iChat
Somewhere between email and the telephone lies the joyous communication tool called instant messaging. Plenty of instant messenger programs run on the Mac, but Mac OS X comes with its very own instant messenger program called iChat. It’s built right into the system and ready to connect to your friends on the Yahoo, AIM, Jabber, Facebook, or Google Talk networks.
iChat does six things very well:
Instant messaging. If you don’t know what instant messaging is, there’s a teenager near you who does.
Instant messaging combines the privacy of email and the immediacy of the phone. You type messages in a chat window, and your friends type replies back to you in real time.
In this regard, iChat is a lot like the popular standalone messenger apps from AOL and Yahoo. But iChat lets you type back and forth with anyone from the AOL, Yahoo, Google Talk, and Facebook chat networks, all in a single program, which is a huge advantage. And iChat’s visual design is pure Apple.
Free long distance. If your Mac has a microphone, and your buddy’s does, too, the two of you can also chat out loud, by talking, using the Internet as a free long-distance phone. Wait, not just the two of you—the 10 of you, thanks to iChat’s party-line feature.
Free videoconferencing. If you and your buddies all have fast Internet connections and cameras—like the ones built into most Mac models—or even camcorders, up to four participants can join in video chats, all onscreen at once, no matter where they happen to be in the world. ...
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