iChat and Facetime, a match made in heaven

Dear Cupertino,

I have to say, the iPhone 4 is fantastic.  There are it's flaws, don't get me wrong, (like the fact that it doesn't have voice integration into the phone in every aspect, you know, like Android does), but it's a fantastic phone and I am glad you made it.

But there is one more thing.

Facetime is great, it works, you don't have to configure a bunch of ports to open on the firewall and through NAT devices, and the iPhone remembers which other iPhones are capable of holding those calls.  So, that's just great.  However, how much harder would it have been to put out a new version of iChat at the same time that allows you to call your iChat video capable friends (read: everyone that has a current Mac) with your iPhone 4?  That would be fantastic and would probably cause a lot more people to use iChat than they do now.

iChat could be rewritten so that all the video features of the iPhone's Facetime could be used to help iChat for transversal through NATs and the like.

Thanks,
Joel

For both Apple and Google this time

Dear Cupertino,
CC: Googleplex

You guys work together great on several aspects of various products, however, there is one feature or section that I think would be great for you to fix.

Apple -- Your iChat supports video and audio chat.
Google -- Your Gtalk supports video and audio chat.

Can you make iChat connected to Gtalk be able to talk with those individuals on Gtalk that have cameras?

Thanks,

Joel

iChat Media

Dear Cupertino,

I love iChat, I really, really do.

I love how I can easily constantly stay in touch with my friends and family through audio, video, and text chat.

I love how I can easily share my screen with a friend on the other side of the globe who's having an issues with their Mac - that way, I can show them what they should see when they click on what button, or vice versa - they can show me what they see when they click on some button.

I especially love how I can give a friend a Keynote presentation through iChat Theatre - that way, my friend can tell me how to improve on my public speaking skills.

However, one of the features I'd love to be added to iChat is the Media tab. The Media tab would be my one-stop-shop for everything that I could interact with, say, photos that I wanted to send to a friend, or a picture that I'd like to set as my display picture.

From the Media tab, I'd have instantaneous access to everything I've ever sent to anyone, anything I've ever received (much like the file transfers list now), but also the options to send a new file, or share a new movie trailer.

The Media tab seems like another no-brainer - one of those features that should have been there in the first place, but isn't.

Thanks,
Dan Katz.

iChat improvements

Dear Cupertino,

I love iChat.  I love its integration with Address Book, I love its integration with Mail, I love the fact that iChat has an AV component.

Couple suggestions however?

1)  One contact window.  I personally have three jabber accounts (one being Gmail), one AIM account, and a Me.com account.  This takes up almost my whole screen in lateral space.  How about one contact window?  I mean, Chax figured out how to do it, take some intel from Chax, and some intel from Adium on how to combine contacts, and you've got it!

2)  Yahoo IM?  I am probably guessing that you have a contract with AOL to only provide support for Jabber + AIM.  But if that's not true, then let's get Yahoo on board?  Yes, I understand their protocol isn't standards based like AIM or Jabber and I'm not going to expect to you to integrate with MSN.

3)  Allow for some resizing of the contact list.  I have hundreds of people in my contact list, and that's only on my company's internal server!  Let alone all of the contacts I have through AIM and GTalk!

That's all, just a couple thoughts.  Thanks!

Joel