How Skype Can Stay Ahead of iChat
Right now, iChat offers everything that skype does. There is audio calling, chat, send files, away messages, available messsages, history, and chat logging.
The one thing that iChat has up on Skype is their video system.
Video conferencing on iChat includes video effects, which are live effects that manipulate the output video for the receiving client in the video chat. But this is far from the advantage iChat brings to the video conferencing table.
The real thing that seperates it is something so fundamental. Something that Skype should have implemented ages ago. Something that countless users have requested in the Skype forums: video conferencing. iChat has it.
iChat offers full video conferencing with up to 3 people, but there is a limitation: it needs to be on the leopard ( OSX 10.5) operating system. This is where Skype can beat iChat. Due to the fact that you must have leopard in order to use this feature in ichat, and that iChat is bundled with an OS X distribution, Skype’s modular client allows multiplatform installability on any platform. This means that if Skype can get their video chat conferencing act together, they can give this ability to anyone who chooses to download their software, enabling the millions of users (right now I see 12 million online) to be able to use skype for more than a call-your-girlfriend-while-at-college skype call. With an implementation of video conferencing, Skype would be one of the most powerful and versatile communications software for business computing everywhere.
Conference meetings could be indepenedent of physical location. Thus, opening up skype to the business market in ways thousands of times greater than their current market share.
Come on Skype, its been long enough.