AppleInsider Staff
Apple introduced iChat as an IM client for AOL's proprietary chat protocol, later adding support for Jabber/XMPP, an open IM standard supported by Google Talk and Apple's own iChat Server.
For Lion, Apple has added Yahoo as an account type. Yahoo operates its own proprietary protocol that can't interoperate with AOL or Jabber type accounts.
The other primary chat protocol is Microsoft's Windows Live Messenger, which is also proprietary and does not support cross chat with AOL or Jabber, although Microsoft and Yahoo have created a gateway between their two networks.
News of the new Yahoo client working with video and voice chat was initially reported by blogger iMarck90.
After Android, Apple has increasingly worked to minimize its dependence upon Google as a partner, adding Microsoft's Bing and Yahoo search to Safari on both the desktop and iOS. However, adding new video support to iChat is an interesting addition, given Apple's push to promote FaceTime as its video calling solution.
The company has even renamed its iSight cameras as "FaceTime," and now develops and distributes FaceTime as a standalone app in the Mac App Store, wholly independent from the iChat AV app it bundles as part of Mac OS X.
Chip Loder
Malcolm Owen
Amber Neely
Mike Wuerthele
Christine McKee
William Gallagher
55 Comments
Now we know what Steve Jobs and Carol Bartz talked about at the dinner with President Obama.
How about letting third parties add hooks to communicate with their own systems: cellphone SMS messages via bluetooth, IRC, and maybe even Chat Roulette. oh wait... never mind.
I like iChat; it does a whole lot more than just simple video calls. Glad to see it’s still being improved! I had feared it might stagnate with FaceTime. (I do think they should just roll FaceTime into iChat, at least as one method of using it.)
Integrate Facetime into iChat---that would turn iChat into a one stop solution for most people's chat needs. And it is simple. Why confuse people with two chat app? Simplicity my friends, simplicity
Until iChat integrates different IM accounts/protocols into a single window view I can't imagine switching from Adium.
I am surprised they are still improving/working on iChat. I had assumed that it would not be worked on any more now that Facetime is out.