Skype with Video for Mac
Finally, what we’ve been waiting for.
No, not the cat.
The new Skype for Mac has video. This snapshot was from a video conference between my Windows machine running Skype 2.5 and my Mac with 1.5.0.47 beta.
It’s an important step that could spur more adoption of videoconferencing, though it’s doubtful it will challenge the preference for voice. Several reasons why this is significant:
- Cross-platform conferencing. The Mac has iChatAV, which is spectacular between two Macs, but no Windows version. MSN Messenger is popular on Windows, but no Mac video version. As the only popular app that can talk to both platforms, Skype can really use this as an advantage for market share.
- NAT/firewall traversal. Skype wasn’t the first to do voice over IP, but it succeeded to find a seamless way to work through firewalls and residential NAT routers. Doing the same for video is a huge leap forward, as anyone who’s ever tried to configure a router to forward H.263 packets.
- Mac users are important trends setters. Look at all those iMacs and Macbook computers with builtin cameras with nothing to do.
Mac users can try it out here.
technorati tags:mac, skype, video, videoconference
