Mac OS® X Leopard™ All‐in‐One Desk Reference For Dummies®

Chapter 3. Staying in Touch with iChat

In This Chapter

• Setting up iChat

• Changing modes in iChat

• Adding Buddies

• Inviting a Buddy to chat

• Sending and receiving files via iChat

• Sharing screens with another person

• Ignoring those who deserve to be shunned

• Adding visual pizzazz with video backgrounds and effects

Throughout man's history, our drive has been toward communication — from the earliest cave paintings, through written language, to the telegraph, the telephone, and the cell phone all‐in‐one PDA that the guy in the SUV in front of you is using …and he's arguing with someone and he's not paying attention and …(whump).

So much for the scholarly introduction — forget that silly cellular phone and your complicated calling plan! As long as you have Mac OS X and an Internet connection, you can instantly chat with your friends and family whether they're across the aisle in another cube or halfway across the world. And, by golly, if you both have an iSight camera, Web camera, or digital video (DV) camcorder connected to your computers, you'll see each other in glorious, full‐color video! This modern marvel is iChat, and it fulfills the decades‐old promise of the video telephone quite well, thank you.

In this chapter, I show you how to gab with the following folks:

• Others who use iChat (either on your local network or on the Internet)

• Anyone who uses AIM — that's short for America Online (AOL) Instant Messaging

• Folks who participate in AOL chat rooms

Configuring iChat

When you first run iChat (by clicking ...