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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?"
Quite some old news.
This was very well covered in the first documentation released on MacOS X Server 10.4...
Because the jabber specs ( and clients ) still need quite a bit more work. While we have a spec for file transfer through a nat'd environment, I have yet to play with a client that can do it effectively and seemlessly. Namely, because the protocol itself could use a little work.
For example, instead of having some random, and unknown, jabber file proxy to enter in, why can't the server offer hints? Someone sets up a jabber server, they are likely to understand how to setup the file proxy needed for it, so have that in the config file as a hint of which proxy to use.
Don't get me wrong, I love jabber, it's just not ready for "prime time", as it were. Although it's more than adequate for local lans where you dont want chat data going out over the internet.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
The question answered would be has iChat had any noticeable effect by AOL on AOL Instant Messenger membership.
I would say it might have an effect on Jabber. Eventhough Apple has a small marketshare, it has a higher percent of that marketshare that are online.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
With a jabber client you don't really need an IM that supports multiple protocols, because that can be done on the jabber server via transports.
In other words, you connect to the jabber server, and the server hooks you up to your msn, icq, yahoo, ect. accounts. You can configure your transports with a client like PSI http://psi.affinix.com
If you don't want to do it that way, gaim http://gaim.sourceforge.net can connect to a host of protocols. Mine starts and connects to six different accounts in about 4 seconds (P-III, slow disc). It supports IRC too...
In KDE you have kopete as well, that does the same thing.
sigaar
Is there a way to do videoconference (or just audio conference) between a Mac and a PC? I haven't found a way yet....
-- Leeeter than leet
Will this include support for video and audio chat?
This will certainly help with Jabber's market share and installed base.
What I'd like to see, though, is a Google branded instant messenger service -- based on Jabber. This would really kick IM up to the next level, and maybe even pressure the other big three to make their systems interoperable, like Internet technologies are supposed to be.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
I've spent the last 3 days at my office attempting to install a Jabber server for internal use. What I want to do is very simple: I merely want to setup IM clients for 20-30 employees, and have their buddy lists controlled by the server itself, so when a new employee is added, all 20-30 existing employees don't have to add them.
Sounds easy right? Obviously you've never used Jabber!
The obvious place for support would appear to be http://jabber.org. But there's no support on that site. Well, maybe jabber.com! Nope, that's a corporate commercial Jabber site. Hmmm, maybe jabberstudio.org! After all, that's where the server software is hosted! Nope, not there either. They have a mailing list where 4-6 different people have asked for help on the same problem . . . and in true Open Source fashion, no one helped them, other than to say, "Well, I've setup a nifty Perl hack to fix that problem . . you just need these 4 libraries and then write your own XML commands.".
Hopefully Apple will put their spit and polish on it and make it usable. In it's current state, Jabber's a pain in the ass to try and configure with absolutely zero documentation to help.
--DrH, the Sandwich with the Ph.D.
I noticed, a while ago, that the iChat Agent (2.x) executable contains the string 'Jabbler' on a few places, so maybe this has been planned for some time?
Nonetheless, this sounds great, and is probably going to give Jabber a significant usage boost. It's sure nice to see Apple support more open technologies.
Sig Nature
Does anyone know what the current state of play is with the Real / Helix funded extensions to Jabber that were supposed to be bringing voice / video to our favourite Instant messanger. I thought it was supposed to be released by now?
Apple use has been skyrocketing in higher education. It used to be that when I went to conferences 90% of the laptops were IBM or Dell running windows. Lately it as been a little more than 50% Powerbooks and iBooks, and the remaining computers are split between Linux and Windows.
Walking around on campus you see a LOT more apple laptops than you used to. The recent public awareness of how grossly insecure Windows is has helped that a lot since I know a quite a few people who went to Apple to escape the monthly system rebuild that was required when they got infected with spyware, viruses, or Trojans. While Windows certainly CAN be secure it is much easier for a non computer geek to keep an OS X box secure. I would say that Apple is poised to possibly invade the corporate world from the ground up as more graduates have expertise in OS X.
This is just my observations though, no marketing data to back that up.
Finkployd
Not quite the same thing. Many (most?) Jabber clients already support SSL connections, but having GPG on top of that provides a different level of protection.
SSL gives you client-server privacy, but the owner of the server can still see what is going on, and if the other party isn't using SSL then the messages will be going to them over plain text anyway. However, with GPG, then you have security between clients. The server owner can't read your messages.
So SSL is good, but only half way there, adding GPG support is necessary for more complete privacy.
Yea, like that USB thing, Firewire, ditching the floppy, colorful computers, photo management software, digital music players, WiFi, bluetooth, video editing, dvd burning. Apple made the first jump on all of those and look where it got them! Nothing! Ha! Nobody will ever try to follow Apple's lead! Bunch of losers!
Apple is a good example of how businesses can maintain a proprietary business model, make money and still use open source software while not violating the spirit of open source. They integrate open source into their products and give their changes back to the community, and they make money from those products. So everyone ends up happy. It's worked out really well for them so far.
Even geekier is bitlbee, an irc gateway to aim/msn/icq/jabber, based on gaim IM code.
Meanwhile, additions to Tiger's [...] "Security" preference panes have unveiled [...] an option to encrypt memory when its being swapped to disk.
:) I guess Apple is taking pointers from Linux users. I found this script to encrypt swap -- what other options are there under Linux? Windows?
Wow, that's paranoia!
I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing. -- Thomas Jefferson
We must applaud that Apple is using open standards for their own good? What's in it for us?
More like the other way around - their contributions (while very welcome) are few and far between.
But not open itself.
But itself totally proprietary, except for WebCore, which is currently primarily usable for cocoa (e.g. proprietary) developers.
iTunes protocol and code is proprietary. OS X uses and relies on proprietary drivers (Broadcom, are you listening?). iChat primarily uses AIM instead of Jabber.
I vaguely remember when Tiger was anounced that they were also kerberizing it. so iChat and their server will be kerberized. It's pretty cool they have kerberized a lot of the stock services on OS X Server. I use OS X Server to host my personal mail and use Mail.app as the client. I really liked the no fuss procedure to get up and running with kerberized mail service. I've come to REALLY like and respect Kerberos. I never really took the time to set Kerberos up using a Linux or Solaris or BSD before but it motivated me to really learn how it works. I'ved added in some non mac hosts to the kerberos keytab(via the CLI. there's no GUI that I know of) now so I can ssh with no passwords entry to, at least so far, a linux, an OpenBSD, and a FreeBSD host. OpenBSD's lack of nss support is a bit of a bummera and damn Solaris is a bugger. I was thinking it might be cool to have OpenLDAP export a NIS map for the OpenBSD host but I haven't looked into it very closely yet.
ok now that getting I'm off on a tangent I'll stop.
jerky
--
What is pirate software? Software for inventory of stolen treasure?
Since Adium (can't speak for Fire & Proteus) is nothing but a nicely done GAIM port, for me it IS GAIM on OS X.
What would be interesting, now, would be to get Adium ported to Linux (and, why not, Windows), using Qt, for instance.
GAIM has a real problem of being ugly, has usuability issues, and lacks the general polish you get with Adium. The Kopete project looks interesting, but it's not there yet : missing buddy icons and file transfers in everything but MSN Messenger - and even there, it has issues with NATs and can't display a MSN picture full size (yes, real people want that).
Has anyone experience in porting Cocoa (Obj-C) apps to Qt?
Instant Karma's gonna get you, Gonna knock you right on the head (John Lennon, 1970)
"...that USB thing, Firewire, ditching the floppy, colorful computers, photo management software, digital music players, WiFi, bluetooth, video editing, dvd burning..."
Hey, whippersnapper, you forgot something... or you're just too young to remember what a huge jolt true cheap WYSIWYG publishing was. THAT was apple's killer app... took MS years... no, decades to catch up on that one.
Damn those pesky terrorists
Hey, come over to the dark side
Fire http://fire.sf.net/ has supported Group chat (on AIM and Yahoo) for YEARS and now supports it on MSN and Jabber as well.
Also, when I finish the AV work I am doing, it will support Video for iChat/AIM/Yahoo. But that will take a bit more time... I am only about 600 hours into the AV project so far...
I need a less time consuming-hobby...