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Just a quickie to close out the week, folks, because we're about to fall over backwards, sideways, and forwards simultaneously. (We'll try to capture the moment on video for you. It should be special.) You may have noticed a nice piece by David Pogue in yesterday's New York Times in which he shares a "Thanksgiving thought" that amounts to slobbering fanboy acclaim for iChat AV and its partner in crime, the iSight camera. It seems that David was in London a couple of weeks ago, and via the magic of iChat AV he was able to use his AirPort-enabled PowerBook and a borrowed iSight in a WiFi-equipped coffee shop to videoconference with his wife and kids back here in the states. He describes the event as "an almost overwhelming experience"-- an "emotional, powerful, simple, perfect example of how technology can change a moment, solve a problem, and despite the gulf of time and distance, bring you face to face with the people you love."
This is the part where Bart Simpson interjects with lots of gagging noises.
That said, we're certainly not going to contradict David, nor are we going to accuse him of unconscionable oversentimentality. We know all too well just how powerful a force iChat AV can be; sure, we were skeptical when it was introduced, but we've already told you in our own unconscionably oversentimental way how iChat enabled Anya's grandmother to see her granddaughter walking for the first time. And if you want another testimony of the power of iChat that isn't quite so Lifetime TV, it enabled one of us to give a guest talk to a UCLA communications class a few weeks ago, despite us being on one coast, them being on the other, and three thousand miles of stuff resting in between. In short, we're totally on board with the "iChat Rocks!" assessment-- even the weepy bits out of a Hallmark commercial.
No, the part that threw us was this: David describes how he was moping all homesick-like in that coffee shop in London when his new friend mentions that he uses iChat AV to videoconference with friends in the states, and David actually says "I had no idea you could use it across the Atlantic."
Which is just weird, when you think about it. This is David Pogue, after all, the author of a gazillion books on Macs and Windows, a frequent speaker at Macworld Expos, and just generally a very well-connected guy. Surely he understands that iChat does its thing via standard TCP/IP, so where on earth would he get the idea that it wouldn't work across the Atlantic? Did he think iChat's network packets are afraid of water, or something?
Or maybe he meant he expected Apple to have crippled the application to prevent it from working outside of the U.S. for some reason, sort of like how you have to be in the states to purchase songs from the iTunes Music Store or to order prints through iPhoto. But even if David thought there were some bizarre licensing reason for Apple to have done that, Steve has iChatted publicly with overseas buddies during at least two big media events-- with Jean-Marie Hullot in Paris during the original iChat AV intro at WWDC and with Bono in Dublin during the iTunes Music Event. So, what... David Pogue (Mega-Huge Mondo-Important Mac Journalist-Type) didn't see either of those? Inconceivable.
You do realize what this means, of course; David Pogue has been kidnapped and replaced with an exact double. Alert the feds.
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