason why Group FaceTime isn’t going to make the cut, and it has to be something they don’t think they can fix in time for the Fall release.
I think for that to happen the problem would have to be a patent. Hopefully that’s not the case.
Apple has historically been good about not demoing a feature unless they were going to release it. I hope they don’t fall into the habit of many other tech companies in demoing features that end up being dropped or significantly delayed.
Wonder if it also involves patent trolls. That’s caused feature changes (to FaceTime, even) in the past.
That’s a sensible take on the situation. Fearture not ready, Feature doesn’t get included. You’ve lived without the feature before, you can wait a little longer.
Sometimes the text press introduces just a little too much drama into the trivial and mundane.
Something as obviously far more complex as group FaceTime with up to 32 people has got to be field tested—which is what they’ve done with the public beta. They needed empirical data.
The fix may indeed take a bit of time to implement. So, more field testing, once they’ve figured it out!