On Sep 28, 2010, at 10:51 AM, Jesse Thompson wrote: > Are you saying that iChat works with Skype voice/video? Or are you saying > that iChat supports multiple IM protocols like Pidgin and the other > multi-protocol clients?
Well, iChat has supported AIM and video chat via AIM for many years (at least since 2006, see <http://ask.metafilter.com/33287/Cross-platform-videochat-software>). It does also support multiple other chat protocols, but I don't know if it does video with any of them. There are other places and other times that this question has come up over the past five to ten years, see: http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/11/2244233 http://homepage.mac.com/john_kenn/video.html http://mac.blorge.com/2008/05/03/oovoo-puts-free-cross-platform-video-chat-on-your-mac/ http://www.mac-compatible-web-cam.com/mac-video-chat/mac-video-chat.html And any of the other top hits when you Google for "cross-platform video conference". Of course, there's also Meebo, which runs a website with videoconferencing software written in Flash. Or you could just run two Ustream live video streaming accounts, one on either end -- that's basically what Fring was helping to make happen. Of course, none of these multi-platform alternatives is as "shiny, shiny" as Skype. And Skype isn't anywhere remotely as "shiny, shiny" as Facetime. Give it a few months, and I'm sure you'll start to see Facetime clients pop up on other OSes -- helping make that happen through "real deal" Internet standards-based standards is more to the benefit of Apple than any proprietary alternative, and helps them avoid the Microsoft/Google/Skype Hegemony. > I didn't say it was a *good* option, but at least you have it. Conversely, > you can't install an OSX VM on a Windows or Linux desktop (unless you are > willing to shell out $$$ to Apple for the hardware,) so you can't use that as > a workaround for using iChat as your Skype alternative. There are a whole Universe of solutions that do not involve the installation of any Microsoft software on any non-Microsoft platform. I would fully investigate all of them before going down that road. -- Brad Knowles <b...@shub-internet.org> LinkedIn Profile: <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu> _______________________________________________ Tech mailing list Tech@lopsa.org http://lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tech This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
