The iChat AV Resurrection

Today’s article is audience participation intensive. That means I want people to answer several questions that I throw out here. Ready? Great. Here goes:

First question, everyone who has ever used some type of instant messenger please raise your hand.

Ok, thank you thank you, you may put your hands down. I see that quite a few of you have used IM services before, wonderful. Alright, moving right along, my second question is, what types of IM services do you use?

Yes, you in the front, jabber you say? Ok, and you, Yahoo, great thanks. And you, MSN you say? Ah well that’s ok, you still have time to turn your life around. And you, ah AIM, good old AOL, an oldie but a goodie. Well, thank you, I seem to be getting the picture.

I have one more question before we move on, who here uses iChat AV with an iSight or other digital video camera?

. . . (silence)
. . . (a cell phone rings in the back)
. . . (the fat guy on the left farts but pretends like he didn’t)

Anyone use iChat AV? Anyone at all? Anybody? Anyone ever heard of iChat AV? Alright, a few hands! Well, at least I am not completely alone here.

Now, if you ask those same three questions to your average bunch of computer geeks you will get the same general answers. Yes, most people have used some type of IM services before. Of those services AIM, Jabber, Yahoo and MSN are the most popular. And few people really use iChat AV to its fullest extent. In fact, if you use OS X then chances are you have downloaded Adium and are using that instead of Apple’s default IM client.

And yet iChat AV has the potential to be a very powerful tool. Instant video conferencing with three other people is a very nice feature. But most people don’t use it because of its steep (as compared to AIM and others) requirements.

These requirements are:
1. OS X with iChat AV installed
2. Broadband internet connection
3. An iSight or equivalent piece of equipment
4. Someone whom you actually want to talk to who also has items 1-3

Now compare that with what you need to get AIM working:
1. Any operating system with AIM on installed
2. Dial up
3. A friend

Clearly it is much easier to use AIM or Jabber than iChat. And its cheaper too because an iSight cost $150. And yet, despite all of the difficulties I think iChat AV has a future and a very positive future at that. If you want to know why check out this link, laptop latch camera.

The idea behind the patent is that in the latch of a laptop a small camera will be installed. Now, I imagine that this camera can, and will, be used for still pictures. However, it could just as easily be used as a webcam. So, imagine in a couple of years if Apple upgraded all of its laptops to include these small latch cameras, what would happen? Well, iChat AV would become much more popular because the single most expensive component (the iSight camera) is automatically built into your laptop. All you have to do is plug it into a fast connection and away you go.

But what would happen after that? Well, eventually Dell, Sony, Acer and the rest would copy the idea and include cameras in their laptops. Then, what if Apple released iChat AV for Windows? Well, since Apple has been consistently making it better for the last few years I can only conclude that it would be the best product in the market. Which, in turn, would make in the most popular program for video enabled IM. So I wouldn’t write off iChat AV just yet because the best might just be yet to come.

Come to think of it I believe that between Intel, flash drives and this new patent, Apple laptops might look very different in five or six years. But only time will tell.