Even with the lack of iChat's video feature, I still perfer Adium. Absolutely fully customizable. Has features that iChat should've had ages ago, and honestly, how many people in the IM world actually use the video conferencing on a daliy basis? The few that do are a vast minority.
And for you skeptical types, Adium will be getting video pretty soon. So it's really a moot argument anyway.
Adium gets it's backend from Pidgin. Perhaps we could all give credit where credit is due for once.
At any rate, the problem you would have with Apple attempting to connect with Yahoo and MSN is that Pidgin and those that use it's libraries [e.g., Adium] have to constantly hack and rehack to get into the network when MSN and Yahoo decide to change their protocols.
XMPP being an Open Standard, along side SIP allows for none of this time being wasted.
An Open standard backend would allow even the Pidgin developers to advance their libraries more rapidly instead of spending many dev cycles refixing what was once working.
If MSN and Yahoo used XMPP and SIP Apple iChat 4.0 would automagically get those clients and their interaction.
Yahoo will either get bought by Microsoft and remain closed or will soon have to switch to XMPP in order to survive and expand.
Microsoft could give a rat's ass. They've got lots of money, users and don't need to change, for now.
Yup. Same reason Flash video beat Quicktime. Did it look better? No. Did it have more options? No. Did it "just work" on any sort of network? Yes.
Flash doesn't just work. It's horrifically broken on Linux. YouTube vids have audio issues to this day with the latest Kernel and Flash 9 for Linux.
The product hasn't even been ported to 64 bit architecture.
QuickTime isn't for the cheap end user, in-line videos like what we see on the Web. Adobe recognized this would be a problem and have began addressing this with the inclusion of H.264 video.
I'd love to see the scalability comparison tests between Flash and QuickTime with uncompressed HD video streams.
Not really. All of the fancy effects are "packaged" on the computer sending a video feed. All the other end sees is one streamed video.
This means that if one user were using iChat 4.0 (Leopard), and the other 3 (Tiger), then the iChat 4 computer would be able to send a doctored image and the iChat 3 computer would be able to see it. This cannot go the other way, for semi-obvious reasons .
Maybe I miss-read it, but didn't the article state that video traffic is direct between the two computers? It doesn't go through any servers anyplace. So it's not .mac servers that are causing spotty video chats, it's things like Comcast's PowerBoost or simple internet congestion and slow DSL connections.
Right you are. I skipped by the history part of the article and was going by what friends and co-workers had told me.
I am a .Mac member (it's marginally useful but has gotten better since the upgrade), but the people I provide remote tech support for (ie girlfriend's mother - LOL) don't. She's not had any need for it. If screen sharing is for .Mac only I guess she now does.
Nowhere do I see mention of iChat 4.0 supporting video chat between two different people both behind a router that uses NAT. Currently iChat doesn't support that according to my experience and loads of messages on Apple's discussion boards. It seems like everyone is behind a router with NAT these days so iChat is essentially useless for video conferencing. Can't that be fixed with this major update?
Nowhere do I see mention of iChat 4.0 supporting video chat between two different people both behind a router that uses NAT. Currently iChat doesn't support that according to my experience and loads of messages on Apple's discussion boards. It seems like everyone is behind a router with NAT these days so iChat is essentially useless for video conferencing. Can't that be fixed with this major update?
I don't use video chats very often, but when I do it is almost always between two computers which are behind different NAT routers. That's with Tiger.
The specific brand/model of NAT router at each end is important, and it might depend on the firwmare version. In my travels I've found one quite common one which doesn't work, but almost all the others I've tried did work, in some cases after doing some special configuration. Apple has a page in their knowledge base which explains the required configuration for routers which "almost work".
Comments
Even with the lack of iChat's video feature, I still perfer Adium. Absolutely fully customizable. Has features that iChat should've had ages ago, and honestly, how many people in the IM world actually use the video conferencing on a daliy basis? The few that do are a vast minority.
And for you skeptical types, Adium will be getting video pretty soon. So it's really a moot argument anyway.
Adium gets it's backend from Pidgin. Perhaps we could all give credit where credit is due for once.
http://www.pidgin.im
At any rate, the problem you would have with Apple attempting to connect with Yahoo and MSN is that Pidgin and those that use it's libraries [e.g., Adium] have to constantly hack and rehack to get into the network when MSN and Yahoo decide to change their protocols.
XMPP being an Open Standard, along side SIP allows for none of this time being wasted.
An Open standard backend would allow even the Pidgin developers to advance their libraries more rapidly instead of spending many dev cycles refixing what was once working.
If MSN and Yahoo used XMPP and SIP Apple iChat 4.0 would automagically get those clients and their interaction.
Yahoo will either get bought by Microsoft and remain closed or will soon have to switch to XMPP in order to survive and expand.
Microsoft could give a rat's ass. They've got lots of money, users and don't need to change, for now.
Yup. Same reason Flash video beat Quicktime. Did it look better? No. Did it have more options? No. Did it "just work" on any sort of network? Yes.
Flash doesn't just work. It's horrifically broken on Linux. YouTube vids have audio issues to this day with the latest Kernel and Flash 9 for Linux.
The product hasn't even been ported to 64 bit architecture.
QuickTime isn't for the cheap end user, in-line videos like what we see on the Web. Adobe recognized this would be a problem and have began addressing this with the inclusion of H.264 video.
I'd love to see the scalability comparison tests between Flash and QuickTime with uncompressed HD video streams.
Seriously!?
Not really. All of the fancy effects are "packaged" on the computer sending a video feed. All the other end sees is one streamed video.
This means that if one user were using iChat 4.0 (Leopard), and the other 3 (Tiger), then the iChat 4 computer would be able to send a doctored image and the iChat 3 computer would be able to see it. This cannot go the other way, for semi-obvious reasons
Hope this clears it up.
Maybe I miss-read it, but didn't the article state that video traffic is direct between the two computers? It doesn't go through any servers anyplace. So it's not .mac servers that are causing spotty video chats, it's things like Comcast's PowerBoost or simple internet congestion and slow DSL connections.
Right you are. I skipped by the history part of the article and was going by what friends and co-workers had told me.
Thanks!
That blows if that's the case.
Seriously!?
Well, from my experience with the beta I was unable to do audio chats between Tiger and Leopard.
I had the same problem with Panther and Tiger being incompatible.
Nowhere do I see mention of iChat 4.0 supporting video chat between two different people both behind a router that uses NAT. Currently iChat doesn't support that according to my experience and loads of messages on Apple's discussion boards. It seems like everyone is behind a router with NAT these days so iChat is essentially useless for video conferencing. Can't that be fixed with this major update?
I don't use video chats very often, but when I do it is almost always between two computers which are behind different NAT routers. That's with Tiger.
The specific brand/model of NAT router at each end is important, and it might depend on the firwmare version. In my travels I've found one quite common one which doesn't work, but almost all the others I've tried did work, in some cases after doing some special configuration. Apple has a page in their knowledge base which explains the required configuration for routers which "almost work".
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93208
Here's a comparison of Adium to the new iChat.
Still not as much support for different protocols as Adium but the other features sell me.
Question?
If I wanted to screen-share using iChat 4.0 with another Mac user, do they need to have Leopard installed?
Second question?
Can I screen-share using iChat 4.0 with an P.C. user with them using AIM?