Ralph Johns

iChat Information Pages

 


These iChat Version 1 pages are coloured Blue and have the iChat 1 icon on them that was in use at the time, so you know where your are.

iChat Icon

iChat (Version 1)

iChat made it's it way into the Apple Application fold in about 2003 with the first version. We are talking at the time of Jaguar (10.2.x).

At that point it was just a basic AIM client. That means that Apple developed an application that worked with other Clients that use the AIM Service. They came to an agreement with AIM that @mac.com email IDs would be recognized by the AIM Servers as valid AIM screen names (See iChat 4 section about changes to @mac.com/.mac). To be clear, this version does Text Chats, Group chats and File Sending (including Pictures in chats) only.

So iChat (ver 1) can Text chat (including Group chats) and send Files and Pictures to other AIM based clients.

That's about it for a description. See the Links below for the next parts.

As with other versions of iChat the Password for any Screen Name has to be 16 Characters or less to be accepted by the AIM Servers for a Log in. As @mac passwords can be longer, this needs to be watched.

Functions, Pictures and How-tos

Other Help

As well as these Pages here, help can be found at the Apple Discussion Boards This link is to the Front Index page.

A Word about Navigating the Apple Discussion Boards

The Boards are hierarchical. You can see from the URL of the page linked that it has the word "category" as part of the URL. The links onwards to the Forums are shown with folders on the Index page. What you will find is that there is often another category level to go through. For instance iChat AV links to here which still has"category" in the URL. At the top of this page are two links but they do not show folders at this Level. (below is a list of Topics to have the most recent posts in them - not all categories do this) These are to the actual Forums (iChat 1 is with iChat 2 and Earlier) where "forum" appears in the URL.

You can not post until you are in a Forum where the New Topic link is or have clicked on a Topic. You also have to be registered with Apple. Apple uses a common ID for iTunes, the Store and the Discussion - so you may have one already.

©  Ralph Johns
Page created 7th October 2008.

Information Block

This site is about iChat from Version 1 through to iChat 4.x.x

It has a mixture of basic info and problem solving help.

The setions below will change for Specifics about info on the page on view

If you find these pages helpful please Donate to help keep them up to date

About This Page

This page is about the basic info about iChat 1 - the non A/V one.

My intent is to create several pages with very simple information as a History on the whole to later versions that are in use today. Therefore there tends to be little problem solving info here.

Rather the typing long pages I have separated off Functions, How-to's and Pictures from a page describing what is different about each version.

Notes about changes.

iChat valid Screen Names could be username@mac.com (An .mac ID). This has somewhat changed in July 2008 when the .mac service became MobileMe.

Apple have moved to using the moniker "MobileMe" for what used to be .Mac.

New accounts with this service get Email addresses/IDs that end @me.com instead of @mac.com

In later versions of the OS at least, clicking on the .Mac item in System Preferences runs an Update that changes all the apps that have links and drop down windows or text entry points to include the MobileMe option where required.

Compatibility

Confirmed to work with Win/IE 5.5 and later (should work in 5.0, but not confirmed), Firefox 2, Safari 3, Opera 9, iCab 3.02 and later, Mac/IE 5, Netscape 6 and later

Old browsers (IE version 4 or earlier, Netscape 4 or earlier) should only see a text-based page which, while not the prettiest option, is still entirely usable.