And this is what Apple’s iOS should have been named!
Posts tagged Mac OS X
iChat already exists within Mac OS X and it has since the early iterations of Mac OS X. iChat allows you to do video chat, quite elegantly might I add. So this leads me to wonder why Apple felt the need to create a new piece of software that does half the functionality of an existing piece of an application that already exists within their flagship OS.
Couldn’t they have integrated FaceTime into iChat?
It would have been plausible to add a FaceTime section within the existing buddy list found within iChat.
My guess is that this has to do with branding. Apple wants “FaceTime” to be synonymous with video chatting in much the same way that “iPod” has become synonymous with mp3 player.
So why not just rename the iChat application to FaceTime. Merge both apps and you’ll get the best of both worlds, the ability to converse via text and video. I’m guessing that this will happen in the future. iChat’s ife expectancy has been cut and short. And possibly, with the release of Lion next summer, Apple will finally turn off life support for its flagship chatting application. Or will it?
iChat:
FaceTime:
Based on Apple’s sneak peak of Lion, Mac OS 10.7 will bring some changes to the much adored Dock. It looks like the teeny tiny light that appears whenever an application is active will soon be going extinct.
MacRumors suggests that this might be due to the new “Auto Save” feature, which allows Mac OS 10.7 applications to “resume when launched”, just like its iOS 4 counterpart.
But I like that teeny tiny light. It gives me an at a glance view of what applications are currently open while I am multitasking. Sure, there’s this new thing called Mission Control, but I’ve become accustomed to simply looking at my dock and seeing what is running.
Here’s to hoping that Apple makes the Dock light indicator an option that can be turned on and off within System Preferences.
Mac OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard)
Mac OS 10.7 (Lion)
Photos via MacRumors.
