IChat

iChat is a third party AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) client, developed by Apple Computer for the Mac OS X platform and first released with Mac OS X 10.2 on August 24, 2002. Fully endorsed by AOL, it uses their official implementation of the AIM protocol, as opposed to other third party AIM clients which use reverse engineered versions of the protocol.

Description
It bears a brushed metal interface and uses speech bubbles and pictures that some advocates claim personify the online chatting experience.

History
In June 2003, Apple Inc. announced iChat AV Public Beta, a new version of iChat that added voice and video chat capabilities. It also introduced the iSight camera, designed specifically for use with iChat AV. These capabilities are based on the industry-standard, but not yet widely adopted, Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) for and. The final version of the software was shipped with Mac OS X 10.3 and became available separately on the same day for users of Mac OS X 10.2 for USD 29.95. Apple eventually discontinued sale of iChat AV separately; it can now only be acquired through Panther or with a new Mac.

In February 2004, America Online introduced AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) version 5.5 for Windows-PC users. This version allowed video (but not voice) chats over the AIM protocol and was compatible with Apple's iChat AV. On the same day, Apple released iChat AV 2.1 Public Beta to allow Mac OS X users to video conference with AIM 5.5 users.

On June 28 at the 2004 Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple CEO Steve Jobs revealed the next version of iChat AV to be included with Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger). This version supported up to four people in a video conference and ten people in an audio conference. Additionally, video conferencing used H.264/AVC encoding, which offered better quality than the previous H.263 codec. This release also supported the Jabber protocol.

On June 11 at the 2007 Worldwide Developers Conference, Jobs presented an updated version of iChat for the nearly-complete Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) which introduced "iChat Theater", allowing users to share photos, presentations, videos, and files during a group video chat.

On June 8 at the 2000 Worldwide Developers Conference, iChat was revealed to have been updated to 64-bit support for Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard).

Replacement
iChat AV was superseded by FaceTime for Mac, which was announced in October 2010. Apple's reliance on the AIM protocol for instant messaging was replaced by its own iMessage service, which was launched for iOS 5 in October 2011 and Mac OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) in 2012.