You're in Charge: What would you change about iChat?

I think iChat is excellent first of all. However why stop there? There are improvements to be made and I am sure there are many people who will agree.

iChat needs to support other cameras, not exclusivly iSight. iSight might be great and it might support high standards of communication, but it isn't fair that you can't tha people with normal cameras can't take advantage of this technology - Apple is limiting the end user's capabilities and ultimatly Macintosh compatability - which is nasty!

Forget about tabbed chatting - that's why we have Expose! Utilize the technology you're already capable of.

Display pictures certainly need to be larger - maybe double the current size would be a start.

I love how iChat is clean cut, no ads and nothing to get in the way of what it's supposed to do. No other IM client is better when it comes to being clean, easy and user friendly. PLEASE don't clutter it up!

Maybe add the ability to customize the sound effects in Preferences?

Integrate "scratch pads" something like drawing tools. Something that could be utilized in say a meeting situation, where diagrams would be helpful.

Integrated file sharing - with the ability to share a directory and your buddy list is able to access. This would be useful in a business / corporate situation where team work is required by people that might not always be sitting next to you.

Just one last and final request! PLEASE don't clutter up iChat! It is excellent - just improve upon it's glory of cleanliness and sleek design. By the way, I love bonjour - it's excellent!

David, Jabber does not lack this functionality and I personally like the seperation of buddy-lists, but thats obviously up to personal likings. Of course most Jabber clients suck when it comes to setting up pipelines and that's why I asked for really good and easy support of this feature in iChat - for the less, well, skilled, among us.

Ryan, Adium has its ways of letting you know which chats in which tabs have new messages. Expose is great for some uses, but it doesn't solve everyone's problems. One of the beauties of Adium's tabbed interface that I know a lot of users appreciate is *keeping all your chat windows in one place* - not scattered about the screen like in iChat, covering other windows when in use. Another feature I appreciate greatly on my 12" PowerBook is that I can re-size Adium chat windows to any size I want, and they STAY that way, tabs or no tabs.

Concerning all the open windows, does anyone here use Expos鿠I regularly use my 12" PB with dozens of windows no problems. I feel that tabs are more useful when they show somewhat more static data. Buddy lists for example, have each service (I'll admit, having many services in one client is nice) in its own tab. But when you have a large amounts of chats in a single tabbed window, it is too easy to forget about others and such.

I chat really needs much work to be considered for IM. The Videochatting may seem nice, but that's about it. I have used ICQ since way back and iChat is just a joke. 1. Adding Contacts is very confusing in my opinion. If you add a person you automatically have to add them to your address book? once you typed in the email adress or account to add you have no way check if the user really exists if they're not online, that's just too 1995. They need to come up with an protocol that can do things that ICQ can do for years now. Give me fields to fill out my personal data, let users see this data when they add me (unless I am on invide only) even if I am offline, make a searchable online directory (of course you don't have to be included if you don't want too). Really, I just don't get iChat, it looks like is using the AOL protocol. I've tried to add someone. Punched in the email adress, but the person never went online, so I have no idea if the account actually exists or not, it's all just very old school. pf and add ICQ, Yahoo, Googletalk support. I don't even want to think about other features, they obviously have to do a lot of work before we can talk about unique features.

I would like to be able to share my desktop or individual apps with other ichat users.

Okay, you guys were right... I just tried Adium, and I'm never going back, it has everything I need. It's got all the network compatibility, file transfer support, and its GUI is so easily and brilliantly customised. I'm very impressed. Apple, take note. But if you buy them, don't cripple the GUI customizability. If you've got a 17" powerbook you might like the avatars and icons in your list, but if you're on a 12", like me, you're going to rave about every pixel of screen real estate you can save. Saft is great for Safari, but why can't Apple give a little fullscreen love across the board.

How to Fix iChat: Step 1: Throw it away and pay the AdiumX people to come on board and take over iChat development. Start with current AdiumX and go from there. Step 2: There is no step 2.

Compatability, with all other chat programs. Of course there are hacks and work-around, but this just tell why it should be incorporated into ichat itself

Adium + Video + Voice + Data transfer for all IMs *Tabbed browsing *Customizable interface *Connect to multiple MSN accounts