Apple’s iChat AV presages problem for phone companies

6 Comments

“There’s nothing like a good demo to open your eyes to the possibilities of technology. Of course, it helps when that demo is given by Steve Jobs. …Jobs unveiled his company’s latest instant-messaging software, iChat AV, along with a nifty cylindrical webcam called iSight. Because it was overshadowed by Apple’s introduction of the first 64-bit personal computer (the fastest in the world) and a preview of the next version of the Mac OS X operating system, dubbed Panther, the new iChat didn’t generate much buzz. But it was by far the most intriguing thing Jobs talked about all morning,” writes Erick

6 Comments

  1. Haven’t used my land line phone for long distance for years.
    The cell phone deals these days include free LD minutes. If you have a Mac and use iChat I would bet you have a cell phone with LD minutes already.

    My friends with family overseas figured out the “long distance voice over IP” game years ago. The majority of these folk come from impoverished nations where the idea of buying a Mac would be ridiculous. They use cheap out of date Wintel boxes running O/S from a street vendor.

    The odds of an entire family using Macs is pretty low. If I am iChat’ing, it is with a colleague. This figures to be an insignificant fraction of the market.

    Bottom line.. iChat has NO effect on the land line LD market.

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  2. the author of this article is a dim wit.

    old news…old news…old news…

    VoIP is old hat in many countries and the problems for phone companies come from many different angles, with iChatAV being one of the most insignificant.

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  4. That’s pretty short sighted. I think the author is trying to say (and I’d agree) that this technology which has just arrived on our doorstep is going to change the way we communicate in the future. Sure, only a small number of people use iChat, but MSN now offers video chat (although it’s not very good yet), and it won’t be long before AIM offers it, which means that more and more people will be using it. In time, cameras will come down in price, and this will be a very common thing. I realize that there have been voice-over-IP programs out for a long time, but they’ve never been very good. iChat changes that. The sound quality is excellent. A few years from now the phone companies are going to be trying to figure out how to stay relevant the same way that record companies are now.

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  5. It totally baffles me how anyone could have the temerity to be a naysayer in the 21st century.

    According to William Horton (American Society for Information Science, April 8, 2000 – Boston, MA)…

    [start quote]
    In 1876, an internal memo of the Western Union Telegraph Company summarized its assessment thus, “This `telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.” In England, it was predicted that the telephone would not achieve wide use because England had “an adequate supply of messenger boys.” Even the telephone’s inventor, Alexander Graham Bell, for years resisted the notion of using the telephone for person-to-person communications and instead insisted it be used to broadcast news and music.
    [end quote]

    That quote was from “Horseless-carriage Thinking.”

    I STRONGLY urge anyone that has an “It’ll never work” attitude towards new ideas to read it. And if you know someone that doubts your “outlandish concepts”, give them a copy of it.

    With all of the innovations that Apple has produced to bring complex digital tools to the masses, they are the very last ones I would ever question their success.

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  6. Deja Vu all over again..

    Whatever. In 1993 SGI did the EXACT SAME THING with the new Indy workstation (and its ground breakin “Indycam”).

    http://images.google.com/images?q=Indycam

    Silcon Graphics figured if they came out with a standard, preconfigured web cam for their machines that “just worked” (and included one with every box) the world would be revolutionized. Everyone everywhere would be chatting with video. Everyone in our office got an Indy a few months later. After the first day, NO ONE used the Indycam. And, like Steve Jobs made such a big deal out of.., the cams were on top of the monitor to (as he put it) “make it an emotional experience”.

    Ha! Expect iSight to fetch a premium on EBay in about 5 years on the same category with Newtons.

    Reply

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