OS X Mavericks: The Missing Manual

Messages Theater, RIP

Talk about the next best thing to being there. The feature once known as iChat Theater (and then Messages Theater) let you make pitches and presentations to people and committees in faraway cities—without standing in a single airport-security line.

That’s because Messages Theater turned the chat window into a presentation screen for displaying and narrating your own iPhoto or Keynote slideshows, QuickTime movie files, and even text documents. Your buddy, on the other end of the Messages line, saw these documents at nearly full size—with you in a little picture-in-picture screen in the corner.

Sadly, Apple removed Messages Theater in the Mavericks version of Messages, to the dismay and disappointment of presenters and instructors all over the world.

If the idea of making Mac-to-Mac live presentations interests you, though, you’re not out of luck. Your alternatives include:

• Start up your Mac from a hard drive that still has OS X Mountain Lion on it, and use Messages Theater just as you always did.

• Sign up for Zoom (www.zoom.us), an online meeting service (free for up to 25 participants). It lets you share any window, like your Keynote slideshow, and displays your own image next to it, just as iChat Theater once did.

  You sign up for a free account, install the Zoom app, and then invite your audience to see your “meeting.” They see your show in their Web browsers (once they, too, have installed the Zoom program).

• Use Skype, Microsoft’s free chat program. If you sign up ...