We’ve been anticipating FaceTime for a Mac ever since you spied the underline on the iPhone, as well as right away Apple is creation our dreams the being with the handy brand-new beta Mac OS X application dubbed “FaceTime.” It’s not an iChat replacement; far from it, in fact. Instead, a standalone, lightweight app dedicates itself to FaceTime calls only, with no pointer of your accessible TARGET or Gtalk friend list to help you along. It pulls its list of contacts particularly from the Mac Address Book, with no modifying accessible in app, and you’d improved hope you have the good hoop upon which list of contacts (our Gmail-tainted chronicle could certainly use a little work). You have to click on the person’s name as well as then theory that email or phone series they have associated with the FaceTime account — nothing of the helpful icons from a iPhone have made it over to beam you. It took quite the bit of extra-FaceTime information exchange to sort out what was what, but once you guess during a right bit of info to place the call with, it’s standard Apple simplicity.

From a phone side it’s discerning enough: call a email address compared with an Apple ID and you get the computer, call the phone number as well as you get the iPhone. Conveniently, your computer will “ring” even if a app is sealed, though you can turn this underline off in System Preferences if it unsettles you. Hopefully Apple takes this “beta” moniker severely and has a little extra features to add before it releases a last chronicle of the app. We also wouldn’t mind seeing this folded into iChat proper — why have dual first party video discuss methods? Either way, computer-to-phone conversations are here to stay. The boon? The psychedelic experience of viewing four Paul Millers simultaneously.

Update: Want the special little reward? You can assumingly video discuss with iChat as well as FaceTime concurrently, though we attempted to supplement Skype as the third confederate into the mix as well as unsuccessful (there’s a pic of the experiment after the mangle. Oh, you should additionally know which there’s assumingly no approach to shut off a video in FaceTime outward of quitting a app or physically covering up a camera. DISDAINFUL: Is Steve Jobs Watching You Sleep? More at 11.FaceTime for Mac hands-on

Via Engadget