“Apple’s new iSight video camera and iChat AV software opens up personal communication in whole new ways, finally making high-quality videoconferencing over the Internet available,” writes Christopher Allbritton for Popular Mechanics. “iChat AV is the next version of Apple’s intuitive iChat, released in 2002. The biggest change is the AV, which stands for Audio/Visual. Now iChat users can hold audio chats with excellent sound quality over connections as slow as 56K. The quality, which is leaps beyond current Internet audio chat offerings, is attained by using the same compression technology as CDMA cellphone networks.”
Allbritton explains, “The iSight has autofocus, a built-in noise-canceling microphone, a 3-part lens consisting of two aspherical elements, a 1/4-in. CCD sensor with 640 x 480 resolution, an f 2.8 aperture, and a small green ‘on air’ light that lets you know that you’re video chatting. It connects to your Mac using FireWire.”
“Audio and video chatting make a startling combination. The first time you video chat with someone, you’re self-conscious and worried that your hair is mussed up. But you quickly loosen up and realize just how cool it is to be able to see and hear your friend–even if he’s half-a-world away,” Allbritton writes.
“MSN Messenger for Windows has a similar offering, but we found it to be a stuttering, herky-jerky experience. By manufacturing the camera, the software and the computer, Apple is able to create a smooth experience that is out of sight,” writes Allbritton.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple’s “high quality” versus Microsoft’s “stuttering, herky-jerky experience?” Those descriptions pretty much sum up the overall difference between the Macintosh and Windows platforms. How many of these articles does it take to shift momentum away from the Windows “experience” to Macintosh? We think the trend has already begun. More information about iChat AV and iSight here.
I would have sworn that x86 had something similar but apparently they do not. We be the shizz-nit.
God, you can cut the misguided superiority here with a knife. The reason no one uses the Mac is that this article is BS.
Well. Only two comments, and one of them from someone who doesn’t even have the courage to post his real name/e-mail, saying that the article is “BS.” Could you please describe “how” the article is BS, and provide details and proof? If you’re going to make such a ham-handed statement anonymously, you could at least provide us with details about other Wintel programs that make video chat as simple and as useable as iChat AV?
Thanks in advance.
Apple’s video conferencing solution is as clearly superior to all that have come before it as the iTunes music Store is to it’s predecessors.
A quality camera, whether iSight or a DV camcorder. added to an audio solution that works as well as my speaker phone, makes iChat AV as good as corporate boardroom solutions that cost many thousands.
Wait until businesses find out that a $999 iBook and an iSight camera works as well as the $10,000 proprietary system in the conference room.
Putting one of these on every executive’s desk would be cost effective for this one application. The is the “killer app” of this decade.
*yawn* is suffering from some inferiority complex that makes him somehow believe that Microsoft can in NO WAY build a crappy product (like what we have here above… MSN). Most Wintelophiles believe that Microsoft/Intel do not produce inferior products compared to other superior ones on the market. This is due to drinking the red koolaid that produces a very powerful smoke and mirrors that distort their view of reality!
yawn – “…is that this article is BS.”
Oh really? Have you ever even seen iChat AV or used the iSight. My wife and I in Maryland have this product, as do her parents in Arizona. Over our modest cable modems, the video quality is excellent and the sound quality is amazing. We’re definitely on the way to saving quite a bit of long distance calling expenses, and we have a better experience to boot.
Apparently, the only BS on this page is coming from that big yawn of yours.
“God, you can cut the misguided superiority here with a knife. The reason no one uses the Mac is that this article is BS.”
Misguided superiority?
LOL!
Nothing can compare to your misguided idiocy!
Yawn should go back to sleep he is a little lite headed and needs his rest
I tried iChat with my mini Dv camera my friend and I was floored with the quality …wow
It would be a far less hollow vistory for Mac fans if the author had properly documented the configuration of the Windows PC that delivered this “stuttering, herky-jerky experience.” When will these so-called reviewers learn that, without providing this information, these comparative articles come off as nothing more than pro-Mac trolling, and can easily be dismissed by the rest of the computing world as exactly that?
I’d like to see an article in which a Mac running iChat AV and a FireWire webcam is pitted against a PC running Messenger with the same type of cam (say, a FireWire-connected iBot or a DV cam) and the software versions, RAM, video card and processor configurations of each platform are fully documented. If the Mac comes out ahead in this scenario (which it probably would), well, now you’ve got a comparison worthy of publishing. Without this important info, that final throwaway paragraph ends up looking like just another anti-Microsoft rant.
Anyone here up for the challenge? Or, perhaps more to the point: am I wrong in asking for fair comparisons from a supposedly reputable publication such as Popular Mechanics?
iChat AV vs Messenger 6 comparison? Done.
I equipped my wife’s 700MHz iBook (384MB RAM running OS 10.2.6) with iChat AV and a JVC GR-DVP7PU digital video cam. I then equipped my 1.7 GHz P4 Toshiba Satellite Pro (512MB RAM running XP Pro) with MSN Messenger 6 Preview (http://messenger.msn.com/download/v6preview.asp?client=1) and the SAME camera over firewire (IEEE 1394).
Both ran over the same cable modem connection.
The results: No comparison at all. iChat AV had far clearer audio, smoother video, synchronized video and audio play (not present at all in MSN Messenger 6 Preview), and took literally 1 minute to get up and running vs about a half hour of hassle with the MSN product.
I, too, wish that the article was more detailed. Too bad.