Video Chat Sofware Reviewed

Video Chat Sofware Reviewed "Even in their preliminary incarnations, these programs illustrate two important points. First, the addition of voice and video changes the experience so profoundly, it's not really chat any more. Second, Apple and Microsoft may as well have come from different planets.
For example, Microsoft, true to tradition, has focused on expanding its list of features, while Apple has worked toward elegance and simplicity. Messenger is a cacophony of brightly colored buttons, panels, blinking advertisements and, in the new version, animated (and even homemade) smileys; iChat AV maintains the clean lines and brushed-metal "surfaces" of its text-only predecessors. The new features of Messenger 6 include custom window backgrounds and interactive games like checkers; iChat AV is dedicated solely to communication. Messenger 6, in its ultimate form, will be free; iChat AV will cost $30 (but will be free with Apple's next operating-system release, Mac OS X 10.3, code-named Panther, due by year's end)."

This kind of reporting must profoundly annoy the Windows Messenger product team; MSN Messenger is not the strategic IM client from MS... (Of course, it's not the reporter's fault; MS has very confusing real-time positioning at the moment.)

BTW with iChat, iSight, regular $129 Mac OS upgrades, etc., you're ultimately signing up for a rather large iAnnuity, if you're a leading-edge Apple customer...