New Leopard iChat feature

Apple has unveiled a new iChat feature that will make its way into Mac OS X Leopard when the operating system ships in October, noting that 'iChat Theater' will enable applications to communicate with audio and video during an iChat conference. "Since its introduction iChat has become the de facto Instant Messaging client on Mac OS X, allowing users to communicate using text, audio, and even video chat," writes Apple. "The new version of iChat in Leopard opens up these capabilities to other applications on the system, allowing those applications to provide content through an iChat session." The company offers examples, such as a user displaying a photo slide show while chatting with parents and two people collaborating on a document, discussing the details as one person makes changes and the other observes the result. The new features are made possible by a new Instant Message framework that ships with Leopard, allowing developers to access iChat 4.0 features from within applications, according to Apple.

by MacNN Staff