I see a video conferencing revolution around the corner. Alongside the release of the iPhone 2G (featuring 3G highspeed, iChat with video conferencing), will be the iSight 2G with iChat support for Mac+PC and a bundled remote for iTunes w/ bundled Front Row for Mac+PC. I think it's believable, I mean if they made iTunes and Safari for Windows, why not iChat?
That's an intriguing idea... I see it as having pros and cons. One big issue is that iChat, unlike most of the other Apple apps, depends on OS X's ability to manage firewalls for low configuration (if you want to videoconference on a Mac, connected via AEBS, with iChat and an iSight, you have to do zero port configuration). iChat, when it works, is much better than Windows Live, but Windows Live works reasonably well, and I don't see people stampeding away from it for iChat. The iPhone, though, is clearly capable of videoconferencing with some tweaking (as demonstrated in the past few days), though, and videoconferencing is definitely one of those areas where the technology has existed for years, and yet no one uses it well. Rife for Apple intervention.
BTW, the latest beta of Mercury is pretty nice, and supports video on MSN
Unless I'm misreading their blog... their status on OS X is still webcam (video + text IM) and receive AV (video + audio), but not transmit AV, correct? It's been a while since I tried Mercury. It and aMSN are both very nice... I generally prefer aMSN when it works, but they're both very nice.
