The Joy of iChat Photo Icons

Ted Leung writes about his impressions of the pervasive use of photographs throughout Mac OS X, particularly in iChat. I love it, personally. Unlike most AIM users I know, I keep a pretty trim buddy list, just those with whom I regularly speak. I have real photographs of all of them. I’ll even request photographs from the buddies I don’t know that well (classmates and campus acquaintances), a request most seem to find bemusingly eccentric (“Mac users are the craazzzzziest people”). In turn, I use a photograph of myself as my buddy icon, something most AIM users find puzzling.

iChat and the other photo-enabled applications on Mac OS X like Mail and Address Book encourage, I believe, a more personal use of potentially impersonal technologies. It’s harder to adopt an “AIM facade” or attitude when you’re chatting with friends you can see a picture of, and that’s a good thing. I think there’s something lonely about having 150 people on your buddy list you hardly ever talk to, their only visible faces a borrowed Homestar Runner icon or whatnot.

And, as Ted points out, the photographs are a useful visual cue. I never need to know people’s goofy screennames, and I can quickly pick out important correspondence in Mail by looking for messages that display the author’s photo, stored handily in my Address Book even though I only ever entered it in iChat. It’s a human touch and a humane touch all in one; one of those great Mac things.