There are still several technical questions I need to find authoritative answers for before I’ll purchase a Mac. I’ll keep them here so I don’t lose them!
- What is the best way to do one-on-one video conferencing from a Mac PC to a Windows PC?
- iChat seems to use AIM protocol.
- Conflicting information about whether iChat-to-AIM video works
- Articles dating back as far as 2004 suggest iChat-to-AIM video works and works well.
- Could use MSN Messenger within VMWare Fusion? Fusion recognizes iSight, according to VMWare website.
- Does Asterisk PBX run well on OSX?
- How well does the WoW client run on Mac? What happens to right mouse button?
- What kind of remote access ships with OSX? MS Remote Desktop? VNC?
That’s all I can think of at the moment. The biggest issue at this point is video conferencing compatibility.
Update 08-27-07: I’m fully satisfied on question #1. Confirmed with my parents that iChat to Windows AIM video+audio works. It was remarkably easy to set up and use, thankfully. The picture-sharing feature is especially nice.
Update 08-28-07: Well, I received what I consider to be a pretty authoritative answer to question #2. 
Asterisk on OSX will handle everything I might need to use it for in the near future (*cough* Vonage replacement *cough*). I can’t use telephony hardware, I’d need a third party conferencing app, and I can’t do IAX trunking. Thanks to Russell Bryant of Digium for his insight.
Your blog came up in an “Asterisk PBX” google news alert.
I am one of the main developers of Asterisk. While most of our development is done on Linux, Asterisk will also work on Mac OSX, among other platforms. My personal laptop is a powerbook and I do some of my development on it.
There are a few things that will not work on OSX in Asterisk:
1) There is no support for telephony hardware for OSX, such as a card for hooking up analog phones.
2) The default conferencing application distributed with Asterisk, MeetMe, will not work on mac, as it requries Zaptel, which has not been ported to OSX. However, there is a nice 3rd party conferencing application that should work called app_conference. As a bonus, app_conference actually has better video support than MeetMe.
3) There are a few other minor things that use zaptel, but the only other one I can think of that *requires* it is the IAX trunking feature. Regular IAX calls will work fine.
Good luck.
Your blog came up in an “Asterisk PBX” google news alert.
I am one of the main developers of Asterisk. While most of our development is done on Linux, Asterisk will also work on Mac OSX, among other platforms. My personal laptop is a powerbook and I do some of my development on it. There are a few things that will not work on OSX in Asterisk: 1) There is no support for telephony hardware for OSX, such as a card for hooking up analog phones. 2) The default conferencing application distributed with Asterisk, MeetMe, will not work on mac, as it requries Zaptel, which has not been ported to OSX. However, there is a nice 3rd party conferencing application that should work called app_conference. As a bonus, app_conference actually has better video support than MeetMe. 3) There are a few other minor things that use zaptel, but the only other one I can think of that *requires* it is the IAX trunking feature. Regular IAX calls will work fine. Good luck.