Audi Visual Chat, June 2003

Apple stunned everyone when Steve Jobs demonstrated an audio-visual chat application on the opening day of the 2003 World Wide Developers Conference. Steve chatted in quick succession with a guy in the next room, an Apple executive in France (with the Eiffel Tower visible in the background), and ex-VP and new Apple director Al Gore.

A lot of people would like to have real time video conferencing built-into the desktop. Steve Jobs also announced an "iSight" firewire camera that is compatible with the application. The Apple iSight comes with several mounts compatible with Apple desktops. The cameras are sold at $150, and I ordered one immediately. This amazing camera will do true autofocus (i.e. doesn't just have a high depth of field). It will examine what is in its field of view, and change the focus from 5cm to infinity accordingly.

Actually, any firewire camera will work, including your digital videocam. The Firewire spec says that cables should be no more than 15 feet long, but several places sell extensions. The results you get with extension cables depend on the device. While errors could not be tolerated in a disk drive, a moment's interference in a live video feed can be tolerated. You can use three 15 foot extensions in a row without supplying additional power. After three units an additional powered hub can be installed and more extensions can be added for a maximum overall length of 120ft. So, although you are still tethered to the computer, you can put the camera in another room.

AV Chat is built on the Instant Messaging infrastructure, which takes care of noticing when people are online, telling their buddies, sending messages and so on.

Here are the steps to get started with AV chat:

  1. Buy a 17 inch Apple notebook or other computer at the Apple webstore
  2. Buy the camera at the Apple webstore for $149
  3. Download the iChat AV beta from apple site (this application is bundled with Panther, the next major release of MacOS X, due before the end of 2003).
  4. Sign up for .Mac membership at http://www.mac.com. The .Mac package gives you a userid and instant messaging feature. You can also use AOL.
  5. Log into .Mac using your new id and password.
  6. Look at the "getting started with iChat" page http://www.mac.com/1/howto/ichat.html.
  7. Start up the iChat AV application and get chatting/viewing!
How long will it be before we see people constructing fake sets for people to AV-Chat to? Simulated grand palaces, dungeons, exotic space ports and the like. It will start with fake background posters, but I'm betting it will quickly get more elaborate.

When you point the camera at yourself, and display the picture on your system, you may notice that the image is reversed L-to-R. Point it at some text or a poster on your wall to see this. I filed a bug on this when I noticed it. The story came back that they made it do this deliberately in the last hours before going to beta, because they got feedback from the human interface people that this was a closer match to what people expected (if they move the camera while looking at the picture). It only reverses L-to-R for the picture of you on your system. The viewer on some other system gets it the right way round.

There is not yet a critical mass of camera users, so we are faced with the problem of "who do you call when you are the only person in town with a phone?". Several sites have sprung up (June 2003) to help people try the technology.

  • http://www.theisite.net/
  • http://www.isighting.com/
  • http://www.myisight.com/
  • http://www.squarejelly.com/iregister/default.asp?ID=1 (why are these guys using Active Server Pages, [a windows lock-in]?)

    Here is a site with a tutorial on using iSight to shoot a Quicktime movie: http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2003/07/01/isight.html.

    Other Links

    Apple's iSight Support Web Site http://www.info.apple.com/usen/isight/
    How to Troubleshoot iSight http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93240
    iSight - FireWire Connectivity FAQ http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93221