Sometimes somethings have to be carefully studied before someone makes a review of it. This could well be our explanation of why we haven’t published this last part of our review of the new Mac OS X Snow Leopard until now, but what haven’t we mentioned about this brilliant operating system that Apple has given us in exchange for money? Well, as we wrote in part 6; “due to some reasons, will we wait some time before we will write a review of iChat” and now this time has come.

What can iChat do?

If you don’t know, you’ve probably already guessed. It’s an instant messaging application so you don’t need to send an e-mail if you want to deliver a message to someone you know. Unfortunately it doesn’t support all instant messaging clients out there and the one we miss the most is Messenger, but since Messenger is owned by Microsoft, it may not be integrated into iChat for a long time. Alternatively for users of Messenger, we recommend Adium as the best client and actually we, here at AppleLunch, are preparing a review of Adium which will be published in the near future.

Instead of focusing on the missing parts of iChat, why not talk about what it actually can? iChat supports the following networks: AOL Instant Messenger (also known as “AIM”), MobileMe (of course), ICQ and XMPP. Besides those, is uses a Jabber-like protocol which opens gates to Yahoo! and Google Talk. iChat has also Bonjour integrated which and it allows you, for instance, to communicate to another iChat user through a local area network (LAN).

Ok, but what’s new about iChat in Snow Leopard?

What Apple has improved in iChat is, among other things, the connection between users of AIM. Normally, iChat connects the users, but if iChat fails to make this connection, it will be connected using the AIM relay server as connecting link between the computers. This should avoid most of the connection errors in former versions of iChat and make it more reliable to the user.

Another improvement in the new iChat is the iChat Theater. iChat Theater was introduced as a feature in Mac OS X Leopard (10.5) so in Snow Leopard, it’s just an improvement. iChat Theater allows users to share files with their buddies, and not just send the files to them. You can, with iChat Theater in Snow Leopard, make a Keynote slideshow and show it to your buddies while speaking, just like picture in picture. Besides Keynote presentations, iChat Theater allows you to share iPhoto albums, QuickTime movies and text files. The only thing iChat Theater requires is that you and your buddies are all on the same network. The most impressive improvement in iChat Theater though, is the resolution which is now up to 640 by 480 pixels, which is four times the maximum resolution in iChat Theater in Leopard and we’re now getting closer to DVD-quality. This requires an upstream bandwidth which is magnificent, you thought! No, it actually requires only one-third LESS than Leopard.

Now the biggest improvements in iChat have been mentioned, but we haven’t got it all yet. You can, among other things now, if you are simultaneously logged on multiple accounts, select different statuses for each of them and you can with only one click, close other chats with just control-click your active chat window and select ‘Close other chats’.

Conclusion

Now we’ve covered almost all of the interesting features in the new Mac OS X Snow Leopard and it’s time for our conclusion to end this 7 parts long review. If you’ve read all the parts, you’ll probably notice that we haven’t used many negative words, and it’s not because we’re trying to sell anything, but simply because we love the new version of Mac OS X. Many reviewers have said something like “no, don’t buy it. It only has small  improvements that you don’t necessarily need” but we, here at AppleLunch disagree. Yes, it has many new and small improvements, but so many that it actually makes a huge difference in proportion to Mac OS X Leopard. We have now used Snow Leopard a little more than a week and our impressions are still that you should upgrade to it, especially if you’re still running Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4) and don’t be afraid of incompatible software which has been exaggerated by the media. Besides, to those who say you shouldn’t buy it because it’s not worth the money… Well, it’s $29! Come on! To be honest, this is worth much more than that, and even if we’re wrong, it’s still only $29 for improving your Macs speed with like 50 % and getting so many new small OS gadgets and smooth adjustments.

In the following days we’ll provide you with summaries from this review, and if you think that we’ve missed a bit in our review, then feel free to contact us or use the comment feature bellow. Thanks for reading, and enjoy you lunch.