iPhone's great step back from iChat

I did watch the iPhone Macworld Keynote last week - here's my chapter-list version of the stream so you can skip through it to the bits you find interesting:


(I'd do the same for the download except 1. Apple obfuscated the url enough that I can't be arsed to packet sniff it out and 2. they still don't have HTTP 1.1 seeking support working right, despite me building and demoing it about 5 years ago).

After watching it, my biggest surprise was how much of a step back it was from the rich interaction that iChat supports. With iChat you get presence info, chat, sending documents and integrated audio-video chat (when the other user's computer and connection supports it). Instead, iPhone had a legacy telco worldview baked in, with calls not conveying any further context (watch the combined demo near the end, where Jobs has to retype Schiller's email when talking to him on the phone). The iPhone has the camera on the wrong side to be a videophone, and Jobs did not mention any ability to make calls over Wifi rather than the Cingular network, or anything about IM (as opposed to SMS).

My hope is that this is just Jobs not mentioning the features that don't demo well yet, but my sidekick's AIM integration is the reason I am so hooked on it; it buffers chats server-side so thatintermittent phone connections on the train don't interrupt conversation flow.