Leopard iChat gets Screen Sharing

We saw iChat Theater demoed in Steve’s keynote, but I don’t recall hearing about iChat Screen Sharing. It looks to leverage some of the functionality of VNC/Remote Desktop by letting you create a session, via iChat, in which you and the person you’re chatting with share the screen of a single computer.

Share and share alike
Remote control takes on a whole new meaning with iChat in Leopard. Thanks to iChat Screen Sharing, you and your buddy can observe and control a single desktop via iChat, making it a cinch to collaborate with colleagues, browse the Web with a friend, or pick the perfect plane seats with your spouse. Share your own desktop or share your buddy’s — you both have complete control at all times. And when you start a Screen Sharing session, iChat automatically initiates an audio chat so you can talk things through while you’re at it.

This seems like some pretty major functionality to be squirreling away inside iChat, but there is a utility to adding voice chat along with it. I can see this also being an incredibly handy troubleshooting tool that’ll beat the pants off of Windows’s Remote Desktop Connection. Or, it could be a nice big security vulnerability. Who can tell?