When iChat AV was released with Mac OS X Tiger, I was assumed by the demos of Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer, but didn’t really see how this would become mainstream. Sure a few of my friends have web cams, but the majority of people in my opinion still use standard instant messaging over video messaging. Recently video messaging has become more popular with supporters such as MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, AOL instant messenger, Apple, etc. I knew a few people that had Creative and Logitech cameras and a friend of mine purchased an iSight. She really liked it and encouraged me to purchase a camera of my own. I went to the Apple store and noticed it was a tad more expensive than some of the other branded cameras and I had debating using a standard MiniDV camera or purchase the iSight. Since my usual chat client of choice is iChat AV I went ahead and purchased the iSight.

As always, Apple makes a pretty good effort into putting quality time into the packaging of its products. The iSight comes in the standard white and black box most of its other products such as the iPod come in. The iSight package comes with the camera itself, several mounting brackets, a firewire cable, and a small plastic case for the camera. I swap between using the iSight on a Powerbook G4 and a Mac Mini. Both machines are able to use the camera equally well. When I plug the camera in and turn it on, by opening the lense, iChat AV pops right up and there are indicators to tell me that I am in video mode as well as others in my buddy list who are capable of video messaging. I decided to start a chat with a friend and the video popped right up. We are both using Cable connections that are relatively fast in our areas. Sound and video quality were very good and we did not notice any dropped connections. From iSight to iSight over iChat AV the camera works well. I did notice while talking to some PC users over AIM that some firewall configurations needed to be modified and even then sometimes we could not connect at all.

The only problems I really had were connecting to PC users and I wasn’t really sure if that was the fault of the user or different messaging programs or just improper network configurations. Sometimes it worked and other times it just didn’t. For the most part when it did work sound and video was adequate for the task.

The camera is a bit pricey, but it works on the Apple side. In my opinion I think video chat is starting to catch on, but it is still a little before its time. Since I haven’t found anything to make the camera work with the PC, I have just used it with my Macs. It works seamlessly with iChat AV. I would recommend this camera for Mac OS X users who use iChat AV especially those who chat mostly with other Mac users.