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iChat AV 2.1 and AOL IM 5.5 are friends

Finally, Apple and AOL have both released updated versions of iChat AV and AOL Instant Messenger 5.5, and the video conferencing features of both are compatible with each other! To my knowledge, before today the only instant messenging app that supported cross-platform video conferencing was Yahoo Messenger, and the quality was pretty bad. Besides that, no one uses Yahoo Messenger anyway, so if you wanted to video chat with a Windows user, you had to both download Yahoo Messenger for that purpose alone. Now it’ll be a whole lot easier since iChat users can video chat directly with AOL IM users. I hope the quality is as good as iChat to iChat videoconferencing, which is very very good.

Download the new iChat

Download AOL IM 5.5

Update
I installed the new versions of each software on my Powerbook and the Windows machine here at work and tried it with my USB Webcam, and the quality is definitely not as good as iChat to iChat conferences. It’s not as good as Windows MSN to MSN conferences either. But it’s better than nothing, and it’s nice to have another way to video conference with Windows users at any rate.

Hi,

Would it be possible to connect iChat with Messenger ONLY USING THE PHONE, hence without a video being connected. I did not manage to do this here at home, and wonder now whether it is possible?

You can do audio only with iChat to iChat chats, but I don’t know about AOL. I don’t have a way to test it at the moment either.

Yeah, “Audio Only” chat’s are not not working for me between iChat and Windows AOL IM 5.9 clients
Tried it between two clients and my iChat. Could not “start voice chat” messages both times..