Sillyness, werd

I’ve tried out google talk and it’s prettey impressive I guess, thanks for that tutorial on iChat I was wondering how to do that. I’ve also tried calling on Windows to Windows which works fine but I can’t seem to get Google Talk to Skype to work, and also I cannot make calls from Google talk to iChat.

apparently (as I read somewhere), Google will announce the public availability of Gmail soon as well, so invites will then be useless.

and please let’s be angry at them not just for the absence of the Mac version, but also the Linux version (which should not be to hard to develop together, seeing as OS X is based on a *nix variant. ;)

My bro-in-law accepted an invite and we tested both the chat and call functions out. It works great.

I’ve been wondering when this would be released. Thanks for posting this.

danithew,
No problem, I know that alot of people were wating for this.

Colin F.,
I had assumed that audio worked, since it works with the Jabber protocol, so I didn’t feel it neccessary to post about it specifically.

Stefan,
Good point, it was early and my mac geekiness was all up, but you are absolutely right. Which reminds me, I have seen a number of people calling google IM a Skype Killer. I don’t think so, after all Skype is available for all 3 platforms (win32, Linux and Mac) and allows you to call an actual phone, not just another computer.

Colin D. D.,
While I agree with some of your points, I still think it is irritating that google has once again locked out non-windows users from thier apps. What if I just really wanted to use google’s IM client… I can’t.

From a company that pushes the world view ‘do no evil’ this is a smack in the face… yet again.

Where is my google world, or google desktop? No where and probably never will be.

And technically I think that google said, ‘instead of doing the right thing and providing an app for Linux and Mac, we will just make someone else do it. Less work for us and more users, Huzzah!’.

Now if the recent rumours of a partnership between Apple and Google play out, I would be stoked to see the second release from them, after the google.com/iTunes integration, be an enhanced version of iChat that takes advantage of all of the google IM features.

But I won’t hold my breath.

So, got a Google chat name?

jennifer.ledbetter for me.

Now if the recent rumours of a partnership between Apple and Google play out, I would be stoked to see the second release from them, after the google.com/iTunes integration, be an enhanced version of iChat that takes advantage of all of the google IM features.

But I won’t hold my breath.

What rumors!?! Please tell me all you know! :D

well, i’ve been using google talk for over 24 hours now on windows, but yet to use the voice chat. i love it. good to see some competition.

just remember that this is a beta stage for google talk and a mac/linix version “may” be released soon.

It’s still very barebones though. Nothing much to shout about as yet.

However, I think your anger towards Google will dwindle when you think about it this way.

Google has just release an open source instant messaging network. The IM clients we all know and love, for Mac, Windows or Linux, are all considered 3rd party clients. Each of them have been faced with the daunting task of connecting to AOLs IM Network for many years now. I remember when Trillian, my Windows IM client of choice, was releasing point releases every week or so just to keep up with the protocol. The same goes for Adium, and GAIM or even iChat AV if it wasn’t backed by a public company like Apple.

Google, on the other hand, has said “come use our protocol and our user-base”. So, over the next few months you will see these 3rd party clients moving from supporting AIM to the Nth, to supporting Jabber and - in fact - Google’s rendition of the Jabber protocol.

If you look at the “other clients” page on Google, the page does not say that it is absolutely impossible for 3rd party apps to use the audio feature, or even the email notification feature (something built into the Jabber protocol which is probably a huge reason why Google chose it).

In fact, last night I used audio over Jabber with someone using iChat AV. So it does indeed “work”. There is a link on my site in the comments that leads to someone that used video (although I have not been able to test that feature).

I’m not angry at Google. In fact, I say “Thank you Google for finally allowing competition on the IM front, but giving us an incredibly robust IM protocol with a great userbase.”