Along with several other announcements that came out of Cupertino this week, Apple announced the release of FaceTime for Mac. This new public beta finally allows apple users, who connect using Macs with  cameras (since renamed to FaceTime cameras), to make video calls to their friends with iPhones and iPod touches. Once downloaded, the program can video call iPhone 4Gs by their phone number or iPod Touch 4Gs by the user’s Apple ID from any Mac.

The call quality is great, but the program is definitely still a beta. My biggest issue is the dialer. The only way to call someone is to pick them out of your contacts from Address Book. Considering there isn’t an actual dialer or search function, this can be pretty unwieldy if you’ve got hundreds of contacts and even worse if you don’t use Address Book at all. There is a feature to add favorites (similar to that of the iPhone), but it’s not quite good enough (though it does work great once you’ve done the legwork of connecting to your friends). Looking forward to future improvements and continued expansion of the functionality.