Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Audio, Video, Internet Tools, Surveys and Polls
You're in Charge: What would you change about iChat?
Alright boys and girls, since last week's "You're in Charge of Apple Mail" received such an awesome response, I figured I'd give it another go this week with iChat. Sure it's seen some Apple love with no-fuss audio and video chat features, a non-crucial bug fix and the Jabber protocol. Now with 10.4.3 .Mac member messages can be encrypted, and the bubbles sure are cute. But in my opinion, iChat still needs some serious help to get dragged out of 1995. The lack of tabbed chatting (while tabs are infesting nearly every other app's UI) is nearly insulting, and while iChat can log chats to your ~/Documents/iChats folder, there's no easy way to search or browse (Spotlight doesn't count) those logs without 3rd party apps, i.e. - those logs are frigging useless without someone else's development efforts. (But don't get me wrong, I heart Logorrhea.)So, here comes another "You're in Charge". Same drill, different app: let's say iChat development is up to you. What would you change, fix, add or rip out? Would you fire the intern who screwed up your latte order, or just put him on bathroom duties for a week? Let's hear it.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Greg said 10:36AM on 11-03-2005
Features, smeatures, make it compatible with microsoft messenger. I'm not a fan of messenger, but I, personally, don't know anyone who uses iChat (besides me, with google talk) even though most of my friends use macs, because the rest of the world is in microsoft land. Maybe someone could explain why there isn't a workaround for this?
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KSB said 10:39AM on 11-03-2005
Bigger avatars, the 50px are getting too small :)
Search for chat rooms, getting a bit lonely if you don't know people :p
sketching ( would be great for buisness )
use other webcams than isight standard ( don't know if it's changed today )
have a better msn support ( instead of JAbber account :| )
there are some other stuff, can't think of them rite now :p
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Mr Tipples said 10:38AM on 11-03-2005
Yes, let me sign on with my msn sign-on and finally have a video conversation on my mac!
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Kevin said 10:42AM on 11-03-2005
My only big gripe with iChat is that there is no way to discretely alert you of new messages? I really like how trillian displays a small icon when I get a message without display the actual message on my screen.
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Chris said 10:44AM on 11-03-2005
There are plenty of work arounds to get it to work with Messenger if you google for them.
I would give it tabbed chatting. It is so frustrating to have 6 open windows sometimes when having multiple conversations especially on a 12" PB. I would also make it compatible with yahoo and others out of the box rather than having to find all these work arounds.
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Zach Forrester said 10:45AM on 11-03-2005
MSN support is a must! I'd also like to see tabbed conversation windows and better history feature. Also if you could edit people's address book info right from iChat, it would be awesome.
but DEFINITELY MSN support!
Greg: www.allforces.com had a nice tutorial on using iChat with MSN through Jabber, which works. It's a little flaky, but i does allow you to have basic, text conversations.
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Jeremy Writebol said 12:24PM on 11-03-2005
Greg... there is a workaround for using MSN with iChat, it's actually pretty handy. You won't be able to get video or audio, but you can chat. Check out http://allforces.com/2005/05/06/ichat-to-msn-through-jabber/
Now on to the post at hand. I would like to see tabbed browsing, smaller buddy lists, and the ability to customize my message windows to look a little bit cleaner. So I guess overall is that I would make a streamlined look to iChat where the buddy lists, and windows are cleaner and smaller.
I really like the features that Adium has to do that but I love the audio/video excellence that iChat has.
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Matt Rodkey said 10:50AM on 11-03-2005
1) Tabbed Chatting ala Adium
2) More protocol support (Yahoo, MSN)
3) One unified buddy list. It is annoying to have a separate window for AIM and GMail buddies. This would only be worse if Yahoo and MSN were added.
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Clark said 2:21PM on 11-04-2005
I want something on the windows side so that I can use an iSight with them.
Maybe there already is something like that...
Tabbed would be nice,...
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bryan elkus said 10:53AM on 11-03-2005
the ability to have multiple accounts signed on at once. or have more than 180 people on a screen name, but i think that has to do with aol folks. thats really the only thing i REALLY want. a better way to group would be nice. and dont hate on the interns too much.
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boardski said 10:53AM on 11-03-2005
Simple. Buy Adium. hire the developers, and merge ( read scrap most of ichat).
Adium has nearly all the features a chat client could hope for.
Then release a windows version so video could be done nicely cross-platform.
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Luke said 11:24AM on 11-03-2005
My thoughts:
- Tabbed Aim windows. (Just last night I had 5 iChat windows open and was trying to read tuaw at the same time and I couldn't cus of all the windows :-(
- Quicker updating of other folks away messages ( I don't know how many times i've responded to someone's away message only to find that it's changed to something different when I im them.
- Video chat support with other types of cameras. ( USB 2.0 cameras are fine for one on one chats so why not enable people to do that) This is coming from a person who has only experienced multiple audio chat participants but never over 1 video chatter
- Finally, I just want Apple to stop dragging it's feet with iChat updates. it seems we get one ichat update maybe once a year. Other apps are getting complete overhauls and ichat still doesn't get updated. I like it's clean look and interface but it's hard to use a program that is never updated.
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Matthew Fitzsimmons said 10:57AM on 11-03-2005
Make it more like Adium, but keep the working file transfers.
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Luke said 10:58AM on 11-03-2005
ohh yeah one more thing:
Please give up the ability to use the nickname off the person instead of just the Full first and last name or just there aim name. I have always hated that. Why have a nickname field if it wont show up in ichat?
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Clayton said 9:07PM on 11-03-2005
boardski has it right. rather than competeing w/ adium (which I proudly use) apple should buy it up and combine the two great products. using multiple protocols, and tabbed chatting as the 2 most important features.
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Greg said 11:06AM on 11-03-2005
Thanks Zach. : )
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Will said 11:07AM on 11-03-2005
Boardski's got it. Adium does everything I need it to do, and most of the things that people on this list want. Merge in iChat's video and file transfer support, and everyone's happy. Better yet, put the team working on video on the libgaim dev team. We've got the Konq/Safari link, why not an iChat/libgaim one?
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Kyle Brown said 11:15AM on 11-03-2005
First of all, tabbed chatting would be a disaster I think. I don't care if Adium has it.
One little thing that iChat needs is for font color, size etc. to be edited easily in the actual message window like in Instant Messenger.
iChat needs to support animated avitars.
iChat needs better Buddy Profile editing alternatives.
Bonjour is flawless with my experience, as is video chatting and voice chatting. The only thing I hate is the stupid special effects that start up after you video chat for a while.
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Philipp said 11:13AM on 11-03-2005
I want to be able to be invisible while surfing the web. Away is not enough. I have no need for tabs but would not mind increased stability and performance.
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Peter Garner said 11:20AM on 11-03-2005
I'm probably not in the majority here, but I think iChat is a great chat client. And yet, I use Adium. Why?
1) Compatibility with more chat clients: yahoo and MSN, in particular (and wouldn't it be great if iChat were compatible with Skype; I'm not sure if that's even possible, but a guy can dream...).
2) Smaller interface; right now, even at its smallest, it takes up too much screen real-estate.
3) Make it available to Windows users (once the above changes have been made) so that video chats would be just as easy with them as it is with other Mac users. I know this is never going to happen though.
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