Apple has published details on more features that will appear in Mac OS X ‘Leopard’ on the developer section of its website.
The company outlines how iChat Theater will allow applications to present audio and video content during an iChat conference in an article entitled: ‘Broadcast your application’s content with iChat Theatre’.
“The new version of iChat in Leopard opens up these capabilities to other applications on the system, allowing those applications to provide content through an iChat session. For example, a user may display a photo slide show while chatting with her parents. Or two people might collaborate on a document, talking about the details as one person makes changes and the other observes the result,” explains Apple.
The new features are enabled by a new Instant Message framework that ships with the operating system and will allow developers to access iChat 4.0 features from within applications.
“The Instant Message framework gives you is the ability to determine if a contact in a user’s buddy list is online or not. You can also get the Address Book data for that contact as well as other status information,” says the company.
Author: Karen Haslam, Editor
Macworld editor since 2008, Karen has worked on both sides of the Apple divide, clocking up a number of years at Apple's PR agency prior to joining Macworld almost two decades ago.
Karen's career highlights include interviewing Apple's Steve Wozniak and discussing Steve Jobs’ legacy on the BBC. Her focus is Mac, but she lives and breathes Apple.