About a week and a half ago, Apple responded to my iChat feature requests.
First and foremost I asked them to support XMPP-Core now that it's an IETF proposed standard. This would effectively make iChat a multi-protocol instant messaging application. During development of the first rev of iChat, the developers used the Jabber protocols as a model while the biz-heads worked things out with AOL. Here's a post iChat's history.
Secondly, I asked them to fix their implementation of buddy groups. Currently they use a drawer with checkboxes for the displaying of buddy groups. Most other clients on the market use a tree-view, folder-list metaphor. With their innovative implementation, Apple "fixed" something that wasn't really broken to begin with.
They responded by calling both items "known issues." Obviously the lack of XMPP support is "known" - as it was simply a design choice. But calling the current state of the buddy group implementation a "known issue" really surprised me. Either they didn't really read what I wrote, or they're admitting that they made a mistake. Either way, I hope I don't have to wait until 10.4 for the next rev of iChat.
No comments:
Post a Comment