iChat AV

I used iChat AV a few minutes ago to talk to my brother in Germany. Talk, not type, mind you.

The connection was better than some landline phone calls I have had with him recently. And of course it did not cost me a cent to talk to him for over half an hour.

For now we only used the voice option, using the built in microphones and speakers that we both have in our PowerBooks.

I do have a DV video camera that iChat AV works with flawlessly, but it appears we both have to have cameras in order for video conferencing to work.

This beta version of the program works so well already though, that I am considering getting my mom an iSight camera for her birthday. What would be a cooler present than something that will allow her to see me on a regular basis?

iChat AV definitely is a really cool program and works better than any voice or video conferencing program out there.

I have some authority to say this as I have spend countless hours trying to get video conferencing to work with my wife, when I still lived in Germany and she did in the US. I tried everything out there. NetMeeting is horrible and would crash all the time. Everything else was even worse.

This thing I installed, plugged a camera in and it works. Awesome. It really could be the killer app that might sway a lot of people over to a Mac.

If only I had had this back then…