For communicating with other people on those services. Not that many people use Jabber anymore, I don't think, but Google Chat uses that protocol so it doesn't make sense for Apple to remove it anyways. Bonjour is for autodiscovery on a local network, so a room full of people who've never met and haven't shared screen names can still use iChat for communication immediately.
jW
Ok, I completely understand the Bonjour as you've explained it. However, for the rest of iChat, I'm lost. Either this is one of Apple's most non-intuitive applications or I'm just plain stupid(gosh I hope it's not the latter).
Alright, here's the specific issue. My mother uses gmail which of of course has chat enabled. I do not wish to use gmail or have any google account period for that matter.
That having been said, when I added her as a buddy in iChat, I tried to text chat with her and although she wasn't online, the chat window reported that it was a "jabber" connection of sorts. I was lost at that point. Wouldn't it be google talk?
So, now that I have almost certainly confused and, likely frustrated you(thank you for your patience), can I get a step by step walk through of adding her as a buddy? Do I HAVE to add my google account in iChat? If so, when I add her as a buddy, do I add her account as a me.com account or a google account?
Quite honestly, I'm baffled as to why I seem to be having such great difficulty grasping this concept. I'm actually extremely tech literate!
