iChat in Tiger

[Charlie]

Thanks-
My friendly neighborhood Apple man wants $220 for the iSight, so it's off to the pc bargain basement to see if I can find a reasonably priced camera.

China, don't fail me now!

CDW had the iSights for $129.00

 

[pds]

And the Cairo tax man tacks on another $100

 

[sur]

what about doing audio chats on skype instead ichat? the whole profile thing really spoiled it for me. but then i am also using icq... but apple doesn't seem to care about us european weirdos who are not into that whole aim thing....

 

[fryke]

AIM's perfectly compatible with ICQ by now. Just use ICQ numbers instead of AIM nicknames when adding a person. So you could, if you wanted, open an AIM account (free) and tell your ICQ-buddies to add your new AIM name instead of the ICQ-# - if you wanted to use iChat instead of ICQ. I have done that some time ago, because the ICQ application is a bit too much for me. Only 2 things I'm really missing - where ICQ just rocks: Invisibility features and offline-messaging (for those who don't know ICQ, that just means you can leave a message if someone's offline...).

I think AOL should add those features to the AIM protocol and further merge ICQ and AIM.

 

[texanpenguin]

Yahoo! Has offline messages, and Invisibility, and cross-platform webcam, plus an account is free, webcams aren't software-blocked under a certain MHz or bandwidth threshold (like iChat).

It's lacking Audio, though, and it's a coding mess (on the Mac, not at all on the PC) which often crashes completely, but usually on predictable events like unexpected internet disconnections.

 

[texanpenguin]

Alternatively give iVisit a go.

 

[fryke]

AFAIK neither Yahoo nor iVisit are compatible with iChat, AIM, ICQ etc., so they're niche solutions, basically. What I meant was that ICQ and AIM are interoperable, but that I don't understand why AOL, who owns both AIM and ICQ, doesn't give AIM the advanced features of ICQ, namely invisibility and offline messages.