NZ Macguide Issue 12
Before I get into that, let's look briefly at the normal everyday vanilla iChat. iChat is essentially Apple's answer to Microsoft's OS-built in MSN. iChat allows you, as an iChat user, to chat with any other iChat user who has either a .mac account or a free American Online (AOL) Instant Messager account much like all the other instant message programs out there (ICQ, MSN, AIM, etc). | | iChatting your editor when he is busy can be hazardous to your health, and pay cheque ;) | The cool thing about iChat is that it is all Mac-like, with nice colour coded speech bubbles, smile icons, customisable icons for yourself and your buddies, and my favourite feature - the thought bubble that comes up when chatters begin to type and before they press return to send the text. This makes the experience more interactive than similar clients like ICQ. That said, I might as well get into the bad stuff as it applies to both iChat and iChatAV. First of all, you can't send messages to people that aren't online, which means if you want to leave a message for later you are flat out of luck. Secondly, unlike some other instant message clients you can't send text messages from within the client, a highly useful feature. Finally the biggest flaw has to be there just aren't that many people using it at the moment, so you may not have anyone to talk to. That said, American Online now owns ICQ and you can add ICQ users to their AIM chat client, so perhaps Apple will follow suit. Good news too
But that's enough bad stuff, on to the AV! Now iChatAV is called such because it allows you to have audio chats (as in just like over the telephone) with your buddies or, if you are lucky enough to have a webcam or FireWire digicam - or Apple's iSight - you can have video chats with other people who also have cameras. So does it work? Well, yes and no. The audio chat works better than any other audio over the Internet I have tried. That said, it is not quite phone conversation quality and I recommend that you use headphones so you don't get annoying ghosting of what you and your buddy are saying when interference from your external speakers are picked up by the microphone. Apple claims you should be able to use audio chat between two dial-up connections just fine, but I am unsure. Personally I had a much better signal talking with a guy in the States, when we were both on broadband, than when talking with my parents who live 25 minutes away and have dial-up. Now for the video chat: first of all iChatAV only supports FireWire cameras at the moment, but there are numerous hacks out there to try and get your USB camera working with it. Secondly, after trying for an hour or more with an iSight-equipped friend in the States (I was using a Panasonic digicam) I just couldn't get it to work. It would say it was connecting and then just freeze, or in one case it crashed my computer completely. Verdict
So in summing up, iChat and iChatAV are great fun, but until more people are using them they won't reach their full potential. But if you want to give it a go, you can contact me using my AIM screenname nrd42. | Pros Instant - beats email
Excellent on office LANs
Probably the best quality AV chat available on any platform Cons Limited user pool
Some cameras unsupported by iChat AV
Can't send messages to people who aren't online
| Keep this open when you are using audio or video chat and enjoy the information it gives you | © Parkside Media 2003
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