Is that "I love Rory" on your mom's t-shirt? You're such a momma's boy. Which by the way, means open source rules and .NET and Microsoft is evil.<g>

iSight/iChat does look pretty nice though. Might have to give it a closer look.

iSight and iChat seem pretty cool. I may have to investigate that. One of the things I have noticed on the Windows side is the lack of a good video conferencing utility.

Just curious Rory, are you referring to the "webcam" function in MSN Messenger 6 or the "Start Video Conference" from the Actions menu? :-)?

Don't forget that Yahoo Messenger has a Turbo Mode for Point-to-Point that allows 15-20 fps (i.e. only works for 2 people, not for multiple people connecting to a WebCam, which is what you're after anyway).

Haven't tried it yet, my new (Mac Compatible)WebCam is in the post as we speak.

Hey, wow.... I sound like a Yahoo pimp!

Dourn.

Dourn -

"Don't forget that Yahoo Messenger has a Turbo Mode"

Yeah - it'd be cooler if it worked, though :)

It doesn't play well behind firewalls. Kori and I had absolutely no luck getting it to work, but iChat is still plugging away...

I want one

I've never seen anyone break down why iSight/iChat is so superior. Assuming you get a Windows-based camera connected to IEEE1394 or USB 2.0 and a broadband connection can't the experience be replicated? Are they doing some amazing hardware compression that's baked into OS X? I would have thought the network bottleneck would render all video over the net the same but I've heard too many people rave about Apple's implementation. Inquiring minds want to know what the hell their secret is!

Kent -

I think that part of the secret is that Apple only has to design for *one* platform, and for *one* common hardware stack.

You can't videoconference in iChat without an iSight, and you have to have at least a 600mhz CPU (although I've seen it run on lesser machines).

I was chatting with a friend about it, and he thinks that Apple might just be doing what Microsoft/Yahoo/whoever isn't: Compressing the holy crap out of the stream.

When chatting using MSN IM, I typically get about 1 frame every second or two, and it has *nothing* to do with my connection, but rather probably with the compression that MS is using. They have to write their software for people who could be running anything from a 90mhz Pentium laptop to a nine bajillion ghz workstation. So, they figure that to accomodate the person with the crappy laptop, they'll use a compression scheme that's light on CPU.

Apple, on the other hand, has said, "Hey - forget about the people with slow machines. Let's provide a good experience for the people who've shelled out serious cash."

And it works. The reason the CPU requirement is so high probably has to do with CPU-intensive compression. Rather than relying on a big, fat pipe to the internet, they *really* compress the stream.

So, although this isn't something that could only be done with Apple, it *is* easier to do this sort of thing when you can approach it in a dictatorial fashion and leave the people with older hardware behind, which is exactly what Apple did.

Believe me - I much rather would have bought my grandmother a PIII laptop or something, but after doing some research, I didn't find *any* good videoconferencing apps out there (i.e. - ones that *work*).

Yahoo has a new super-duper mode for their videoconferencing piece of Yahoo Messenger, but it sucks, and doesn't seem to work around firewalls. Apple's solution does work, and it provides a great experience.

Hope this answers your question :)