Mac OS X Leopard: The Missing Manual

Audio Chats

iChat becomes much more exciting when you exploit its AV Club capabilities. Even over a dial-up modem connection, you can conduct audio chats, speaking into your microphone and listening to the responses from your speaker.

Figure 21-7. iChat can look like almost anything. Here, for example, is what a chat looks like with the balloon effect turned off (giving you colored rectangles instead). You can even turn off balloons and pictures if they bother you that much. You can also hide the names, if you like. You make these changes for a chat in progress using the View menu. You can also change the color and typeface settings in the iChat→Preferences→Messages panel

If you have a broadband connection, though, you get a much more satisfying experience—and, if you have a pretty fast Mac, up to 10 of you can join in one massive, free conference call from across the Internet. (Specifically, you need a 867-megahertz G4 processor or faster to make audio calls with up to five people. To initiate an audio chat with six to 10 participants, you need a Mac with an Intel processor, a G5 chip, a 1-gigahertz G4 chip, or dual 800-megahertz G4s.)

A telephone icon next to a name in your buddy list tells you that the buddy has a microphone, and is ready for a free Internet "phone call." If you see what appear to be stacked phone icons, then your pal's Mac has enough horsepower to handle a multiple-person ...