Sadly, this never came to fruition, supposedly due to legal complications. Since they own Swift, and the underlying compiler infrastructure this may be simpler to pull off.
The "legal complications" that prevented the open-sourcing of FaceTime were apparently because they lost a lawsuit [0]. Then they had to switch FaceTime to use Apple's servers for signaling/connecting instead of peer-to-peer [1].
FaceTime was my first thought, too. An awesome promise that failed to deliver. It'll be really interesting to see if a video chat format ever becomes a standard, or if we're all forced to keep accounts with multiple vendors for interoperability (skype, hangouts, facetime, etc).
> It'll be really interesting to see if a video chat format ever becomes a standard, or if we're all forced to keep accounts with multiple vendors for interoperability (skype, hangouts, facetime, etc).
I have a feeling that's what Firefox Hello will eventually become (if it gains traction).
As it stands, I can already post a link in this thread and anyone who visits it from any WebRTC-enabled browser (including mobile devices!) can immediately start a video chat with me[0].
That's not federated (yet), but if it catches on I see no reason why it won't be.
[0] If I weren't in the "quiet room" in my coworking space right now I'd try it as an interesting experiment in the HN community. :)
A lot of this has really been blocked by Google before; when they stopped interop with XMPP. XMPP was meant to cross company borders and allow video/media to be built on top of that (with something like RTP & h264).
WebRTC services are still, for the most part, isolated silos. There is no effort made to federate or interoperate between services. For that, you want something like SIP or XMPP/Jingle.
While true, my point was more that there /are/ standardized ways of doing that, and there is no barrier to apple working on and/or with standards bodies to discuss any concerns they have with WebRTC, SIP, etc.
That's not what OP was asking. WebRTC is a standard in the same way HTTP is a standard: it defines the API surface and transport for a particular set of features within the browser.
Signaling is intentionally missing from the WebRTC spec, and that is the "interesting" part here: without open and interoperable signaling, you're just preserving the status quo of proprietary video chat services such as FaceTime, Skype, Hangouts, etc. Just like HTTP enables proprietary services such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, etc.
My understanding is that Steve Jobs made that up on the spot, and of course he could get away with that because he was Steve Jobs (I can't provide a citation, unfortunately--think I heard it from Gruber or the ATP guys on a podcast).
Tim Cook probably wouldn't do something so impulsive based on temperament, and his direct reports would probably not risk it. So I suspect this is a considered announcement.
