Can't find iOS FaceTime protocol documentation

Question

As per the title. I searched all through the Apple website, and cannot find anything about it. I am not an iPhone developer member (yet) so don't have access to that stuff. I just want to develop an Android application that can talk with the FaceTime protocol.

It would be a bit silly if we all had to pay Apple just to view the FaceTime documentation to implement the protocol in our non-iOS applications.

Duala

From what I can tell, the specs have not been released yet. – Suborbital

Answer 1

The docs for facetime are not yet available. You're not missing anything.

Wiggler

You are correct, there are no docs (currently). BUT you can facetime from a URL. eg facetime://5555555555 to see if this works. Just open Safari on the iPhone and type that URL hit enter and it will work. iPhone ios 4.1 – Genitourinary

Sure, but that's not the FaceTime protocol spec now, is it? – Wiggler

If you just want the ports involved (obviously that's not the same as the protocols), Apple has posted those at support.apple.com/kb/HT4245 – Mcintosh

Answer 2

Apple has been unable to release it as an open standard because of the patent battle it lost.

There is community documentation of the protocol, including this series of blog posts:

Special Look: Face Time

• part 1: Introduction
• part 2: SIP and Data Streams
• part 3: Call Connection Initialization

Demand

Answer 3

At least to get started, take a look at this for the list of IETF standards used by Facetime: http://blog.imtc.org/index.php/2010/06/09/the-technology-behind-apples-facetime-standards/

Additionally, Apple has said it will be submitting Facetime as an open standard - so there should be more documentation on how all these standards glue together in Facetime. . anyone know when this will come out?

Sidestep

Answer 4

Update You don't have to pay to test on devices as of 2015. Payment is required to deploy on the app store, get beta access and sundry other stuff as per Apple's page

Original You don't have to pay to get the SDK, just to be able to test on devices

Hedberg