By WILSON ROTHMAN
Apple's mission of late has been to take popular concepts and apply better execution and design. Not only is the iPod a better music player, but its software, iTunes, is a seamless interface for managing songs. The same is true for iSight and iChat, the camera-and-videoconferencing couplet introduced by the company several weeks ago.
Videoconferencing has been around for a long while, and for homes with broadband, it ought to be a fairly straightforward. Nevertheless, there is always a certain "advanced" element that scares away most users. Not so with iSight and iChat, which are nearly as simple as billed. This is partly because the requirement bar is set higher than the competition: not only do you need to be using a Mac, you need to be running OS X Jaguar (v.10.2.5) or higher. You also need an AOL or free AIM account (or the Apple iChat equivalent).
Once you've checked those boxes, you just plug in the camera, launch iChat and scan your buddy list for video-capable pals. Because the camera has a built-in microphone, you can initiate either voice-only or a full video chat. When we tested it, we got fairly decent video — 15 frames per second — and great sound. There's a delay between you talking and your buddy hearing you, but the program uses cell-phone type echo-cancellation software to keep you from getting annoyed.
While the iSight/iChat system is ideal for Mac-happy families scattered across the globe, there are some issues. Primarily, videoconferencing struggles to negotiate network firewall protections. Apple has a good FAQ on how to negotiate overprotective network software.
Even if you don't have a tightly sealed corporate firewall to worry about, there is one other "advanced" setting that might come up: bandwidth limit. During our test — between two homes with cable modems — we had to go into iChat preferences and bring the bandwidth limit down to 200K before it would work properly. In other words, we had to lower the amount of data the software tried to send from moment to moment to keep it from choking.
Simplified? Yes. Problem-free? Not yet. It seems that not even Apple is beyond a little of the old tech troubleshooting. But it's still the most painless videoconferencing I've witnessed to date.
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