Robin Williams Mac OS X Book, Jaguar Edition, The

Instant Message, Direct Message, or Chat?

With iChat, you can communicate with others in four different ways: Instant Messages, Direct Messages, Chats, and Rendezvous. I’ll explain here how each one is different from the others and on the following pages tell you how to do each one.

An Instant Message opens a small window in which you can “talk” back and forth with one other person, and your talk is totally private (unless someone is looking over your shoulder). You must be connected to the Internet.

A Direct Message looks just like an Instant Message and is even more private. Instant Messages go through a central messaging server on the Internet, ...