More Bad News for FaceTime: Skype Brings HD Video Calls to Lion

Will we even remember what FaceTime was five years from now?

Probably. Apple

is a stickler for standing by its own technologies, so it seems unlikely that FaceTime will be abandoned. But while it may have seemed like a necessary evolution in videoconferencing when it first debuted, FaceTime has since become the ugly stepchild of Microsoft's

most notable

: Skype. Skype has

(via

) that it is making “even more improvements” to its Mac client with the release of Skype 5.3 for Mac OS X. “Along with a number of fixes and improvements to the user interface, Skype 5.3 will feature support for the new Mac Lion and HD Video Calls,” the company wrote on its blog. “Skype 5.3 for Mac OS X is built to work with Apple's newest desktop operating system, Lion, in addition to being compatible with past versions of OS X going all the way back to Leopard.” This announcement comes less than one week after Skype brought its technology to the iPad. To receive clear HD video calls on a Mac, Skype recommends an upload/download speed of 1.5Mbps.