Flying out of beta status, Adium 1.2 made a full-fledged public release today. And we were just talking about the beta release right before Christmas... Starting with an improved menubar item and account management features, the new features and bugfixes in 1.2 get too numerous for this post, so be sure to head for the Adium blog to find out what's new.
I will go ahead and mention one improvement that I'm personally excited about: AppleScript support has been improved in the new build and we'll be seeing outside projects interfacing with Adium more easily now. Non-U.S. users will also want to take a fresh look at 1.2 as it now sports over a dozen localizations.
While it's pretty hard to imagine why they'd bother, Cerulean Studios is porting Trillian, their wildly successful Windows multi-IM client, to OS X. How will Trillian (a commercial product) compete against Adium (a free product), particularly considering that Adium is a number of years ahead of Trillian on the Mac, and is by all accounts a very strong multi-IM implementation? As someone who used Trillian for a number of years in Windows, I can say that Adium has completely met my instant-messaging needs on my Mac. I'm what you might call a heavy IM user, with 6 accounts that I use regularly.
Now, to be fair, Cerulean Studios states that this is in fact not a port at all, but a ground-up reimplementation of Trillian. The teaser screenshot on their announcement page is certainly intriguing. From the announcement: Though this first alpha build of the OS X version of Trillian is still very preliminary and minimal - the functionality pulled through is about the same as the Flash-based web version - the code for every single feature on the Windows version is there in the underlying mediums. As the UI is expanded, those features will become available. The OS X version will be playing catch-up to the Windows one for a while yet, however.
Currently it appears that test versions are only being offered to testers of the current Windows-based Trillian Astra. Click through to the announcement page if you'd like to sign up to test Trillian on your Mac.
The folks behind Adium, the fantastic free and open source instant messaging client for Mac, have released a recommended upgrade that fixes 26 bugs and a bunch of other issues. Update 1.1.2 resolves a memory leak while viewing tooltips and AIM mobile contacts now display correctly. Several issues when using Safari 3.0 Beta have also been fixed, and libpurple has been upgraded to 2.1.1 to add limited MSN support.
If you're disappointed that the upgrade doesn't offer any cosmetic changes, you could always dress up the dock duck on your own.
Until Apple releases "iChat Mobile," developers will compete to produce the IM solution for the iPhone. So far, we've considered JiveTalk and Meebo. The former was definitely better than the latter, but neither was perfect. Today, we're looking at FlickIM.
FlickIM supports AIM only, which is a drawback (JiveTalk allows simultaneous connections to AIM, MSN, Yahoo!, GoogleTalk, ICQ, and Jabber), but has the nicest UI of the three. Simple "chat balloon" icons keep tabs on multiple conversations, and your contact list is displayed as a dial selection tool.
I did notice one oddity: After I thought I had logged out, iChat on my Mac complained that I was logged in at two locations.
Adium X, my IM app of choice, has released version 1.0.5-- mostly bugfixes, and no major additions to the interface. A bug which deleted chat transcript indexes has been fixed, as well as a crash that was showing up during text-to-speech. And since libpurple was upgraded to 2.0.2, moving ICQ buddies around will go more smoothly, and as the blog says, users who want to add Tlen (a Polish IM service) support to Adium will now be able to do so.
Adium also says this is the last major 1.0 release-- the next planned release will be 1.1, and will drop OS X 10.3 support. Optimizing for 10.4 only, they say, will "bring you more of the shiny." Can't wait to see it.
The race to see who will rule IM on the iPhone has begun. Last week, Dave wrote about Meebo. It works, but has flaws (the buddy list is very far from the chat window for some reason, and the chat window can't be resized).
Today, I came across JiveTalk, which offers simultaneous login to AIM, MSN, Yahoo!, GoogleTalk, ICQ, and Jabber. The alpha release for iPhone worked pretty well during my brief testing.
The UI resembles iChat. I had multiple AIM conversations open, and a small notification window told me when the inactive conversation had received an update. Also, two "chat bubbles" at the top of the screen let me toggle between conversations.
It's alpha, as I said, but looks good so far. Check it out.
Chatterboxes of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your inability to IM from your iPhone. Cerulean Studios, maker of the popular Trillian multi-service IM client for Windows, is hard at work on the next version -- Trillian Astra, which in addition to being cross-platform will also include a full web interface to all of the social networking features present in the standalone app.
A wee birdie (thanks Victor) pointed us to this post on the Trillian Astra dev blog, which shows an interesting version of the TA web access portal. Seems that the code monkeys are psyched to do a carefully-designed Trillian Astra portal that is tuned to Safari for iPhone's specs... nice. Go ahead and sign up as an alpha tester if you wish, and do tell them that you are an iPhone owner, but note that it will be a few weeks before the iPhone UI is ready for test.
After almost 8 years in production, the open-source instant messaging application Fire has come to an end. Pre-dating even iChat, Fire was the first multi-protocol client on the platform, and has long had a dedicated user base. The loss of multiple key members of the development team and a reliance on legacy frameworks which were no longer being updated caused key members of the development team to reconsider their future plans and cease active development. Fortunately for fans of the software, two of Fire's developers have joined the Adium team, and the two applications are already integrating features. Users switching from Fire to Adium can choose to have all of their contacts, logs, away messages, and groups transferred to the new software.
After 4 years of hard work by almost 30 volunteers, instant messaging application Adium has finally reached version 1.0. The most significant update to the program in over a year and a half, the update brings with it a slew of new features, bug fixes, and added functionality. I've been using the 1.0 since it hit beta on July 4th of last year, and it is truly a treat to interact with. As for the new features, here's the shortlist:
I spend a lot of time in chat (I'm very popular) and sadly all of my friends and colleagues refuse to use the same IM protocol. That's why I eschew iChat and use Adium instead. One of the developers behind Adium gives us a peek at how the beta 1.0 release is shaping up. Before you ask, Adium 1.0 won't support voice/video chat which is just fine with me.
According to a Skype developer, an old and unstable version of Skype for Mac has been leaked onto file sharing networks across the globe. If you spot this file, do not download it! "It is an internal unstable development version, and thus it is extremely buggy" and "it will destroy your contacts and other data". We wouldn't want that now would we?
Since the Windows version of Skype gained video conferencing support in March, many Mac user have felt left behind and stuck with the non-video capable version of Skype. Fortunately, this warning also comes with some good news; Skype version 2.0 for the Mac is nearly ready for primetime. The screenshot of a video capable of Skype on the left of this post is the tantalizing proof.
So, try and resist the temptation to go searching for a pre-release version that could potentially destroy your Mac, and wait a little longer for the official version. Remember what happened the last time someone bit the Apple?
Apparently, a lot of our readers are Yahoo Messenger users. A good dozen of you or so sent us this tip that Yahoo Messenger 3.0b1 has been released. I've just taken it for a spin and my early impression is that Yahoo seems to have hired some great developers. This is a really nice application with a great Tiger/Leopard iChat-like interface, cross-platform webcam support, integration with other Yahoo services, chat conferencing, and file transfers. The website says that the ability to chat with MSN Messenger/Microsoft Live users will be coming soon as well. Oh, and it's a universal binary.
TUAW reader
varun submitted a good question for an Ask TUAW session on the topic of multi-network chat clients. varun has tried out
the likes of Fire, Adium and Proteus, but hasn't come up with a compelling reason to use one over the other.
I thought this would be a nice opportunity to ask you readers to sound off on which multi-network IM client you
prefer, and why. When commenting, be sure to mention how the client fits into your workflow, what you like about it and
why. The more clients you can bring to the table above and beyond the ones already mentioned, the better.
So
what say you, TUAW readers? What is your favorite multi-network IM client, and why?
Flying out of beta status, Adium 1.2 made a full-fledged public release today. And we were just talking about the beta release right before Christmas... Starting with an improved menubar item and account management features, the new features and bugfixes in 1.2 get too numerous for this post, so be sure to head for the Adium blog to find out what's new.
While it's pretty hard to imagine why they'd bother, Cerulean Studios is 
Until Apple releases "iChat Mobile," developers will compete to produce the IM solution for the iPhone. So far, we've considered 
Adium X, my IM app of choice, has released 
The race to see who will rule IM on the iPhone has begun. Last week, 
Chatterboxes of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your inability to IM from your 
After almost 8 years in production, the open-source instant messaging application 
After 4 years of hard work by almost 30 volunteers, instant messaging application 
Apparently, a lot of our readers are Yahoo Messenger users. A good dozen of you or so sent us this tip that 
TUAW reader
varun submitted a good question for an Ask TUAW session on the topic of multi-network chat clients. varun has tried out
the likes of Fire, Adium and Proteus, but hasn't come up with a compelling reason to use one over the other. 
