November 10, 2004

curious George: IM clients for mac I've just switched from pc to mac and I'm having a hard time finding a IM client like GAIM where I can use both Yahoo and AOL IM accounts. Suggestions?
posted by a22lamia 20 years ago
  • Adium. Adium adium adium! It uses the GAIM protocols, and has a ton of features, and is free. Here is a link.
  • I second Adium. Lot of fun features. If you want a laugh set it up to speak your comments or the comments of the person with whom you are conversing. Hillarious.
  • (and you can customize it so as to get rid of the duck icon, change the sounds/layouts etc. by going here. )
  • I use Proteus, but I've heard good things about Fire and Adium. Its big plus is that it works with the built-in address book application, so you can group people's handles and show them by their name. Proteus' big downfalls are that it doesn't do file transfers or chat, although those are supposed to be coming. Since I rarely use those features, it isn't a big deal for me. YMMV.
  • Another Adium recommendation here. I like Fire's encryption capabilities, but nobody else has it, so it's more trouble than it's worth.
  • Lately I have been using Adium as well. I really like the interface. I dont like that it logs me in and out as it sees fit and sometimes refuses to start up unless I throw out the preferences and sometimes not even then unless I persist and do it 8-10 times. Looking at the forums, I seem to be alone with that issue. The other option I used to use is Fire. It doesn't have all the expandability/customizeability of Adium, but it works flawlessly if you just want to chat. MSN uh, conference calls (i dont know what they're really called) didn't work the last time I tried it. Adium is my pick, even with all of it's bugginess. If only for the "/mom" script (that seems to have been taken down...) type "/mom" and it tells a random "yer momma" joke
  • Adium, yeah.
  • I own and use about 11 macs some of which still use OS9. Are there any good clients for that now totally defunct (albeit eminently useful) OS? TIA
  • BTW a22lamia, are you happy with the switch?
  • Thanks for all of your comments! I'm using adium as we speak and I'm pretty happy with i, but I will have to work with the sounds as the duck quacking is awful. The speaking comments thing is pretty funny.... I think I'll ultimately be happy with the switch - but its only been 5 hours so I can't say for sure. Over the years I've gotten pretty good at dealing with windows - its going to take me a while to get to the top of this learning curve. I decided to switch mainly because Windows XP just isn't stable - too many crashes at the absolute worst times. Also as a biologist macs seem to be able to handle genetics and statistical programs better than pcs - the only thing I'm not happy about is that the GIS applications I use aren't available for macs.
  • Used to use Fire, now use Adium and I like it lots. :) /mom and the Shakespearian Insult Generator (/insult) are fun, too.
  • There are tons of soundsets available for Adium, if you go to the Adium menu (within Adium,) and go to Adium xtras... Also, there are a few others that come pre-installed.
  • I'd have to with Adium, it's updated more frequently, and has a large amount of add-ons: graphics, message styles -- there's even one that makes your IMs look like something out of a Strong Bad Email, and tons of soundsets as Hectorinwa said.