Skype 5 Beta Hits the Mac

Skype rolled out a public beta of Skype 5.0 for the Mac on Thursday, leap frogging over versions 3 and 4. The public beta of the chat client application added group video support, along with a redesigned user interface.

Version 5.0 includes Mac OS X Address Book support, and gets much closer to feature parity with the Windows version of Skype, although it doesn’t support Facebook news feeds.

The public beta of Skype 5.0 for the Mac is available as a free download at the Skype Web site. It requires Mac OS X 10.5.8 or higher and an Intel-based Mac with at least a 1 GHz processor.