Difference Between Facetime And Skype
Apart from the usual text chatting facilities, today’s Apps continue to present various features. The number of video chat or video conferencing software is increasing in the IT market. Some of them are free and others are paid ones. Few such examples are Facetime and Skype, and both of them are quite popular.
What is Skype?
Skype is a video calling or video conferencing App, developed by the Microsoft Corporation. Since its inception in 2003, its popularity and usage increased. Because Skype works just with the Internet, users do not need to pay any extra money for the calls when both users are available online.
What is Facetime?
It is a video chatting App and is proprietary software of the Apple Inc. It was launched in 2010, and it works only with the Apple devices.
Differences
Developed By: Skype was developed by the Microsoft Corporation and is made available to the public irrespective of whether they use it with a Microsoft device or not. But the Facetime is proprietary software of the Apple Inc and only the Apple users could use it.
When was it Launched? The Skype was launched in 2003 whereas the Facetime came a little later in 2010.
What do you need in order to use these Apps? You need a Hotmail account before you create a Skype ID. Similarly, you need an Apple ID in order to use the Facetime App.
Device Support: The Skype supports a variety of devices and it includes computers, Tablets, and Smartphone whereas the Facetime supports only Mac computers, iPods, iPads, and iPhones (only Apple Products).
Platform Support: We could use Facetime with platforms such as Mac OS 10.6.6 or other versions and iOS 4 or other versions. The Skype supports Windows, Linux, Mac, Android OS, and also Windows mobile phones.
Cost: Skype is available free of charge to the public irrespective of the device that they use. The Facetime is also freely available for the above-mentioned versions of the Mac OS or iOS, but Apple Inc charges $0.99 for the users who have older versions.
Video conferencing: Skype allows video conferencing in which users could invite a maximum of 25 people, but Facetime does not have this feature despite it’s audio conference feature. The audio conferencing was more recently launched along with iOS 7.
File Sharing: Skype allows users to attach images, text or any kind of files to other Skype users.
Facetime does not support this and therefore users need to rely on other sources such e-mail to share files.
Land-line Calling: As we cannot expect everyone whom we call available on the Internet, it is better to have a land-line calling facility. With Skype App, you could even call a land-line or a mobile number and it cost you only a small amount of money in the form of adding credits to your Skype account. Unfortunately this feature is not available Facetime as its objective is just video calling.
International Language Support: Skype supports almost 38 international languages and the count is expected to increase in the near future. Whereas Facetime supports just 16 International languages.
Text Messaging Feature: Other than the video or audio calling facility, Skype also offers text messaging option, but it is missing with Facetime.
Language Translator Feature: Skype had recently introduced language translator whereas Facetime does not have this facility.
Audio-Only Version: Facetime has its audio-only version, known as the Facetime Audio, but there is no such a version present in Skype.
Security: Skype uses AES 256-bit encryption to secure communication between its users. However phone calls are not encrypted, so it does not use an end-to-end encryption. It allows the Government agencies to monitor the conversation, but Facetime always uses an end-to-end encryption. Therefore it is unable to track conversations.
Could it decrypt the data? The Microsoft could decrypt the conversation between the Skype users. As Facetime uses peer-to-peer communication, the conversation is decrypted only with ICE (Internet Connectivity Establishment) of Facetime and not by the Apple.
Disabling Automatic Updates: Skype never allows disabling the automatic updates in its 5.6 or later versions, but it allows such disabling in Windows devices having 5.9 or later versions. Irrespective of the Facetime version that you use, it allows the disabling of automatic updates.
Accessing User’s Geographic Locations: Skype allows the Law enforcement agencies to access the user’s geographic location, but Facetime never allows such accesses unless you grant it in the settings.
User Interface: The user interface of Skype comes with a support for emojis, text, and gif files whereas these are missing in Facetime as it concentrates only on audio and video communication.
Let us look at the differences in a tabular form now.
| S.No | Differences in | Skype | Facetime |
| 1. | Developed By | It was developed by the Microsoft Corporation and is made available to the public irrespective of whether they use it with a Microsoft device or not. | It is proprietary software of the Apple Inc and only the Apple users could use it. |
| 2. | When was it Launched? | It was launched in 2003. | It came a little later in 2010. |
| 3. | What do you need to use these Apps? | You need a Hotmail account before you create a Skype ID. | You need an Apple ID to use the Facetime App. |
| 4. | Device Support | It supports a variety of devices and it includes computers, Tablets, and Smartphone. | It supports only Mac computers, iPods, iPads, and iPhones. |
| 5. | Platform Support | The Skype supports Windows, Linux, Mac, Android OS, and also Windows mobile phones.
|
You could use Facetime with platforms such as Mac OS 10.6.6 or later and iOS 4 or later. |
| 6. | Cost | It is available free of cost to the public irrespective of the device they use. | It is also freely available for the above-mentioned versions of the Mac OS or iOS. But the Apple Inc charges $0.99 for the users who have older versions.
|
| 7. | Video conferencing | It allows video conferencing in which you could invite a maximum of 25 people including you in the call. | There is no such facility associated with Facetime despite it has the audio conferencing. |
| 8. | File Sharing | It allows you to attach images, text or any kind of files to other Skype users. | It does not support it and we need to rely on other sources such e-mail to share our files.
|
| 9. | Landline Calling | With the Skype App, you could even call a landline number and it cost you a little money in the form of adding credits to your Skype account. | It is not possible with Facetime. |
| 10. | Language Support | It supports almost 38 International languages and the count is expected to increase in the near future. | It supports almost 16 International languages. |
| 11. | Text Messaging Facility | Other than the video or audio calling facility, it also offers text messaging option as well. | It is not present here. |
| 12. | Language Translator Facility | It had introduced this feature more recently. | This facility is not present here. |
| 13. | Audio-Only Version | There is no such version present with Skype.
|
Facetime has its audio-only version, known as the Facetime Audio. |
| 14. | Security | Skype uses AES 256-bit encryption to secure the communication between its users. However, the calls to telephone or landline are not encrypted. So, it does not use an end-to-end encryption and allows the Government agencies to monitor the conversation. | It uses an end-to-end encryption and nobody could track the conversation.
|
| 15. | Could it decrypt the data? | The Microsoft could decrypt the conversation between the Skype users, for their purposes. | As Facetime uses peer-to-peer communication, the conversation is decrypted only with ICE (Internet Connectivity Establishment) of Facetime and not by the Apple.
|
| 16. | Disabling Automatic Updates | Skype never allows disabling the automatic updates in its 5.6 or later versions. But it allows such disabling in Windows devices having the 5.9 or later versions. | Irrespective of the Facetime version that you use, it allows the disabling of automatic updates.
|
| 17. | Accessing User’s Geographic Location | Skype allows the Law enforcement agencies to access the user’s geographic location. | Facetime never allows such accesses unless you grant it in the settings.
|
| 18. | User Interface | The user interface of Skype comes with a support for emojis, text, and gif files. | These are missing in Facetime and it concentrates only on audio and video communication. |
Hope the article was quite interesting and do kindly let us know if we had still missed something.
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References :
[0]http://smallbusiness.chron.com/whats-difference-between-facetime-skype-78556.html
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Skype_logo.svg
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FaceTime
FYI, you incorrectly say that SKYPE was developed by Microsoft. This is an incorrect statement.
First released in August 2003, Skype was created by the Swede Niklas Zennström and the Dane Janus Friis, in cooperation with Ahti Heinla, Priit Kasesalu, and Jaan Tallinn, Estonians who developed the backend that was also used in the music-sharing application Kazaa.Microsoft. In September 2005, eBay acquired Skype for $2.6 billion.[11] In September 2009,[12] Silver Lake, Andreessen Horowitz, and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board announced the acquisition of 65% of Skype for $1.9 billion from eBay, which attributed to the enterprise a market value of $2.92 billion. Microsoft bought Skype in May 2011 for $8.5 billion. Since then it has been marketed as a Microsoft product. Rightly so since they bought Skype outright.