# Best messenger on mac



## wazowski (Jul 9, 2005)

I wanna use msn, yahoo and ICQ, which is the featureful and most stable IM available?

I am however downloading yahoo messenger but need sure shot alternative for anothers. 

Just moved from Windows to mac and i realize i have been such a fool all these years not using mac.


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## bobw (Jul 9, 2005)

I've been using Fire for a long time, works well.


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## Qion (Jul 9, 2005)

I've messed around with a lot of instant messenging clients, and I've found Adium is what I stick with. 

http://www.adiumx.com/


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## nixgeek (Jul 9, 2005)

I've used Fire and it's been quite good for me.  I also recoemmended Fire to another friend of mine who recently switched to a PowerBook G4 12".


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## kingtj (Jul 9, 2005)

To be honest, I haven't used "Fire" yet, though I may have to give it a try.
I've been very pleased with the features, regularity of updates, and overall look and feel of Adium.  Only complaint I've got with it right now is it seems like right around the time I upgraded to Tiger 10.4 and the time Adium started supporting encrypted "secure chat" features - I started getting a lot of errors causing the application to quit in the middle of using it.

I can't quite pinpoint what causes it, but it seems like it tends to "blow up" more often if I've been doing a secure chat with someone in my "buddy list" and then I close their chat window up, but leave Adium running for a while (maybe even overnight or something).  The next time they try to chat with me, it will often say it's re-establishing a session using the existing secure session and then I type 1 or 2 lines of text and it crashes.




			
				Qion said:
			
		

> I've messed around with a lot of instant messenging clients, and I've found Adium is what I stick with.
> 
> http://www.adiumx.com/


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## Qion (Jul 9, 2005)

kingtj said:
			
		

> To be honest, I haven't used "Fire" yet, though I may have to give it a try.
> I've been very pleased with the features, regularity of updates, and overall look and feel of Adium.  Only complaint I've got with it right now is it seems like right around the time I upgraded to Tiger 10.4 and the time Adium started supporting encrypted "secure chat" features - I started getting a lot of errors causing the application to quit in the middle of using it.
> 
> I can't quite pinpoint what causes it, but it seems like it tends to "blow up" more often if I've been doing a secure chat with someone in my "buddy list" and then I close their chat window up, but leave Adium running for a while (maybe even overnight or something).  The next time they try to chat with me, it will often say it's re-establishing a session using the existing secure session and then I type 1 or 2 lines of text and it crashes.



Try erasing Adium and reinstalling; I've never had this problem.


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## Yellowbeard (Jul 9, 2005)

Adium is the way to go, I have been using it for quite awhile now


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## AdmiralAK (Jul 9, 2005)

is there a messenger out there that does the MSN thing but also offers the video functions of MSN ?


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## Lt Major Burns (Jul 9, 2005)

no video chat other than the amazing iChat AV. but that doesn't support msn....

i use Adium. it's the best.


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## Veljo (Jul 9, 2005)

Mercury does MSN webcam, but I've found it to run extremely slow.

Look, the reality for me is that IM on Macs simply sucks. The only decent IM on Mac is iChat, but face it, if you don't live in America you won't have a strong affiliation with AOL, and if people don't have Macs then chances are your buddy list is going to be pretty empty.

In Australia almost everyone uses MSN Messenger. MSN Messenger 7.0 for PC is absolutely fabulous (apart from it crashing occasionally but that's to be expected). It has so many more features than other IM programs, it's just a shame that Mac doesn't have it. Especially with so many expansions, Messenger Plus!, etc.

So I don't know what I use. I use iChat to speak to ONE person, and MSN Messenger 4.0.1 to talk to everyone else (which sucks complete and utter ass). I've tried aMSN but it's ugly and unstable so I guess I'm really at a loss. For me the Internet experience on a Mac is great, but IM is simply something that I hate to do on a Mac.

It especially annoys me that Apple provides full featured apps to Windows such as iTunes and QuickTime Player (aside from H.264) and Microsoft offers 10% completed programs to Mac users. But what can you do?


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## RGrphc2 (Jul 9, 2005)

Veljo said:
			
		

> It especially annoys me that Apple provides full featured apps to Windows such as iTunes and QuickTime Player (aside from H.264) and Microsoft offers 10% completed programs to Mac users. But what can you do?



Try to convince everyone you know to switch to mac???  I've managed alone about to convert about 10 to 15 people on to mac  , i've been trying to convince many people to stay away from AOL but no to no avail


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## untz (Jul 10, 2005)

I used Fire and then switched to Adium... Definitely the *BEST* chat program on OS X.


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## Lt Major Burns (Jul 10, 2005)

Adium is the way to go. i see it as _better_ than msn 7.  i can have my little display picture, and i do file transfers, speedily, but i can also set adium up a hell of a lot better. the chat windows on mine is so much better designed than the msn one, and my contacts list is now along the side on the right, like a dock, just showing the faces of people online untill i click on it.

and the best thing? it doesn't have all the childish crap in msn 7

i don't want to be nudged

or winked

i don't want to see the other person (it kills conversation)

i don't want their gratuitous custom smiley usage plastered all over my conversation. it's irritating, and just gimmicky

best of all - no adverts msn 7 is so stuffed with links to other websites it's painful. adware from the maker


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## Damrod (Jul 10, 2005)

Lt Major Burns said:
			
		

> the chat windows on mine is so much better designed than the msn one, and my contacts list is now along the side on the right, like a dock, just showing the faces of people online untill i click on it.



That sounds really interesting... May I ask how you have configured your contact list style so that it appears that way? I'm looking for an alternative to the Mockie/3-Tone-Coloring style, but have not yet found a suiting one.


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## sirstaunch (Jul 10, 2005)

AdmiralAK said:
			
		

> is there a messenger out there that does the MSN thing but also offers the video functions of MSN ?



There is some trick through iChat, look on this forum for ichat.

But funny aye, a friend sent me a screen shot of her MSN chat (windogs of course), was taking up about 85% of her screen. I sent her a screen shot of Adium and set as 50%  transparent on my screen, she was shocked  ::ha::


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## Veljo (Jul 11, 2005)

Don't worry, I'm still 100% pro Mac 

Adium looks and sounds very very interesting. It's downloading as we speak. I will post what I think when it's done.


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## Veljo (Jul 11, 2005)

Okay.....WOW, Adium is by far the best. MSN Messenger is in the Trash. Wow, this is so good!!!!! Adium I recommend!!! Sorry, I'm just so excited/shocked.


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## wazowski (Jul 11, 2005)

Thank you everyone... just downloading Adium. Screenshots look brilliant. Will post my feedback and what I like about it too .. sooon!!


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## Lt Major Burns (Jul 11, 2005)

sirstaunch said:
			
		

> There is some trick through iChat, look on this forum for ichat.
> 
> But funny aye, a friend sent me a screen shot of her MSN chat (windogs of course), was taking up about 85% of her screen. I sent her a screen shot of Adium and set as 50% transparent on my screen, she was shocked ::ha::


 
the MSN hack through ichat is that - a hack. it's very limited in use, and is closer to being a proof-of-concept than actually an adium replacemnt, and doesn't suppot video, audio, buddy pictures, complex smileys...or anything really


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## Lt Major Burns (Jul 11, 2005)

Damrod said:
			
		

> That sounds really interesting... May I ask how you have configured your contact list style so that it appears that way? I'm looking for an alternative to the Mockie/3-Tone-Coloring style, but have not yet found a suiting one.


 
the mac isn't online atm, so a buddy list screen grab is not possible, however it works on the principal that if you get all your windows to budge up about 3/4 of an inch on the right (opening up a space down the right hand side) then this can be used as adium status.

configure the list to go into bubbles (big ones) with the user picture on the hard right. align text to go on the left, justified to the right, (but not the bubble wrap-around) and drag the whole thing to the top right (play with the alignment to the top of the screen). resize all the commonly open windows (safari, itunes, iphoto etc) to the defined line of the picture/text, so when using other programs, all you see are the pictures of people currently online (i have adium only show me online people, it's all i care about).

done.


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## gphillipk (Jul 11, 2005)

How about Skype chat? I use it for conference chats and has history functionality that allows you to open the whole chat as an HTML file.


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## macadam (Jul 11, 2005)

try amsn


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## Randman (Jul 11, 2005)

amsn is weak. Adium is tops.


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## macadam (Jul 11, 2005)

is adium compatitble with msn?


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## Lt Major Burns (Jul 11, 2005)

adium is the best msn on the mac. seriously. fire's close, but no others are anywhere near


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## mw84 (Jul 11, 2005)

I concur. Adium.


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## sirstaunch (Jul 12, 2005)

Lt Major Burns said:
			
		

> the MSN hack through ichat is that - a hack. it's very limited in use, and is closer to being a proof-of-concept than actually an adium replacemnt, and doesn't suppot video, audio, buddy pictures, complex smileys...or anything really




Hmmm, i thought it did.... oh well.... sorry


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## minasi (Jul 12, 2005)

There´s 2 clients that promisse in/out video:
aMsn: http://amsn.sourceforge.net/
Mercury: http://mercury.sourceforge.net/

none works for me cause I´m behind a router


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## Authority_X (Feb 7, 2006)

anyone know what cams i can use for my imac 700mhz? i have 10.2 tho. any thoughts. i like fire for all, but only use yahoo messenger mainly?  help please


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## nixgeek (Feb 7, 2006)

Wow.....I can't believe that this thread was revived!   Well, my last post I've switched over from Fire to Adium.  It's a much better multi-IM client IMO.  As for a webcam, you might want to check Apple's site to see what webcams are compatible with Mac OS X other than the iSight.


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## Authority_X (Feb 7, 2006)

i looked at the site and there isn't any on there. there has to be something out there bc my ex has it on their computer through yahoo. just too hard to get a hold of the information. thank you.


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