Best messenger on mac
- Thread starter wazowski
- Start date
Qion
Uber Nothing
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/
http://www.adiumx.com/
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.
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:
Yellowbeard
And The World Returned
Adium is the way to go, I have been using it for quite awhile now
Lt Major Burns
"Dicky" Charlteston-Burns
no video chat other than the amazing iChat AV. but that doesn't support msn....
i use Adium. it's the best.
i use Adium. it's the best.
Veljo
Mac Enthusiast
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?
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?
Lt Major Burns
"Dicky" Charlteston-Burns
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
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
sirstaunch
Registered
There is some trick through iChat, look on this forum for ichat.AdmiralAK said:
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::
Lt Major Burns
"Dicky" Charlteston-Burns
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 reallysirstaunch said:
Lt Major Burns
"Dicky" Charlteston-Burns
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.Damrod said:
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.