"ichat"

Included with Mac OS X, iChat is a rich instant messaging application that works with your AIM or MobileMe account and makes it easy to stay in touch with friends and family using text and video, whether they’re on a Mac or a PC.*

IM me.

A powerful instant text messaging application, iChat comes with Mac OS X and is loaded with great features that make sending messages to your AIM or MobileMe buddies fast and easy. Simple text chats feel like natural conversations, with icons and thought bubbles that make it easy to see who’s saying what. And you can transmit any kind of file — from a web address to a photo — by simply dragging it into your chat. Pictures display right in the message window, web links open in a browser with a click. In short, iChat is the best way to IM.

iChat Basics

See how easy it is to video, text, and audio chat with anyone, anywhere.

iChat Basics

Don’t just type it — say it face to face.

Most Mac computers include a built-in iSight camera and mic. When you use them with iChat, you get the easiest way to have high-quality video and audio chats with your friends and family. You can chat with just one other person or make it a party by starting a multiway chat. Featuring a three-dimensional view, iChat practically puts everybody in the room with you. View their faces reflected into space, just as if they were sitting around a conference room table. And with video backdrops built into iChat, you can make it look like you’re chatting from the Eiffel Tower, under the sea, or your own custom backdrop.

Click to begin.

With its intuitive interface, iChat shows you when your buddies are available for a chat. Bright icons indicate their online status and whether they’re capable of a video chat or just audio. To start a chat, click the camera or phone icon to send an invitation. To add more people, click the icons for the meeting attendees on your buddy list and each colleague steps into your virtual office.

Show off slideshows from anywhere.

Why wait for a darkened room and a projector to present vacation photos or Keynote slides? Now you can do it all remotely, right in iChat. Put on a photo slideshow, click through a Keynote presentation, or play a movie — in full screen, accompanied by a video feed of you hosting — while your buddy looks on.

Share and share alike.

Thanks to iChat screen sharing, you and your buddy can observe and control a single desktop, so you can easily collaborate with a colleague, browse the web with a friend, or pick plane seats with your spouse. Share your own desktop or your buddy’s — you both have control at all times. iChat initiates an audio chat when you start a screen sharing session, so you can talk things through while you’re at it.

Child’s play.

With iChat at home, you can enforce your “no talking to strangers” rule using parental controls that allow you to decide who your children can chat with online. Approve the buddies you trust and iChat blocks all attempts to send and receive IMs with anyone else. iChat also automatically hides or displays online status so that only buddies approved by you can see if your kids are online.

iChat Text Features

• Tabbed chats
• Multiple logins
• Invisibility
• Animated buddy icons

• SMS forwarding
• Custom buddy list order
• File transfer manager
• Space-efficient views

• * Video chatting requires a broadband Internet connection; fees may apply.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/what-is-macosx/ichat.html?cid=oas-us-domains-ichat.com