Apple Computer Inc. and America Online Inc. on Thursday announced a new level of compatibility between the companies" instant messaging applications, iChat AV and AIM 5.5 for the PC. With updates released today PC and Mac users will enjoy the benefit of video conferencing between the two platforms. One industry analyst said today that Apple stands to benefit greatly from the relations as it moves out of its niche market. "With the introduction of iChat AV in Mac OS X Panther and the iSight camera, Apple revolutionized the way people communicate with each other over the Internet," said Philip Schiller, Apple"s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, in a statement. "Now iChat AV users can video conference with their AOL buddies around the world who use PCs."
Kurt Knight, Internet Product Manager at Apple, told MacCentral today that the ability to video chat with other users, regardless of the platform, was one of the top requested features for iChat AV. iChat AV, like Safari 1.2 released earlier this week, is available for Panther only -- leaving users of Mac OS X Jaguar or earlier without a way to upgrade to some of the new applications from Apple. Knight didn"t say if Jaguar was able to handle the new updates from a technical standpoint, but offered that Apple was "really focused on pushing forward and innovating" on Mac OS X Panther.