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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.
Quite some old news.
This was very well covered in the first documentation released on MacOS X Server 10.4...
Seeing has how the next version of Server is going to have a built-in Jabber/iChat/XMPP server (scroll down to the "Your Very Own iChat and Blog Servers" section).
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!
more importantly, will it a ffect Jabber's overall share of the IM market?
Karma: T-rexcellent.
For those unaware, iChat has always used the Jabber protocols for its local (Rendezvous-initiated) messaging. This just dusts off and reveals full-fledged support for Jabber.
Why Jabber? Because Jabber is a completely open IM standard. The IETF has accepted the core Jabber protocols and has standardized them as XMPP, an open IM protocol.
i chat already uses jabber in the local im feature using rendezevous (sp?). that also removes the need for a central server since it uses rendezevous for discovery of other hosts.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
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!
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
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
Additionally:
So, yes, we've known since WWDC that iChat will be able to speak to standard Jabber servers, mostly because Apple will be shipping a Jabber server with Tiger Server.
There's a lot of cool stuff in Tiger Server, and that page is with checking out.
While an open IM application can be useful in a defined group or organization for messaging, obviously, a standalone IM application is of limited utility on its own if you're already communicating with people on other IM networks.
This is why Jabber supports "transports", server components that allow seamless connectivity with AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, MSN, SMS services, and even IRC..
Will this include support for video and audio chat?
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.
While Apple and the Mac desktop account for a rather small percentage of desktop users, I firmly believe that Apple has a way of promoting technologies LONG before they become popular. They went all USB years ahead of many of the other manufacturers (in fact, some are still catching up).
Apple has a way of moving technologies from the geek realm to the "average joe" realm in a very short period of time. I would also suggest that you applaud Apple for using yet another standard vs. creating their own in house brand or simply succumbing to the power of Redmond.
iChat AV 2.1 can videoconference with AOL Instant Messenger 5.5.
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
Apple continues to incorporate open software and strike that fine balance between the usefully proprietary (hardware, GUI) and interoperable standards. The MS dweebs that run the IT where I work keep frowning and scratching their heads when I explain that this or that new Apple implementations of free (beer/speech) software (zeroconf, LDAP, Apache, SSH, etc.) makes their lives easier and more secure. This just helps my arguments.
Nice thing about Jabber is that it's decentralized and has so much room to be elaborated into some nifty applications that go way beyond text messaging. I was annoyed at Apple for nailing iChat so firmly to AIM, and now it looks like they're fulfilling some of the promise behind having a default chat client that isn't tied to an Apple network.
Damn those pesky terrorists
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 didn't say the poster used it correctly, since they didn't.
However, his simplistic view of "one is a noun, the other a verb" effects no useful change in people's English understanding, as it prevents them from understanding the way an effective use of the verb "to effect" can affect an English sentence.
You dig?
---
Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
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.
USB? IEEE 1394? 802.11? Touchpads on laptops? Quiet computing?
It's been on Apple's website since WWDC 2004.
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
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.
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?
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 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
Dear Dr. Hogie,
Thank you for your complaints about Jabber. Please read the file WARRANTY. Jabber comes with no warranty, express or implied. As such, it is your responsibility to use it in an appropriate fashion.
For more details, please RTFM, STFU, and STFW.
Sincerely,
The Open Source Community
Since Jabber already has market share, this move by Apple will not Effect (verb: to create) a share for Jabber. However, including Jabber in iChat may Affect (verb: to influence) the market that already exists.
OTOH - The Effect (noun: influence) of the ignorant substitution of inappropriate words Affects (verb: to influence) your ability to write clearly. Learn to the difference between english vowels, or you'll be condemned to confuse a cat with a cot (or Al with an eel)
-- "At Microsoft, quality is job 1.1" -- PC Magazine, Nov. 1994
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.
Have you tried http://www.jabberdoc.org/?
For Windows Miranda is nice. On Linux I use GAIM -- it works well and is easy to use.
CenterICQ
;) I have connections to all the major services, a slashdot RSS, and any other RSS feeds I find interesting on our shell server at our data center, and it never skips a beat.
;)
- Cross Platform
- It supports server hosted friends list
- Starts up quickly
- Supports AIM, MSN, ICQ, YIM, Jabber, RSS, Gadu-Gadu, IRC, and LiveJournal
- It's free as in speech (GNU)
AND
It can be put into a screen on a server, you can detach, then simply ssh into the server from a different location and reconnect to your screen as though you never left. I do this all the time.
FYI, if this interests you, contact me for a shell account.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
'nuf said
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!
I wish they had posted Perl scripts -- all the comments that I read merely said "I used This::Library and got it working. It's really easy."
That being said, I did unmerge jabberd1.4 and got jabberd2.0s3 up and running this morning after posting that comment, and the experience is much better. Changes I make to the MySQL database are picked up by the clients, whereas changes I made to the xdb files in 1.4 were overwritten by the clients.
I just hate using non-final software in a production environment.
--DrH, the Sandwich with the Ph.D.
Jabberdoc is helpful, but it won't do anything for this guy: he's not looking for documentation of a feature, he's looking for a feature that doesn't exist in any of the current server implementations.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
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
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
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.
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?
"...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