Wednesday, August 13, 2003

WSJ.com - The Mossberg Solution: An Instant Messager You Can See and Hear

WSJ.com - The Mossberg Solution: An Instant Messager You Can See and Hear: "The first thing to know about Apple's new video-chat system is that the company, as usual, is playing to a small, rarified audience. To conduct a video chat with the software, called iChat AV, and the iSight camera, you must have a broadband connection and a Macintosh computer with a high-speed FireWire port for connecting the camera. Any old Mac won't do -- it has to be a fairly new Mac, capable of running the latest versions of Apple's new OS X operating system.
...
ISight's biggest drawback is you won't be able to do video chatting with most of the world, which uses Windows and slow, dial-up connections. In fact, the system works with such a small percentage of Internet users that there are several Web sites dedicated to matching up iSight users for video conversations.
Still, Apple often sets the trend for other companies. And sometimes, as in the case of the iPod music player, the company even deigns to extend its products to Windows users over time. So Apple's success in video instant messaging holds hope for all of us."

"Think different" -- as in not-for-profit, apparently...

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