Why iChat?

I wonder if you can transplant the 10.2 dock.app to 10.1.4 :p

That seems like it'd be possible.

Anybody want to try? :D
 
Originally posted by googolplex
Reading all the protocols isn't the same. There should be a standard protocol!
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Well there is, but unfortunately not enough people use it right now: Jabber. It is an open protocol and the server can have "transports" installed so that you can connect to AIM, ICQ, Yahoo!, and MSN through the server and you can then use any Jabber client. The server installs on MacOS X through Fink, but there are no transports yet. Mac users are also limited by the fact that Fire's implementation of Jabber sucks, Proteus's is only moderately better, and of the two native Jabber clients available, JabberFoX is pretty basic right now and Psi ends up using most of the processor by the eight hour mark (I like to leave my client running at night). But still, you can run your own Jabber server, and people have already started to do some amazing things with it.
 
Yes, Jabber is really cool, but it doesn't have any corporate backing so nobody uses it. Which is too bad. Its too bad apple isn't using it for iChat.
 
Actually, Jabber does have a bit of corporate backing. A lot of the server development is done by the company that runs Jabber.com. They make their money with that and selling company branded Jabber clients. It's really too bad that Apple picked AIM over Jabber. It would have really given it a huge push. With any luck though, iChat will have some kind of plugin support for other chat protocols, and it can be added in.
 
In case anybody is curious about Fire's partial AIM support it's because there are two AIM protocols.

One is called TOC, the other is called Oscar (I think). AOL let's people use the TOC protocol on any client. However, it's a lessor protocol that doesn't support direct connections or any of the things that a would require one (file transfer, voice, etc.).

Trillian has reverse engineered Oscar but their service sometimes drops as AOL figures out ways to kill trillian connections without hurting their own customers. I'm guessing that it's getting harder and harder to do that because trillian has been working well for months.

When Steve said that AOL let them "into the tent" it sounds like they are letting them use the Oscar protocol. The fact that they have file transfers further supports this guess.

Anyway, there's a little info for you.

Vanguard

PS My guess is that they aren't going to support other protocols because that might hurt their relationship with AOL.
 
TOC can handle filetransfer (just look at ICQ, the current AOL versions use TOC.)

However, TOC cannot connect to or message the new @mac.com names, thus putting a big disadvantage to just about every Mac AIM clone out there now.
 
1. I actually think iChat looks and functions really cool, what is it that everyone is so upset about?

2. Is it just me, or is it that every time AOL buys software, they don't use it (Netscape and ICQ)? I think they buy these purely to get rid of the competition.
 
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