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Next iChat version to include Jabber support
SeaFox writes "A couple of stories about new features in the next version of Mac OS X have revealed that the new iChat 3.0 will include support for Jabber. With businesses able to host their own messaging servers behind the firewall and use it with Apple's included IM client, will this effect Jabber's overall share of the IM market?"
Is one IM client supporting all widely used standards while NOT taking 5 minutes to start up like my ICQ :). I'd be willing to pay money for such a thing.
Is there an IM client that supports ICQ functions like server hosted friends lists? Preferrably one that is available under linux and windows.
those "couple of stories" both come from a rumor site. Grain of salt, and all that... of course, if those stories suddenly go away after a Cupertino landshark sees them, they might be a bit more believable.
Come to the University of Mars! Classes starting soon!
Jabber's slowly been infiltrating the office, and has proven itself to be really handy. It's nice to be able to keep your IM server on the friendly side of your firewall. iChat/OS X Server publicly and proudly supporting Jabber is a great step forward!
Apple has created may ripples...3.5 in discs, the mouse, on board ethernet, plug and play, video editing, etc. You know the routine. Apple could very easily survive and thrive with its current market share and still have a huge impact on the industry. Just like Mercedes and BMW, market share really doesn't mean a whole lot as to the viability of a company. PS. Did you run your Windoze adware/spyware/virus programs today?
-- I fart in your general direction.
Please, please, please include GPG support (a la gabber), Apple. Business have been wanting secure instant messaging for a long time -- I'd like it too.
May we never see th
Oh wow that's so important thanks for pointing it out! I had NO idea what was meant by that sentence until I read your comment. Hah, effect, those silly editors! Man, you are a life saver, I missed the WHOLE point of the submission until you pointed that out. And it's SO great you got modded up so I wouldn't miss your post!
This is another example of Apple using open standards to leverage their platform, and for that, one must applaud their efforts. Apple looks more like a friend of Linux and the Open Source community more and more as time goes on. Ways Apple Supports Open Standards: iCal (open file format), Safari (built on Open Source code), iTunes (uses open standards MP3 and AAC*), OS X (foundation is open), iChat (jabber support)... * - OK, not 100%, but better then others.
This could be the most common error online.
Come on people get it right. EFFECT is a NOUN.
Liberty.
significance to or impact on the market is not directly related to market share. apple has had a significantly disproportionate impact on the industry relative to its market share because, unlike most PC hardware or software companies, they represent consistent innovation. their hardware drives other companies to keep up (talking total system design here, not CPUs, although that might still be true). look at the push for adoption of firewire and USB. or the slow decline of the floppy. or A/V IM.
apple applied the same history of innovation they've had in the computer world to digital music - innovation wasn't new to them. the reason they've been so much more successful there than in the computer market (using the limited definition of success == market share) is because there was a dramatically smaller installed base; the innovation was more apparent, and the cost to conversion wasn't really an issue, as it is when trying to convince someone to switch from an existing product/service.
now compare this with the situation with IM. i used to work a lot with high school and jr. high kids in the states, and nearly all of them have AIM (not just IM - AIM). it's a crucial social tool, and the fact that all the AIM stuff is interoperable is critical for them. apple's not going to have any more success in this market (using the same limited definition of success) than they have in the computer market, unless they can work out a cross-connecting deal with AOL (which isn't out of the question; note that the @mac.com addresses are the only reserved domain handed out in the AIM address space). but in business... that's a whole other story. we use AIM at work pretty heavily, especially between our US and GB offices. but when i mention this to friends and colleagues in other companies, it's nearly unheard of. many companies have explicit restrictions against using it... and often for exactly the reasons that a in-house server would resolve.
i'm not making any predictions for what impact this will have, but do keep in mind that 1) impact != market share, 2) the world != teenagers, 3) network effects are more powerful than the effect of an isolated change, and 4) just because something doesn't solve a problem you have doesn't mean it doesn't solve a problem somebody else (like businesses) has.
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
With businesses able to host their own messaging servers behind the firewall and use it with Apple's included IM client, will this effect Jabber's overall share of the IM market?
You assume that ther are enough "mac" computers in business to affect market share? Some companies are hip enough to use Macs in business. Many many many are not.
If MozillaFireFoxBird had built-in support for Jabber instead of having to download a special client, Jabber might find its way into more homes and businesses. Like the US economy, Mozilla is starting to gain some traction.
1. Pixar isn't all Apple. 2. Jabber is an _open_protocol_, with many clients available for many different OSes.
"Apple has created may ripples...snip...Just like Mercedes and BMW"
Agreed. They all provide the privilage of over paying for something. But then again you just don't get that same status with a VW or Honda, just the knowledge that you saved a boat load of money.
P.S reply: didn't need to, my Linux machine and BSD server are well protected, but thanks for asking.
Not to mention that most of the client software is
too nasty to use in a work situation. For work we don't need kitchen sink software just simple messaging. The whole jabber protocol is cool but if tools for managing it in a sane way do not exist it just becomes a nightmare.
Got Code?
I use AIM, Yahoo Messenger, and Jabber (all via Trillian) and Jabber is by far the most featureless of the three. Where's video or audio IM, buddy icons, etc. ?
What's being touted here is that Jabber can function as groupware for intranet messaging, and that it is a viable option for IM in the enterprise. But even for Internet messaging, it has a very attractive feature: encryption.
Trillian Pro offers 128-bit Blowfish encryption for ICQ, but that requires both parties to use Trillian Pro (a non-free Windows client).
On the other hand, Jabber is more readily extensible, and already offers both SSL and the somewhat SSH-like JEP-0116 encryption scheme.
I know some international business people that have already adopted Jabber for its privacy features. Jabber may never take hold among teens and "tweens", but it has a chance among other groups, such as Internet professionals who (believe it or not) conduct business via instant messaging.
It seems that with Apple's public comments about the enhanced iChat to ship with Tiger they are pushing greater adoption of iChat as a communication tool. With text chatting, file exchange, audio {with up to 10 participants} & video {with up to 4 participants} conferencing it seem logical.
If Apple would develop the Windows counterpart of iChat and include it with the iSight, they would be able to further entrench QuickTime into the Windows market (I'm assuming that QuickTime is needed to pull off the multiparty audio & video conferencing) and offer their digital lifestyle solutions to the widest possible market.
Offtopic? Seriously people. An on topic reply to an off topic post is not off topic. And besides, iso is right.
Random is the New Order.
Yes, hopefully Apple will help bring some polish and increased credibility to the Jabber world. I'd also like to see them working with the existing Jabber community to build future applications/protocols on top of Jabber. Jabber at its heart is just an XML messaging system. So get some creative minds together and we will see some really interesting new applications of the Jabber framework.
Personally, I like the idea of using Jabber for communicating with and between software agents. People have already made things like email notifiers, but you could take it beyond IM-like functionality. Imagine having temperature sensors around your sever room (or house, or outside) and a Jabber client/agent that regularly sends out temperature readings to it's "friends". You then have some applet on your desktop that is also a Jabber client/agent. It takes these readings and displays them in a little window (or docklet, etc). It would all be very simple for both agents/clients. One sends out formatted data to subscribed "friends" (there's already an IRC-like group-chat schema in Jabber), and the other displays it. Most of the coordination would be in the server(s). And if the Jabber server is visible from the public internet, then you could be anywhere in the world monitoring the temperatures of your server room (or house). This is what Jabber offers.
Why should people running Microsoft's service have some right to connect to a service owned by another company?
There's no reason except that tech people are a bunch of hippies.
Well, actually, there are a number of other pretty solid business reasons as it turns out.
The main one is the network effect - if you combine two huge pools of IM customers, then the total becomes more useful than the sum of its parts. If you have five different companies all with different IM's, then you'll get fewer users than if you just have one big pool that everyone can use. Fewer users, means less revenue (assuming an IM provider is able to eek revenue out of users somehow!)
Did hippies steal your cat or something? Not quite sure where that would enter into things.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I think the mere fact that there exists an entire Web site dedicated to providing documentation for the product testifies to what a lousy product it is.
I write in my journal
Jabber's model is excellent. It's very similar to the email distribution model where there is a network of servers and then each server has a bunch of clients hanging off it. Although email has a few security issues, the general model is sound: it's decentralised, and yet it still makes efficient use of the network unlike the current "peer-to-peer" apps which generate an extra network over the network usually with little regard to the underlying topology and proceed to shove redundant data everywhere.
The difference between Jabber and the email system, though, is that the email system happened during the early days of the Internet. Consequently, when it got enough momentum for commercial ISPs to appear providing access to homes it was a given that every ISP "had to" provide customers with an email account and run email servers to handle the customer's mail.
If Jabber had come along at the same time, it too would be one of those things ISPs just provide with every account. Some ISPs would even let customers have multiple Jabber IDs per account like they used to do with email addresses to differentiate themselves from the competition.
The problem is that, with a few notable exceptions, the only companies that actually get paid for Internet services are ISPs. There is no viable business model to provide free Jabber services just as there is no money in free email with POP3 and IMAP access. The availability of Jabber is limited to geeks who set up servers of varying scales and people who know said geeks. The only way a commercial Jabber service could be provided is to use a proprietary protocol for client-to-server communication and then bridge that onto the Jabber network at the server side. This is comparable to web-based email which uses proprietary HTML to encode the data, meaning you get the service on their terms and not on yours. (usually one of these terms is the presence of advertising)
On the other hand, if every viable comsumer ISP provided customers with a Jabber server and at least one Jabber ID it would have flourished. These days, though, there is no way to add new "required services" to ISPs and they are frantically trying to shed the few they have now. (Notice the decline in ISPs providing USENET servers and customer webspace)
It sucks, but there is no way at this point in the game to introduce a new distributed and open protocol. There's just no money in distributed and open protocols.