Apple has dropped FaceTime group calls from its iOS 12 beta, going against its commitment to bring the feature to its next generation operating system.
Addressing the issue, the official iOS release notes from August 13 say “Group FaceTime has been removed from the initial release of iOS 12 and will ship in a future software update later this fall.”
FaceTime will be able to handle 32 simultaneous users when it comes out at this new, undisclosed date.
Previews and betas are regularly released in June, testing functionality before being released in September. Usually within this period developers will update their software and take advantage of any new features they can.
Following this structure, FaceTime groups was announced last June. Apple also confirmed that it would be backwards compatible with older devices. The feature was ditched relatively last minute as the September crunch time arrived.
Apple lags behind Google Hangouts and Microsoft Skype by years in being able to deliver multi-user conferencing.
This puts Apple delays back in the headlines after Apple Pay Cash was delayed by months last year, as well as the continuing delays of the AirPower wireless charging pad that had been announced last September.
