“iChat is one of the most obvious receipients of Apple’s new interface design rules. This, more than most any program in Leopard, reaps the rewards: the lack of borders and the relatively utilitarian look mean more room for text, both in the buddy list and in any of the conversation windows,” Jon Fingas reports for MacNN.
“Until now, iChat has always been the IM client experienced Mac users ran only out of necessity, such as having to conduct an AV chat or requiring a reliable file transfer method. Although Skype and Yahoo have caught up in some respects, iChat is still what most turn to when connection quality is more important than the luxuries of more robust clients,” Fingas reports.
“iChat 4.0 does not entirely meet every need, especially for those who depend on Windows Live or Yahoo. Regardless, the improvements in day-to-day usefulness are hard to ignore when iChat is used regularly. iChat alone may not justify Leopard’s $129 price-tag, but it could be enough to tip the balance in favor of a purchase for some fence-sitters. The additions may even provoke at least a few companies that turn to iChat for business purposes,” Fingas reports.
Full review here.
Yeah…”day-to-day usefulness are hard to ignore when iChat is used regularly”
what he said
The screen sharing feature is awesome!
Adium all the way!!!
I chat therefor I am!
If only Windows Live Messenger was on the Mac, instead of the featureless Microsoft Messenger for Mac!
I like and use iChat as my only instant messaging client. However, no one buys a mac because of iChat. That would never factor into a person’s decision even in wild fantasy land.
IChat AV has always been far superior AV conferencing tool when it comes to call (i.e. video) quality and robustness. Skype is significantly less reliable and can’t tolerate high-latency connections well. While Skype does everything it can to maintain best possible audio, this makes video suffer badly. Very often, video turns into a slide show (1 fps). On iChat, I have seen bandwidth drop down to 35kbps (practically dialup!) and both audio and video would continue to stream without dropouts.
My daughter has been using iChat since she was 4 (past almost 4 years) to talk to her grandfather practically every day. The grandfather is in Belgrade, Serbia (ADSL, 1 MBps down, 128kbps up). It is by far the simplest, most intuitive teleconferencing application out there. Skype comes close with UI, but falls behind on connection robustness.
3-way conferencing is the most amazing feature. Oftentimes, I had such a conference with Brussels, Belgium, The Hague, The Netherlands, and Belgrade, Serbia (I’m in NYC). It is just remarkable how everyone hears everyone, there is absolutely NO feedback (Skype suffers terribly form audio feedback), and video is smooth and robust on all participants.
I am sure iChat alone could very easily be the most convincing factor for many family switchers.
Kudos on the screen sharing integration!!!
I am an experienced mac user and have looked at other cleints like adium and such but I just don’t get it. What is it that these other clients offer that make some people look down on iChat? Is it the mutli protocol capabilities? I know literally no one who uses anything other than the AIM protocol so that’s useless to me. Within the US I didn’t think that any of the other protocols were very popular so is the appeal international messaging? Are there awesome, useful features that I just can’t find in there?
As mac users I would think people would appreciate the minimalism of iChat. I love it because it has everything I want and nothing I don’t.
@ JAYGEE WLM is so bad that M$ have not given it automatic access on Vista. This is mainly due to the fact that it was design to let your buddies know automatically when you are logged on so that they can talk to you.
You can also grant your buddies access to your HD which means that they can alter your programs and files remotely. Granted that you owuld have to authorise that access. Some unwitting fool & there are many could inadvertently allow such a scenario hence M$ dropping its priority on Vista.
Now, WHY would I want it on my Mac?
I bought a Mac mini for my parents so we could video iChat easily. They are in France and I’m in California. Nothing beats the simplicity of iChat and that was the #1 requirement as my parents are hopelessly un-tech savvy.
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All of my friends use WLM on their Windows machines *shudders*. My friends that have Macs use Microsoft Messenger for Mac, as they where Windows users before getting Macs.
I never really wanted to use WLM or msn messenger, as it was known, when I got my PC, but all my friends, & most people in the UK use it, so I had to use it, to talk to people.
@Art W: I love the screen sharing too. Nothing beats having that ability built into the OS. When a friend of mine did an erase and install of Leopard, it was great to be able to see his screen afterward and help him with the configuration and installation of some things…talking him through it on the phone would have been much more difficult. I can’t wait to upgrade my parents’ computers to Leopard…no more having to explain to them where to click or what to do, I can just say, “share your screen and I’ll take care of it.”
So I do stand corrected, iChat does figure into people’s Leopard upgrade decisions…I wouldn’t bother upgrading my parents computers if it weren’t for that screen sharing feature.
I could swear that the video color looks richer in Leopard. I was bummed that on my PB G4 15″ I was disallowed from several features, including PhotoBooth video features, because i was told my CPU wasn’t up to snuff… But then again Spotlight was indexing and I was doing something else… maybe loading iLife. Hopefully I’ll be okay.
Still looking for the George Washington’s mouth feature and Star Wars Hologram, though.
When you think about it someone out there could write a pretty blistering article about the stuff that was said to be in Leopard that didn’t make it.
Maybe Apple should port iChat to Windows. People aren’t going to switch just becaue of iChat, so what could it hurt.
Sadly, I have friends all over the chatosphere. Some on yahoo, some on AIM. Some on WLM. However, I wish iChat was opened up to all messaging protocols. It’d make my life a lot easier. I’d be able to consolidate 3 messaging programs on my mac into one. That’d be the real benefit of iChat. Sadly, that benefit does not exist.
Also, I’m sure with time it will come. Does anyone know of an updated Chaxish program that activates growl notifications for incoming messages? Or, is there a library of scripts out there that can accomplish such a feat?
Has anyone experienced problems using iChat between DSL and Cable internet? I’m on DSL and it freezes after about 3 seconds. On an intel iMac.
With screen sharing enabled, does one have full access to the other Mac’s desktop? Can one transfer files and install programs on the other machine?
what happened to the holographic, upside down, mouth imitate and all the other effects go? It’s lame, I want those
I’ve always had problems connecting to a PC using AOL for video chat. Hopefully Leopard will improve that. In an ideal world everyone would run mac os x but sadly it is not the case. Maybe the release of Safari for windows could be a sign that a PC version of basic ichat would be released.
Anyone else experiencing similar problems?
@DogGone I’ve never had any success doing video from iChat to someone else using AIM on Windows. I’m don’t know why it never works, but who knows what can go wrong when you connect to a Windows machine? Hopefully Leopard improved this situation, I’ll have to try sometime and see.
iChat will be an interesting but useless application until there is support for it amongst the wider computing world. With around 95% of the world not using Mac’s, it really is of very limited use, unless you happen to find that all your friends are Mac users. To make this really useful, Apple should develop this for Windows and install it by default with iTunes and/or Quicktime. This should include all the bells and whistles to ensure that it makes a compelling alternative to Yahoo Messenger or Windows Messenger. Until that day, iChat remains a lonely application consuming memory but doing very little on my Mac.
@ Reality Check,
Too bad you don’t have a use for iChat on your Mac. I agree with Predrag and others about the usefulness of iChat for hassle-free video-conferencing between Macs. iChat was the main reason I also bought a Mac for my elderly parents — now we can effortlessly video-conference across the country.
Hey everyone. WLM works in iChat using Jabber.
Check here:
http://allforces.com/2005/05/06/ichat-to-msn-through-jabber/
Now it’s iChat all the way.
It seems that many here are not aware of the fact that iChat works with Windows’ AIM. Most recent version of AIM for Windows, while a monstrosity, works well, both with audio and video. I have no problem videoconferencing with Windows people through iChat.
Mac users may be 6% of the computer-using population, but AIM is the most popular IM/Chat platform in the world. THere may be some countries where some other platforms are locally more popular, but globally, and especially in the US, AIM (and therefore, iChat) is the king.