Multi-party Video Chat with iMessage

Hi,

Short answer is Yes.

The Long answer is that you have to have an AIM or AIM valid name to chat to AIM Buddies or a Jabber or Jabber capable ID to chat with Jabber Buddies.

In Messages > Preferences > Accounts you will find you have at least the iMessages account and a Bonjour option that everyone gets.

If you Enable the Bonjour account you will find that in the Window Menu there is now a "Buddies" option.

Selecting this or using the keystrokes listed brings up a Buddy list window.

Returning to the Preferences > Accounts you will see a plus and minus icon at the bottom of the list.

Clicking the Plus one opens the Add Account pane.

The top item is a drop down where you can chose AIM, Google, Jabber or Yahoo.

AIM and Jabber valid names.

When you want to Text Chat or A/V chat to your Buddies you will have to have a Screen Name (AIM name for IDs) or a Jabber ID to match the service they are on.

You can register at AIM for a Name.

However Apple IDs from (Issued by) Apple ending in @mac.com, @me.com and @icloud.com are also valid AIM Screen Names due to an Agreement Apple made back in 2004 with AIM.

This does mean that your iMessages and AIM name could be the same but you will have to add it twice in the app.

You alos have to keep the Apple ID password to 16 characters or less as this is the AIM limit.

Jabber works on a non centralised basis.

This means that you can register an ID (they are referred to as Jabber IDs) with a myriad of Public Jabber servers or possibly even a private company one.

The IDs follow a format of username@JabberServerName.com

In the Add Account pane the presumption is that the server will be called the last part of the Account ID

The exception is Google. It's server is called talk.google.com which is why it has a separate option in the Add Account pane.

There are a couple of other things with Google accounts.

1) You must Enable "Talk" as an option on your Google Account settings

2) It can only be Google Mail Accounts and you must enter your ID as it appears on the Google Web Mail page as @gmail.com and @googlemail.com names are different in this case (irrespective of what Mail does)

Facebook IDs are also Jabber valid IDs as long as you Enable the "Chat" option on your Facebook settings.

At this point you could have an iMessages account, an activated Bonjour option and possibly an AIM (Vlaid) and Jabber(Valid) Accounts set up.

This will make the Buddies Buddy list a combined list by default.

It will show all your Buddies mixed up.

Go to the General Section of the Preferences and untick the Line about Gathering Accounts in to one List.

The iMessages account does not have a Buddy List so you should now have 2 or 3 Buddy list showing.

It is easier to Add Buddies to the separated Buddy lists.

So the AIM Buddy list (whether a Valid Apple ID or not) can have AIM, @mac.com @me.com and @icloud.com names in it.

A Jabber or a Google Buddy List can also mix and match Google, Facebook and other Jabber IDs.

System Preferences

Mail, Contacts and Calendars may list any iChat Accounts you used before Mountain Lion and need only being Enabled for the Messages app.

You may only then need to separate out the Buddy lists.

9:48 PM Friday; March 29, 2013

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 MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
 Couple of iPhones and an iPad
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