Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Second Edition

iChat

iChat is Apple’s take on instant messaging. If you don’t know what instant messaging is, chances are there’s a teenager near you who does.

It’s like live email. You type messages to friends and colleagues in a chat window, in real time, and they type replies back to you. Instant messaging can be a great way to converse with the privacy of email but the immediacy of the phone.

In this regard, iChat is a lot like AOL’s popular Instant Messenger (AIM) and Buddy Chats. In fact, iChat lets you type back and forth with any of AIM’s 150 million members (it speaks the same “chat” language), which is a huge advantage. But iChat’s visual design is pure Apple, complete with comic strip-style word balloons and a candy-coated interface.

If you’ve used AOL Instant Messenger (or any of its competitors, such as Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger), you’ll find that iChat has some interesting quirks and perks that entice you to switch. And if you’ve never been one to spend a lot of time chatting, iChat may change your tune.

Two Chat Networks

iChat lets you reach out to fellow chat partners on two different networks:

• The Internet. If you’ve signed up for a free .Mac account or a free AOL Instant Messenger account, you can chat with anyone in the 150-million-member AOL Instant Messenger network.

• Your own local network. Thanks to the Rendezvous technology described in Rendezvous, you can communicate with other Macs on your office network without signing up for anything at all—and without being online. ...