iChat (previously iChat AV) is a discontinued

instant messaging Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of synchronous computer-mediated communication involving the immediate ( real-time) transmission of messages between two or more parties over the Internet or another computer network. Originally involv ...

software application Application software is any computer program that is intended for end-user use not computer operator, operating, system administration, administering or computer programming, programming the computer. An application (app, application program, sof ...

developed by

Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Comput ...

for use on its

Mac OS X macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

. It supported instant text messaging over

XMPP Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (abbreviation XMPP, originally named Jabber) is an Open standard, open communication protocol designed for instant messaging (IM), presence information, and contact list maintenance. Based on XML (Ext ...

Jingle A jingle is a short song or tune used in advertising and for other commercial uses. Jingles are a form of sound branding. A jingle contains one or more hooks and meanings that explicitly promote the product or service being advertised, usually ...

OSCAR Oscar, OSCAR, or The Oscar may refer to: People and fictional and mythical characters * Oscar (given name), including lists of people and fictional characters named Oscar, Óscar or Oskar * Oscar (footballer, born 1954), Brazilian footballer ...

( AIM) protocol, audio and video calling, and screen-sharing capabilities. It also allowed for local network discussion with users discovered through Bonjour protocols. In OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, iChat was replaced by Messages for chat and

FaceTime FaceTime is a proprietary videotelephony product developed by Apple. FaceTime is available on supported iOS mobile devices running iOS 4 and later and Mac computers that run and later. FaceTime supports any iOS device with a forward-facin ...

for video calling.

History

iChat was first released in August 2002 as part of Mac OS X 10.2. It featured integration with the Address Book and Mail applications and was the first officially supported AIM client that was native to Mac OS X (the first-party AIM application at the time was still running in Classic emulation). One episode of the first season of the

HBO Home Box Office (HBO) is an American pay television service, which is the flagship property of namesake parent-subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is based a ...

dramedy series ''

Entourage An entourage () is an informal group or band of people who are closely associated with a (usually) famous, notorious, or otherwise notable individual. The word can also refer to: Arts and entertainment * L'entourage, French hip hop / rap collecti ...

'' had Eric Murphy having an iChat conversation with Ari Gold, marking the first time that this application was used on a television series.

Interface

iChat incorporated Apple's Aqua interface and used

speech bubble Speech balloons (also speech bubbles, dialogue balloons, or word balloons) are a graphic convention used most commonly in comic books, comics, and cartoons to allow words (and much less often, pictures) to be understood as representing a charac ...

s and pictures to personify the online chatting experience. With iChat, green (available), yellow (idle), and red (away) icons could be displayed next to the name of each connected user on the buddy list. For color-blind users, this could be altered to show different shapes, circle (available), triangle (idle), and squares (away), to illustrate status with shape rather than color.

iChat AV

In June 2003, Apple announced iChat AV, the second major version of iChat. It added

video Video is an Electronics, electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving picture, moving image, visual Media (communication), media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, whi ...

and

audio Audio most commonly refers to sound, as it is transmitted in signal form. It may also refer to: Sound *Audio signal, an electrical representation of sound *Audio frequency, a frequency in the audio spectrum *Digital audio, representation of sound ...

conferencing capabilities based on the industry-standard

Session Initiation Protocol The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is a signaling protocol used for initiating, maintaining, and terminating communication sessions that include voice, video and messaging applications. SIP is used in Internet telephony, in private IP telepho ...

(SIP). The final version of the software was shipped with Mac OS X 10.3 and became available separately on the same day for Mac OS X 10.2.

iChat AV 2

In February 2004,

AOL AOL (formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City, and a brand marketed by Yahoo! Inc. The service traces its history to an online ...

introduced

AOL Instant Messenger AOL Instant Messenger (AIM, sometimes stylized as aim) was an instant messaging and presence information computer program created by AOL. It used the proprietary OSCAR protocol, OSCAR instant messaging protocol and the TOC protocol to allow us ...

(AIM) version 5.5 for Windows users, which enabled video, but not audio, chats over the AIM protocol and was compatible with Apple's iChat AV. On the same day, Apple released a public beta of iChat AV 2.1 to allow Mac OS X users to video conference with AIM 5.5 users.

iChat AV 3

In June 2004,

Steve Jobs Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American businessman, inventor, and investor best known for co-founding the technology company Apple Inc. Jobs was also the founder of NeXT and chairman and majority shareholder o ...

announced that the next version of iChat AV would be included with

Mac OS X 10.4 Mac OS X Tiger (version 10.4) is the 5th major release of macOS, Apple's desktop and server operating system for Mac computers. Tiger was released to the public on April 29, 2005, for US$129.95 as the successor to Mac OS X 10.3 Panther. Incl ...

. iChat AV 3 provided additional support to allow up to four people in a single video conference and ten people in an audio conference. Additionally, the new version of iChat used the H.264/AVC codec, which offered superior quality video compared to the older

H.263 H.263 is a video compression standard originally designed as a low-bit-rate compressed format for videotelephony. It was standardized by the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) in a project ending in 1995/1996. It is a member of the H.26x fa ...

codec used in previous versions. This release supported the XMPP protocol, which could be directly used to connect to

Google Talk Google Talk was an instant messaging service that provided both text and voice communication. The instant messaging service was variously referred to colloquially as Gchat, Gtalk, or Gmessage among its users. Google Talk was also the name o ...

and indirectly be used to connect to users of services including

Facebook Chat Messenger, formerly known as Facebook Messenger, is an American proprietary software, proprietary instant messaging service developed by Meta Platforms. Originally developed as Facebook Chat in 2008, the Client software, client application ...

, and

Yahoo! Messenger Yahoo! Messenger (sometimes abbreviated Y!M) was an instant messaging client and associated protocol created and formerly operated by Yahoo!. Yahoo! Messenger was provided free of charge and could be downloaded and used with a generic "Yahoo I ...

. However, support was limited as it did not support several common XMPP features such as account creation,

service discovery Service discovery is the process of automatically detecting devices and services on a computer network. It aims to reduce the manual configuration effort required from users and administrators. A service discovery protocol (SDP) is a network pro ...

and full multi-user chat support. iChat 3 included the Bonjour protocol (previously called Rendezvous) which allowed iChat to automatically find other users with iChat Bonjour messaging enabled on the local network. In October 2005, iChat received support for encrypted communications, but only for paid subscribers of .Mac (later

MobileMe MobileMe (branded iTools between 2000 and 2002; .Mac until 2008) is a discontinued subscription business model, subscription-based collection of online services and software offered by Apple Inc. All services were gradually transitioned to and e ...

and currently

iCloud iCloud is the personal cloud service of Apple Inc. Launched on October 12, 2011, iCloud enables users to store and Data synchronization, sync data across devices, including Apple Mail, Calendar (Apple), Apple Calendar, Photos (Apple), Apple Ph ...

) service. These features were part of iChat 3.1, released as part of the Mac OS X v10.4.3 update. This version also added support for XMPP multi-user chat. In March 2007, Apple released the Mac OS X v10.4.9 update, which allowed

USB video device class The USB video device class (also USB video class or UVC) is a USB device class that describes devices capable of streaming video like webcams, digital camcorders, transcoders, analog video converters and still-image cameras. The latest revi ...

(UVC) cameras to be used with iChat, rather than FireWire cameras only. This allowed a wider range of cameras to be used with iChat AV.

iChat 4

iChat 4, the first version release under iChat's current name, was introduced as a part of Mac OS X 10.5 and received new features including: iChat Theater (inspired by ChatFX a product from Plum Amazing), Backdrops, and Screen Sharing. iChat Theater allowed users to share any file supported by

Quick Look Quick Look is a quick preview feature developed by Apple Inc. which was introduced in its operating system Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. The feature was announced at the Worldwide Developers Conference on Jun. 11, 2007. While macOS's Finder has alway ...

, including photos, Keynote presentations, and movies, over a video chat session. Backdrops allowed users to insert movies or photos as a backdrop in video chats. Screen Sharing allowed two users of Mac OS X Leopard to have control of the same desktop and work collaboratively. Minor features in the new release included multiple logins, animated icons, use of

Photo Booth A photo booth is a vending machine or modern kiosk that contains an automated, usually coin-operated, camera and film processor. Today, the vast majority of photo booths are digital. History The patent for the first automated photography m ...

effects in live video chat, and tabbed chats.

iChat 5

iChat 5.0, released with

Mac OS X Snow Leopard Mac OS X Snow Leopard (version 10.6) (also referred to as OS X Snow Leopard) is the seventh major release of macOS, Apple's desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers. Snow Leopard was publicly unveiled on June 8, 2009, at A ...

, converted iChat to a

64-bit In computer architecture, 64-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are 64 bits wide. Also, 64-bit central processing units (CPU) and arithmetic logic units (ALU) are those that are based on processor registers, a ...

application, reduced the bandwidth required for 640×480 video chats, and upgraded iChat Theater to the same resolution.

iChat 6

iChat 6.0, released with Mac OS X 10.7, added support for Yahoo Messenger account and allowed iChat users to have text, voice and video chats using their Yahoo Mail accounts. It also supported third-party plugins, eventually allowing other protocols to be compatible with the software. iChat 6 was the last iChat version; in

OS X Mountain Lion OS X Mountain Lion (version 10.8) is the ninth major release of macOS, Apple Inc.'s desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers. OS X Mountain Lion was released on July 25, 2012, for purchase and download through the Mac App S ...

, it was replaced by Messages. The final release, iChat 6.0.1, was published on February 1, 2012.

Messages

As part of the OS X Mountain Lion preview, Apple announced on February 16, 2012, that its

OS X macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

messaging client would be Messages, and that it would support the

iMessage iMessage is an instant messaging service developed by Apple Inc. and launched in 2011. iMessage functions exclusively on Apple platforms – including iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and visionOS – as part of Apple ecosystem, Apple's approach t ...

protocol, making it compatible with the iOS client. Messages also incorporates

support. Apple made Messages immediately available as a downloadable beta version for use on Mac OS X 10.7.

Supported protocols

iChat's AIM support was fully endorsed by

, and used their official implementation of the AIM OSCAR protocol. Using a XMPP transport, iChat could serve as a

client Client(s) or The Client may refer to: * Client (business) * Client (computing), hardware or software that accesses a remote service on another computer * Customer or client, a recipient of goods or services in return for monetary or other valuable ...

for

, ICQ and

. iChat could also integrate

contacts into the XMPP pane.

References

External links

Official website
(archived) {{DEFAULTSORT:Ichat Apple Inc. software MacOS instant messaging clients Videotelephony AIM (software) clients XMPP clients MacOS MacOS-only software made by Apple Inc. 2002 software Defunct instant messaging clients