okay, so thats a bit extreme, iChat has potential. but it seems to me that the apple people made this (sort of) nice looking program thats all cute and everything, but they have very little idea of how people actually use aim. some simple things my iChat won't let me do:
see peoples away messages without actually im'ing them. yes, you can see peoples' status below their name, but unless its like one word or two you have to stretch the buddy list window clear across the screen to see it. and even then that may not be enough. its pretty stupid that you can't click "get info" and see what somebody has posted.
another thing, iChat wont let me im somebody thats not on my buddy list. maybe i don't want everyone i talk to online to be my "buddy". i tried to mess around with privacy settings to no avail.
last, when i have an away message set, iChat doesn't send it when somebody im's me. i'm not sure yet if this goes for everybody or just a few people who have im'd me so far while i was away. i just upgraded to jaguar so i'm still ironing out the details.
i have a mac, and i like it, and macosx is a great system, etc etc etc. and i'm sure ichat is great if everybody you know also has macs and ichat, but obviously they dont. its pretty poor on apple's part to not incorporate some simple functionality that even lame ol' aim can do.
i'm the first to admit i'm wrong if theres some preferences i'm missing somewhere, but i'm not seeing it. anyone help here would be much appreciated. thanks
jake
btw, this gunmetal motif for ichat, safari, itunes, etc IS a bunch of crap. all of that fancy shmancy quartz whatnot in the system, and apple wants to make everything look like brushed aluminum (ie. grey)? lame. ie explorer is much better looking, even if it is slower. are there skinning patches for any of this stuff? seems like it would be easy for apple to do...