iChat: Taking IM to the Next Level

1891 days ago in Essential Apps by Brent | 9 Comments

Here’s another basic little info bit concerning iChat. A nifty little program that packs a wallop in functions. It doesn’t seem like a lot, but if you stop and think about what’s going on in the background while you are making faces and fart noises at your best friend through your iSight camera, you would have a lot of respect for this powerhouse of a program that comes packaged standard with OS X. I’ll just cover the basics here so all you pro users, skip to the bottom and add some meaty tips via the comments. I know I’m itching to hear some juicy tidbits so thanks in advance!

Also, Thanks to Derek for his Breath new life into OS X iChat post. Talk about meaty!

Like all other instant text message programs, iChat begins with your buddy list, so let’s start with building a buddy list. You’ve gotta start with friends. Um, real, flesh and blood friends. Or at least people who will give you their AIM or .Mac account name.

Once you have an account name, you can add that person to your buddy list. Simply click on the iChat icon in the dock, then on the + sign at the bottom of the buddy list. Follow the directions and click, “add,” and you have started your buddy list.

If you want to chat with someone in your buddy list, open the list. If your friend’s name isn’t dimmed, he or she is available to chat. Type your message in the block at the bottom and hit “return,” and you’ve initiated an IM type chat.

iChat takes it to the next level, though. Instead of just sending text to your friend, you can choose an audio or video chat. Instead of typing your message, hit the phone or camera next to their name. If they accept, you can audio chat or video chat with them.

You can video chat with up to three people at the same time and audio chat with up to ten people. (Some hardware restrictions may apply)

What if someone wants to chat with you? You’ll get a message on your desktop, and you can accept or decline. Simple as that.

If you don’t want to be disturbed by friends who want to talk, open iChat, and then close it by using CMD-Q instead of hitting the close button. This will close iChat rather than just hide it.

iChat also gives you the wonderful advantage of parental control. You can help your child set up their buddy list, and utilize parental control to block messages to or from anybody else. In fact, iChat will hide your child’s internet activity from anybody who is not on the approved list; they won’t even know they are online.

As always Apple has a (somewhat cheesy) little informational video about the features of iChat. You can view the video here.

That’s the basics, now what can YOU do with iChat?