I'm thinking because it's not using AIM or any chat server, seems like the backend is new, run by Apple, and dedicated solely to this. If I were to predict the

I'm thinking because it's not using AIM or any chat server, seems like the backend is new, run by Apple, and dedicated solely to this. If I were to predict the future, I'd say iChat will probably stagnate feature-wise, and the features that they want to keep will be migrated to facetime.