[Mike Elgan making a fantastic point about FaceTime][1]:

> From the user’s perspective, FaceTime should work like iMessage. If Apple did it right, you’d be able to simply use it to make all your calls — video and audio. If the person you’re calling has FaceTime, great! If they don’t, that should be when the phone fails over to either the regular carrier’s phone system or another VoIP alternative. Or, it would connect to the other user’s FaceTime-compatible app.

If you haven’t had a chance to make a FaceTime audio call, do it now. It is actually amazingly better than a “normal” phone call. The depth and clarity of the audio is astounding. However FaceTime audio is buggy as shit. There’s been several occasions where one or more of these things have happened:

– Call unable to connect after reading connecting for a minute.
– Call dropped because I got another call.
– Call dropped because I got an iMessage.
– Repeatedly calling and not getting an answer, then cell call works.

It’s about a 49% success rate for me. I have my wife setup on my Favorites to default to FaceTime audio, we both love it, but it is more of a hassle. I wonder why FaceTime wasn’t built like iMessage whereby everything defaults to FaceTime and falls back to cell calls if FaceTime cannot work, I’d love that.

*(I also wonder if the dropped call problem is a Verizon issue, or AT&T suffers this as well.)*

[1]: http://www.cultofmac.com/247673/why-its-time-for-apple-to-open-facetime/