iChat Theater removed in Mavericks?!?!
Overall I am happy with the Mavericks upgrade. However, I am *very* saddened to see that in Mavericks, the "iChat Theater" feature has been removed from Messages.
I used iChat Theater frequently, for years. And I never had a single issue with it. It was a unique feature I haven't been able to replicate with any other software. And the look on the other videconferencing partner's face when they saw it in action for the first time was always priceless. Especially if they were new to Mac. 
It was one of those differentiating features that made things easy and fun, and practically felt like magic. It was a great way to watch a video together online, or to to present a document/image to another person while you're videoconferencing. So why was it removed? I hope it comes back.
Comments
Wasn’t it removed a long time ago? Same with four-way videoconferencing?
My big gripe (beyond those) is that FaceTime STILL ISN’T INTEGRATED INTO MESSAGES WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU APPLE.
No, Messages in Mountain Lion 10.8.x still had both iChat Theater and multiparty videoconferencing. I know because I used them all the time. Only iChat Theater appears to be removed in Mavericks.
I'm not sure what direction they're going with this. It could mean they'll integrate Messages into FaceTime and get rid of the legacy iChat code entirely. I hope not.
Funny. We (my brothers) and I use it all the time and just had a session last weekend after I upgraded to Mavericks. They were still running either 10.5.8 or 10.6 so maybe in a mixed environment it still works??
Or you need to set up an AOL AIM account to use with Messages.
Funny. We (my brothers) and I use it all the time and just had a session last weekend after I upgraded to Mavericks. They were still running either 10.5.8 or 10.6 so maybe in a mixed environment it still works??
Or you need to set up an AOL AIM account to use with Messages.
No, Apple has confirmed it's gone at this time. I'm not sure how you could have used it if you're running Mavericks. We're talking about iChat Theater, not multiparty videoconferencing or screensharing.
When you are in a multi person video chat, a set of menu option are available allowing you to share a file, or photos from iPhoto etc under the Buddies menu I believe (could be another menu). We were able to do this. Maybe it was the mixed OS's. If this is true, then it's a deal breaker for we. We do video production and need to share videos in real time. I think the issue for Apple is copyright infringement. We'll be moving to some other service or downgrading to Mountain Lion if these features have been disabled.
The ability to send documents and pictures and videos is still there.
That's not what iChat Theater is.
iChat Theater is (er... was) an elegant Apple-only feature, that allowed videoconferencers to look at documents and images, and watch videos, TOGETHER, in the videoconference window. In real-time. To comment on pictures together, or watch movies together, in complete sync.
http://www.tuaw.com/2009/10/09/getting-in-shape-with-ichat-theater/
It's a real shame this has been removed. It worked really well and easily, and there's really nothing else quite like it that's out there. I can think of no good reason that Apple would have removed this
By "share" we meant "view in real time" (iChat Theater).
I have since "downgraded" both of my machines to Mountain Lion for this and other even more troubling issues with Mavericks.
1) Mavericks does not support ExpressCard/34 I/O from any manufacturer as far as we can tell. See this link for background - https://discussions.apple.com/message/23580033#23580033. This put us dead in the water for our video production as we use external devices that need this port to function.
2) Safari crashes or freezes upon launch. The solution: kill all extensions. Safari particularly does not like DuckDuckGo which I use exclusively for web search. Even with Mountain Lion, Safari crashes with extensions enabled. I now use Firefox and Tor exclusively.
3) Mail.app would not work at all in Mavericks until we disabled all - and I mean all - external accounts (those with external providers). Then we had to re-enable and configure each account. For those that were POP accounts, we first had to back up the mail directories with each host before deleting. We even had to log out of iCloud and re-log in. And from discussions we've read on TUAW and MacRumors users have had their GMail accounts disabled as well.
4) iCloud Key Chain does work but only intermittently. Updating of credentials fields is not instantaneous causing login errors.
5). Notes.app does not work any better than with Mountain Lion. Since we use multiple machines to post from, Notes can't seem to keep our posts updated or at all. In the past much of what we "saved" on iCloud has been "lost". Now we use Notational Velocity --- super.
These are some of the issues prompting us to move back to Mountain Lion. For us, Mavericks is a "wipe out".
Quote:
By "share" we meant "view in real time" (iChat Theater)
Okay, well I'd gotten confused when you wrote:
Quote:
I suppose this would *only* be possible if the person on the non-Mavericks system was able to initiate the iChat Theater session. Because there's no UI for it at all on the Mavericks side.
This hasn't been my experience, at all (and I have 45+ extensions installed!) I suspect it is ONE (or maybe more) of your extensions that are simply incompatible and causing the freeze. Try disabling half of your installed extensions to troubleshoot. Then the other half of them. Since you say the freeze is consistent and easy to reproduce, it should be easy to narrow down the variables. Keep narrowing down until you find the culprit.
And I only suggest this because Safari in particular has been the BEST part of the Mavericks upgrade for me. It is super duper fast, faster than any browser on this Mac, and I've tried every single one of them. In Mountain Lion I had finally given in and switched over to Chrome as my default browser, but with Mavericks I am back in the Safari camp. It works like a champ for me. And I can't see switching to Firefox... that one feels like an old bloated mess to me.
Ah well, glad you've been able to find what works for you.
I agree with all that you have said above. I believe it was a very bad move for Apple to remove the capability to do so. I too hope they bring back iChat in some form be it via Facetime or whatever just as long as we are able to have multiple video chats. If nothing else at least on our desktop Mac's.
But I’m not sure you know what he’s saying.
Still possible; always has been.