Mac OS X Leopard: iChat 4.0

[MacRumors]

AppleInsider provides a look at Leopard's updated iChat 4.0 application.

A couple of useful new features are detailed, including Document Sharing:

Any file that can be viewed with Quick Look can be "beamed" with document sharing. While the document is being shared, the sender sees it in a Quick Look panel view, while the viewer on the other end sees the document as a video chat.

and Screen Sharing:

There hasn't been a really simple and obvious way for users to set up a screen sharing session however. In the new iChat, it's effortless. Click the new screen sharing icon in iChat for any user that can support the feature, and it drops down two options: share my screen or request to share theirs. Once the user on the other end approves the connection, a VNC session is setup.[/i]

The appeal of Screen Sharing is that remote troubleshooting can be easily initiated without the requiring the end-user to go through a technical setup to enable screen sharing. Now, anyone who can iChat can share their screen if desired.

Apple also details the features of iChat and has published a list of 300 new features found in Leopard.

Apple announced today that Mac OS X Leopard will go on sale on October 26th, 2007 at retail Apple Stores and you may pre-order it starting today.

Article Link

[Ibjr]

Why wouldn't anyone address the performance questions? What settings does it just the desktop too, aprox speed, ect?

[Eidorian]

I hope that screen sharing can save me a trip to someone's office.

[xelphy]

unbelievably still no mention of ichat! Craziness.. if they rollout ichat for iphone i MAY just abandon the hacks... as long as there's a todo list too!... there's a chance

[CWallace]

I don't use iChat, but the better it keeps getting, I might have to try it.

[Aeolius]

Would two users of 10.5 be able to share a simultaneous GarageBand jam session via an internet connection and screen sharing? I can videochat with my buddies, but I'd love to play together as a band, as well.

[Manatee]

I hope iChat shows up on the iPhone soon after 10.5 is released.

There are so many nice features in OS X that would be great on the iPhone.
- Finder
- Spotlight
- iChat

And it would be nice to have scaled-down phone versions of Pages and Numbers.

[WildPalms]

Originally Posted by Aeolius

Would two users of 10.5 be able to share a simultaneous GarageBand jam session via an internet connection and screen sharing? I can videochat with my buddies, but I'd love to play together as a band, as well.

The timing would not be accurate between the two connections...unless you like inserting a two-step in your rock'n'roll jam

[pacohaas]

Originally Posted by Aeolius

Would two users of 10.5 be able to share a simultaneous GarageBand jam session via an internet connection and screen sharing? I can videochat with my buddies, but I'd love to play together as a band, as well.

I've tried that, just with audio. The delay makes it impossible to share two ways, but I could certainly play along with what the rest of the band was playing. Basically everyone who's not in the same location as the drummer needs to mute their iChat mics or it gets messy. Pretty cool, but I doubt you'd want to waste bandwidth on screensharing when it's the audio that's important.

I suppose technically you could even record what you're playing on your local machine while listening to what the band is playing and playing along, but they still won't be able to hear what you're playing in real-time because of the delay. After practice, send them your audio file and have em add it to their garageband project with the right delay and you're good to go!

[CavemanUK]

Don't know what its like in the rest of the world but in the UK iChat is basically useless until it has native MSN support. I know it can via done via jabber but that goes against OSX's 'simplicity' initiative.

Come on apple! dont give me that licensing BS.. Other packages support it.. You cant tell me the guys that made Adium are paying a huge license fee and you cant afford it!

And again, Adium as an example.. the protocol is not that hard to figure out even without microsofts help.

[M. Malone]

"Text, audio, and video chat whether your buddies use a Mac or a PC."

I am yet to video chat with a PC that works with no issues, hopefully they did something to make it work nicely

[uraniumwilly]

After all the kitty cats are used up (Panther, Tiger, Leopard) and we've switched to fishes (e.g. "Barracuda," "Stingray,") and we finally reach "Stripped Bass," we will have finally purchased our Dick Tracy-like video iPhones. And that's going to be sooo cool.

[nostaws]

Text, audio, and video chat whether your buddies use a Mac or a PC."

I am yet to video chat with a PC that works with no issues, hopefully they did something to make it work nicely

This is the ONE app I would really like to see for the PC. I have also not been able to find an error free and seemless video chat solution for mac to pc.

I haven't tried skype yet.

[twoodcc]

great new features. looking forward to screen sharing for sho

[sunfast]

I'm really chuffed about screen sharing - my parents alway need my help and I've not been able to give it since we both switched to macs. But now we can!

[lofight]

i really like the backdrop effects, but the problem is: is use hotmail ( wich i really hate, i would rather want to use google talk and gmail, but everyone in my school uses hotmail) and i still havent found how to get the jabber thing working, in general can someone explain in short?? in pm maybe ?

[mkrishnan]

Originally Posted by xelphy

unbelievably still no mention of ichat! Craziness.. if they rollout ichat for iphone i MAY just abandon the hacks... as long as there's a todo list too!... there's a chance

Wouldn't the fact that the camera is on the back and the screen is on the front pose a barrier at this point?

[shoelessone]

Do all of you who use iChat have .Mac accounts?

It is basically impossible to actually get chat working for me or my friends. We are all charter users, but don't have .mac accounts.

I can't connect to my other iChat friends because there are always connection problems. Googling turns up a solution, which is to farward like 10 different port ranges. Seems rediculous.

Is there a secret I'm missing?

[Orng]

This is like, when they first invented the telephone, and your phone number was "5", but only two other people you knew had one, and they weren't necessarily people you wanted or needed to talk to, so you have this snazzy new telephone doing nothing.

Until I meet more people with iChat (ie, with a Mac) or even ONE person who uses AIM, whom I actually want or need to talk to, then all this really cool iChat technology is just taking up space on my hard drive.

Too bad, I'd love to use it, but it's useless.

[shoelessone]

Originally Posted by Orng

This is like, when they first invented the telephone, and your phone number was "5", but only two other people you knew had one, and they weren't necessarily people you wanted or needed to talk to, so you have this snazzy new telephone doing nothing.

Until I meet more people with iChat (ie, with a Mac) or even ONE person who uses AIM, whom I actually want or need to talk to, then all this really cool iChat technology is just taking up space on my hard drive.

Too bad, I'd love to use it, but it's useless.

A/S/L? Cyber?

[mkrishnan]

Originally Posted by Orng

Too bad, I'd love to use it, but it's useless.

I kinda agree. I would love it if I could AV chat with my parents. Will my parents ever have working AV hardware? Even if I get it for them, they will find a way to take it apart or make the software crash or change the network or something. A few of my friends have webcams on Windows, but most of them are inept at installing new software and use MSN, so what I could really still use is better MSN AV inside OS X.

[coolbreeze]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/3A109a Safari/419.3)

Google chat support would be nice.

[mkrishnan]

Originally Posted by coolbreeze

Google chat support would be nice.

Erm...

Do you mean Google Talk audio? Or do you mean on the iPhone?

[sunfast]

Originally Posted by shoelessone

Do all of you who use iChat have .Mac accounts?

I've got an AOL account.

Originally Posted by Orng

Too bad, I'd love to use it, but it's useless.

I'll only be using it to help my folks with their iMac. All of the IM stuff I do with my friends is on Adium (all Windows users on MSN)

[jettredmont]

Originally Posted by Macrumors

The appeal of Screen Sharing is that remote troubleshooting can be easily initiated without the requiring the end-user to go through a technical setup to enable screen sharing. Now, anyone who can iChat can share their screen if desired.

So. Hmm. You know, there indeed are technical hurdles to sharing VNC over a network and across firewalls and NATs etc. I'm all for "tearing those down" if the end result is a secure system. But, they are there because VNC is NOT a secure system.

This is all supposition, and it is entirely possible that iChat will have far better security than VNC, AND require SSL encryption, etc. But until Apple says that's what it does ... well, I'm not a big fan of any random user on the internet being able to see what's on my screen at any minute of the day.