So, you’ve used your Mac in some way in recent times to communicate with someone using one of those VOIP/video apps there are out there, like Skype and iChat..
Not to mention all those cool video apps out there (okay, I’ll give you Skype, and iChat again) that let you use your iSight to be seen by the dude on the other end. Just like the videophone on the spaceship in 2001: A Space Oddysey. That’s great for talking with that dude you met on the Mactalk forums about XCode or (if you’re a pimply teenager) having a 6-way audio conversation where you talk shit for 5 hours straight, but not so useful when you want to call mum and have a chat, or call a client about a proposal you want to put forward, or even call the bank to ask why you can’t log into their damn website. iChat and Skype make it kinda difficult to call mum on her good ol’ Telstra line in such fashion suggested by Telstra in their ads. The problem is that your mum doesn’t have a Mac, nor knows or cares to know what Skype is (I know this for a fact because she told me last night) Yes, OK, you can use SkypeOut and get charged 2c/minute, if you’re fine with this then go right ahead buddy.
Oddly enough, even if you haven’t used anything like iChat or Skype, chances are you’ve used VOIP and haven’t even realised you were using it. Many businesses now use IP telephony infrastructure to increase productivity and reduce costs by unifying their PBX infrastructure with their IP networking infrastructure. And you might have seen the ads on TV for iiNet’s “BoB”, for instance, which uses VOIP technology over Naked DSL (where your dialtone goes bye bye). I want a BoB but iiNet don’t have capacity in my exchange yet. How very dare they!
So the type of VOIP I’m talking about today is where you’re interconnecting with the PSTN (or Public Switched Telephone Network). iiNets’ BoB is a physical cordless phone (amongst other things). There are a lot of IP phones out there on the market from various manufacturers – Cisco, Linksys, Siemens, Belkin, Polycom and Snom just to name a few good ones.
In lieu of buying one of these, because IP phones are still kind of expensive, you can use a softphone. As it implies, a softphone is a telephone emulator of sorts. And you thought a C=64 emulator was cool! Their advantage is you can get going with null capital investment and they have an added advantage that they’re built into your laptop, so they’re great for road warriors who travel heaps.. You use these in conjunction with a VSP or VOIP Service Provider. Two I recommend that are cheap (since it’s all about lowering costs) and work really well are Pennytel and Maxo. You will then be able to call Mum with a headset attached to your computer.
By the way: I’m a VOIP snob, and an audio snob, so I’ld thoroughly recommend investing in a half decent headset because you really don’t want to make mother repeat herself, do you? So go somewhere and buy either a USB headset, or a pair that go into your headphone sockets. Even your iPhone ones are perfect and much, much better than the mic/speakers in your Mac. A massive problem arises when you have low input volume and lots of background noise pushed through a PSTN “narrowband” connection – people on the other end can’t hear you! Also, you could probably try a Bluetooth headset and it’ld probably work but from my experience, pairing it with my Mac just to make a phone call is akin to gouging my eyes out with a steak knife.
Also, I talk about “codecs” in this review. They’re pretty much the telephony equivalent of MP3 for music CDs. I wrote a page about the differences and pros and cons of each codec as an appendix for this review but deleted it because you probably don’t care. Codecs aren’t too important when you’re using the PSTN. Look them up on Wikipedia and learn about them and their bandwidth usage if you’re interested.
Telephone 0.14.3
Telephone is an obnoxiously easy to use SIP client that is pretty easy to set up too (note to self: Enable “Use DNS SRV Record” in Network preferences) and conveniently, supports Russian and German as well as good old Queens’ English. When you’ve set up your account details (your name, the SIP server, your username and password) it appears as a teeny tiny little window that lets you enter a phone number. It also lets you search your OSX Address Book and dial contacts from there too, as well as SIP URIs, all from the same text field. Each call established appears as a seperate little window which can get annoying if you’re like me and have 80 applications open at once on a 13” Macbook screen.
From within a call you can dial numbers for IVRs by just typing them on the keyboard with the call in progress window in focus, hit H to put them on hold and M for mute. And that’s about it really. It’s pretty simple and there are next to no business-esque features, just hold and mute. No 3-way, conference, transfer call or anything flash like that.
Telephone works fine in Snow Leopard. Another very cool thing about Telephone is that it supports Growl notifications. I couldn’t get it to display any, though perhaps it can send you a growl notification when your phone rings. It supports the usual group of audio codecs, namely G.711, iLBC, and GSM, but notably G.729 is missing most likely because of licensing restrictions (big royalty money here). It also supports Speex. My favorite codec, ever, in the whole whole world, G.722, is also present, although there is a current bug in the pgsip stack that the author is fixing by adding a workaround in the next release. The bug causes lots of distortion when using G.722, which makes me cry.
Pros: Extra easy to set up and simple to use, wideband support, integration to OSX Address Book
Cons: Darn G.722 bug to be fixed in next release, no transfer/conference features
Blink beta 2
And with the blink of an eye it’s on to Blink. Blink is a “fully featured and easy to use SIP client.” Unfortunately, the initial feeling I got from Blink is that it attempts to be much more than just a SIP client. The reason appears to be due to its attempt at being much more than a SIP client. It’s got IM and file transfer and desktop share and rich presence (SIMPLE). But I don’t want that, I just want to make phone calls.
That said, Blink is otherwise pretty similar to Telephone in functionality. It has an iChat-like interface that lets you make phone calls by either entering a number into a text field at the top or by double clicking on entries in a contact list. It also shows items from your address book and it also lets you search both data sources with the text box at the top. Each in-progress call appears in an expanded window list box where you can select between them (and the other call(s) go on hold). There’s a conference button at the bottom of this expanded view, but I couldn’t for the life of me get it working so for all I know it’s a never-implemented feature. Apart from that, Blink is another nice contender.
Codec wise, it supports GSM, iLBC, G.711, speex, and G.722, so it’s pretty identical to Telephone.
Pros: Easy to set up, reasonably straightforward to use. Awesome sound effects stolen from a hollywood movie!
Cons: Not the best UI. Tries to be some kind of open source Unified Communications client, and fails.
Zoiper Communicator 1.10.5624
This latecomer to my arsenal of reviewed apps has been around for a while now on Windows but I only realised recently it is available now for OSX. I downloaded and played with the free version because I’m cheap.
To be honest, there’s no real advantage I can see running Zoiper over the above two apps.
Unfortunately it’s got its own skin and look’n’feel, probably to try to remain consistent with the Linux/Windows versions. So it sticks out like a traffic accident in OSX. When you first install, it coaxes you into signing up for a Zoiper account. Why? I don’t know. You can bypass it and set up your VSP provider settings manually, which is what I did. Also, I noticed that you can’t search for contacts using your Address Book – it has a contact list somehow integrated to your online Zoiper account, but who the hell wants to manage a second contact list?
When I started up a call I saw several buttons for hold, transfer, conference, and recording. All but the first require the ‘biz’ version of Zoiper, so clicking on them redirects you to their website so you can fork over the cash. I didn’t.
Zoiper Communicator supports GSM, speex, G.711 and iLBC. The speex codec is probably wideband, but maybe not, I can’t tell.
Pros: Umm. Pass. It works?
Cons: No G.722. Dirty un-OSX-like interface that makes Steve Jobs cry. No address book integration.
And the winner (for me at least)… Telephone!
This reviewer felt that for the majority of use at this point in time Telephone was the clear winner because of its clean UI and completeness of features. The only thing letting it down was the G.722 bug which the author advises me will be fixed in the next release.
