Why iChat?

To be perfectly honest, I was wondering the same thing. The interface looks kinda silly too.

Hopefully they'll surprise us with something. :D

-the valrus
 
My guess is it was a trade agreement made between AOL and Apple. A pact made between the two companies to fight against their common enemy, M$.

Regards,
George Lien
 
Don't forget that apps like Fire and Adium are not exactly sanctioned by AOL to us their protocol. AOL has been fighting with companies like that for a while now.
 
I believe there will be some good integration with Quicktime 6 that will allow for video conferencing in this little baby.

Not to mention the fact that it is integrated with the mail.app and adressbook.app... it makes sense for apple tomake this type of app.

Why rely on a third party app like AIM or Fire, when this functionality is included with a standard install of MacOSX?
 
Originally posted by rinse
Why rely on a third party app like AIM or Fire, when this functionality is included with a standard install of MacOSX?
Because from what I can tell from the pictures, iChat looks like crap.
 
julgu: Mine too, they have to litterally beg me to log on if they wanna talk to me. It's working, 3 moved over to AIM already...

As for Fire, Fire is not stable at all, I'm looking forward to iChat
 
Yeah. If it supported as many different services as Fire.app, there's no question that I would use it. As is, though, I dunno...

I have faith though. And if it turns out that Chat isn't the best thing ever, Fire is still pretty good.

By the way, while we're on the topic of integration, shouldn't Apple then make a web browser too? :rolleyes:

-the valrus
 
fire has no file transfer no image connect and alot of things dont work on it. same with audium. ichat will inable all the cool stuf like that. it looks like crap but there is probaly a fix for that in the preferences
 
I wouldn't be surprised if AOL is paying Apple to make it.
1. XP comes with MSN and starts it up every time you turn on your computer. - This way AOL will have an OS to put there IM Sefvice on.
2. AOL could stop making their version of AIM and tell people to use iChat meaning they don't need programmers, technical support people or anyone else to pay to keep the Mac verison of AIM up to date and working.
3. I think there was a three but I forgot it.
 
The interface makes iChat look like a toy, or at least colored hard candy. I can't believe the interface made it this far in development. I would never use that unless I could turn-off that feature/annoyance. Plus, that fancy/ugly interface looks expensive, computationally, on slow hardware. It looks very reminiscent of "Bubble Help" from Mac OS 7.5 - ack! I think the current Mac OS X version of AIM is very good, wouldn't change too much in it.
 
I still don't understand how both AIM and MSN Messenger found any friends. *sigh* ... ICQ rules ever since it came to exist. I don't think I'll use AIM or MSN ever. I *might* try iChat because it's by Apple, but otherwise... And furthermore, all *my* friends are ICQ.
 
ICQ was my first IM chat. AIM was my second.

ICQ is great.. on windows. It just sucks on Mac, and the latest Windows versions even suck since AOL took over. I started ICQ when it was still independent.

AIM is the future, though. It seems to be more user friendly, I.E. names instead of numbers. MSN is just like a sucky oddball, it wouldn't be accepted normally, but it is becuase Microsoft forces it upon everybody.

I think Apple will do a great job with iChat. We have NO idea about how iChat really looks or what options it has, nobody on this board has seen it other than a tiny screen shot on Apple's page. It's a TINY SCREENSHOT! We don't know if it'll be stuck in that bubble mode or not, I doubt it, though. I wouldn't jump to conlcusions of it just yet.
 
Here's a keynote closeup, provided by MacNN:

DSC00009.jpg
 
Originally posted by dricci
We have NO idea about how iChat really looks or what options it has, nobody on this board has seen it other than a tiny screen shot on Apple's page.

There's a full video demo of iChat at News.com.
 
Why isn't AOL instant messenger compatible with ICQ? Didn't AOL buy ICQ years ago? It would be beneficial to make the 2 work together. I use ICQ only, but I would like to use iChat. The ICQ client for Mac is always so far behind on features compared to ICQ for PC. I think a client made by Apple would get more attention and more features.
 
ICQ and AIM are in a state of semi-compatibility. That is, The less-featured protocol that AIM uses for its Java client and for third party clients is the same as for the latest ICQ protocol. They are at least similar enough that the Jabber transport is the same for ICQ and AIM. However, they still do not interoperate, probably since the official AIM client uses a different protocol.
 
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