Showdown: Adium vs. iChat

Unless you're using voice or video chat, or just don't care that much, Adium is by far the better client. The only reason I ever open iChat is to do video chats.

For those, I rely on Skype. In fact, I've never opened iChat on my Mac, for the simple reason that my friends use either MSN or Windows (which also means they use MSN too). So, here comes Adium!

It seems to me that iChat is kind of Mac-centric. As soon as you go beyond that, you can't really use it.

Kind of Mac-centric? If by that you mean "only available on the Mac", then yeah. ;)

Unless you're using voice or video chat, or just don't care that much, Adium is by far the better client.

I'd have to disagree. The only reason to use Adium is it's interoperability with Microsoft and Yahoo. Having given the 4 members on my buddy list an ultimatum [get Skype or AIM or goodbye], I find the interface of iChat far more pleasing. This is especially true with the Chax add-on.

Honestly, I'd like to see Yahoo and Microsoft integration into the Leopard edition of iChat.

Either you don't care about features or you must be joking. iChat is severely lacking. It is a basic chat client at best. Maybe you like how it looks (Adium is skinnable, btw) or its simplicity, but you can't seriously think that iChat wins on features.

What features? Perhaps I just never used them, but the only reason I used it previously was Yahoo and Microsoft messengers.

First, I want to say that I meant my last post as a kind of joking "I can't believe anyone would have another opinion" kind of way. I'm not really calling you a moron. Holy flame wars can be fun, though. ;)

It supports pretty much every protocol, including allowing multiple accounts per protocol, and even the obscure protocols (like Sametime, which is a Lotus Notes thing). It supports aliases (iChat does too, but you have to add every user to the address book; don't even get me started on that). It allows you to log every conversation and search through your history (per user, per multiple users, or all users) easily. Tabbed chats (which let you drag a conversation out of a window to make it a new window, or into another window to move conversations around; very intuitive). Combining multiple accounts into one "Contact" (so if you know someone who uses AIM, MSN, ICQ, etc. you can have them show up just once in your list). Things like that.

And on a purely-subjective note, I think it looks a lot nicer (not sure if I use the default skin, though).

I honestly can barely tolerate iChat. The lack of tabbed conversations and chat logs are enough to drive me insane.

Chax fixes that.

Fixes what?

Chax adds tabs to iChat. If you use Yahoo!, MSN or ICQ, though, iChat still leaves you out in the cold.

That said, I only use AIM, so iChat with Chax works beautifully.

Killer features that make me love iChat:

- Bonjour (that Just Works™)
- unparalleled 2-way, 3-way and 4-way video chat
- great 10-way audio chat
- great X-way text chat
- fantastic OS integration (which is going to be SO much more awesome once Leopard comes along)

All in all, plenty of reasons to love iChat. But, for balance's sake, here are the killer features that make me love Adium:

- skinnability; I've made my contact list disappear off the edge of the screen, made it semi-opaque, very minimalist. Great!
- support for Y! and MSN as well (I still have some friends using that, much to my regret)
- cleaner, more efficient look (but the upcoming Leopard iChat will match if not beat Adium on that, so..)

Honestly, the main reason I use Adium at all is the Y! and MSN support, and the fact that my contact list can be minimalized so that I can display more of my contacts on screen without having to scroll. My iChat lists are always frickin' long, but only because the names take up so much space.

While I've discovered Adium's deep customization features since, the original reason I switched from iChat to Adium was because those damn balloons take up inordinate amounts of space and override color formatting. It's cute for the first 15 seconds, but then it's frickin' annoying.

That being said, I don't use video chat at all, so iChat's advantages there don't matter to me.

Kind of Mac-centric? If by that you mean "only available on the Mac", then yeah. ;)

Obviously :)

What I meant is that as soon as your friends are not on Macs, you can forget about iChat. On Windows, seems to me that they mostly use MSN, so...

Or maybe it's just me, but I don't know anybody who use AIM.

I don't know anyone who uses MSN. I used to know a few, though. It used to be that I knew 1 or 2 people using MSN, 1 or 2 using Yahoo, 1 or 2 using ICQ, and a huge number using AIM. It was unreasonable for me to use separate clients, so gaim/Adium was the best choice easily (don't even get me started on Trillian for Windows).

Henry VII said:

Chax fixes that.

Come Leopard, Chax won't work. And I don't use it on Tiger because it's an InputManager hack, which are unsafe by nature.

Faruk said:

Bonjour (that Just Works™)

fantastic OS integration (which is going to be SO much more awesome once Leopard comes along)

Adium does Bonjour, and it's OS-integration is just as good, if not better.

Jack Huang said:

I don't use video chat at all, so iChat's advantages there don't matter to me.

Same with me. And when I do audio or video, it's in Skype. Almost everyone in India uses Skype, but few even have AIM accounts, let alone use iChat/AIM to video chat. The most popular and widespread IM protocol in India, Canada, Germany and a number of other countries (Faurk's country, for one!) where I have friends is MSN. Microsoft may make a @!$%#ty OS, but their chat protocol is solid and has almost never failed me, whereas I've had innumerable problems with AIM (too many pings?!?), and even more with iChat (mac.com). Also, file transfers Just Work™ with MSN, AIM is moody. I like Google's Jabber protocol and use it in Adium and iChat, but I wish they'd open it up to third parties and let non-Gtalk users send files and audio chat.

Another reason I use Adium is because some of my friends have only 1 IM account, on Yahoo! or MSN, for example. iChat Leopard better be good, because right now it's no competitor to Adium. I hope that if they don't improve it, Apple will let us put Adium on the iPhone.

I agree with Faruk about the article not being objective, but one has to agree - Adium is the winner.

I think I saw something in the very last update notes about Bonjour. I never tried it, though.

I had problems with Sametime support for a while. I could get messages, but when I sent them no one ever got them. That was fixed a long time ago, though.

What other parts?

Video and voice will definitely be a welcome addition. They need gaim to support it first, though.

iChat integrates with your Address Book, User Account Picture, iTunes, Mail, and probably a few more apps that I'm not thinking of.

Adium integrates somewhat with Address Book but that's it.

iChat integrates with your Address Book

I don't consider that a good feature. They do it clumsily. I don't need an entry in my address book for every AIM user I talk to. I honestly don't want integration with the address book, and I've heard that the new iChat in Leopard will finally not force you to add a user to your address book just to add their screen name.

Adium also integrates with iTunes (for status messages; what else is there?).

iChat integrates with your Address Book, User Account Picture, iTunes, Mail, and probably a few more apps that I'm not thinking of.

Adium integrates somewhat with Address Book but that's it.

Adium integrates with your Address Book, User Account Picture (just check the drop down box, it's hooking into the exact same API), iTunes (used 1.0, Faruk?), Mail, and many more apps that I'm not thinking of. It can integrate with even more apps with the help of plug-ins. I used a plug-in to import my chat transcripts from Microsoft Messenger, for example.

I don't consider that a good feature. They do it clumsily. I don't need an entry in my address book for every AIM user I talk to.

Adam hit the nail on the head. Thanks to Apple's unintuitive and poor integration of the two apps, I have all sorts of people in my Address Book, who I'd rather just have on my iChat contact list. And since I synch my Address Book contacts to my iPod, I have a ridiculous number of entries that I have to scroll through when I'm looking for a phone number. Many of those people don't even live in my city or have given me their phone numbers (I don't need them).

There's a difference between being an Apple fan and an Apple apologist.

Correction: haven't given me their phone numbers

I don't think it's fair to call him an "Apple apologist". I bet that for his use cases the integration into the Address Book is exactly what he wants. Some people really do only have people in their buddy lists whom they know personally (family, coworkers, etc.). For those people it seems right to have one list of contacts. For the majority of IM users (read: young people) that's not the case. Most people have lots of people in their buddy lists whom they may know only through online chats, or whom they only ever talk to online. In those cases (which I would argue is the majority) it doesn't make sense to add people to your address book.

I'm not calling him an apologist, I'm just saying that there's a difference between praising everything that Apple does, and the things that the company gets right.

For example, all this hype around the TV and the iPhone - they aren't that great, IMHO. Both are overly accommodative of a Windows-using audience, and thereby completely misuse iTunes, turning it into bloatware.

I just think that honest and constructive feedback is good for Apple. Pretending everything is rosy and perfect doesn't work. Again, not targeted at Faruk specifically. I'm just sick of the hundreds of Apple rumour and fan sites, praising everything the company does.

Regarding Adam and Smaran's points:

Yes, Adium 1.0 has added a lot more OS integration including some Address Book support (I've not seen any Mail integration at all — where's my Adium indicator of people being online in Mail?). I didn't notice that Adium 1.0 natively integrates with iTunes because I used a script to do that before I upgraded and simply thought it was still the script at work. Good to see these improvements.

For the Address Book integration, I agree that forcing a new AB contact addition for a mere IM person is a bit annoying, but for me the integration is fantastic. I mostly pull contacts _out— of AB as I'm hooked into a big directory of people, and thus I love it.

On the whole, though, I really find iChat's OS integration much better than Adium's, even after the 1.0 release. Come Leopard, that integration will — to paraphrase from the article — blow Adium's out of the water.

(I've not seen any Mail integration at all — where's my Adium indicator of people being online in Mail?)

That has nothing to do with Adium's integration with Mail, but the other way around.

for me the integration is fantastic. I mostly pull contacts _out— of AB as I'm hooked into a big directory of people, and thus I love it.

I understand that, but I believe you're in the minority, as most people have a lot of IM contacts who they do not want in their address book and on their iPod/iPhone.

Come Leopard, that integration will — to paraphrase from the article — blow Adium's out of the water.

I honestly hope so. But, keep in mind, for it to do that it would have to support MSN, Yahoo!, combine the Jabber, AIM etc. contact lists into one (how many floating lists are we going to have with multiple IM protocols - 5?), and finally, provide a better interface for viewing chat logs.

I can't wait till Leopard and all the new apps are out. FYI: iChat is the only bundled application that I have a replacement for. I do have Firefox installed, but only use it for old/IE-optimised sites (eBay, for one!).

Oh, yes, I'm definitely in the minority with that. I'm just saying, just because it may not be useful to you doesn't mean the feature as a whole is bad.

I honestly hope so. But, keep in mind, for it to do that it would have to support MSN, Yahoo!, combine the Jabber, AIM etc. contact lists into one (how many floating lists are we going to have with multiple IM protocols - 5?), and finally, provide a better interface for viewing chat logs.

Perhaps for you to do that would be a more appropriate phrasing. All the iChat Theater and Backdrop features, for instance, are getting me really excited. I really wouldn't mind if the new iChat still wouldn't support MSN and Y! — especially since they're terrible protocols.

Rubbish. The only terrible protocol is Gtalk, at this point, and only because it's under-featured. The problem with AIM for Mac users is that the mac.com servers are highly unreliable. I used to get signed out randomly, receive "ping errors" and be unable to send files to AIM users on other platforms and those using Adium. That's why I signed up for an aim.com ID instead. Now I only rarely receive a "rate limiting" error, but that's acceptable. A few days ago, I decided to log in with my mac.com ID, and after an hour or so of usage, poof!, signed out and unable to sign back in.

What's ironic is that Microsoft's MSN is the most reliable IM protocol on the Mac. File transfers "just work", and if you're using Microsoft Messenger, audio chats are mighty fine, too. Yahoo!'s also good, but only if you're using the Y! Messenger app.

I don't have any reliability issues with my .Mac account, I only ever have them in Adium with my AIM account. MSN is by far the least reliable as it'll regularly time out for me, and Yahoo! is always snappy on my Adium but then, I don't ever really use it so I don't really care.

But I was talking from a technical point of view, not usability. MSN's display names and handling thereof is terrible and on the actual MSN client it showed how poorly designed the whole thing was, as people abused it beyond measure (rendering entire contact lists useless). Yahoo's is sh!t because it injects a ton of html around each message you send. Etc. etc. etc…

The older versions of Trillian (from a few years ago) were so bad that I don't think I'll bother trying them again. The only thing Trillian had going for it was multiple protocol support, and they only allowed one account per protocol. I seem to remember also having problems running it on a machine with multiple users. The Windows version of Gaim (which was ugly as hell) was still better than Trillian, even back when it crashed all the time.

/rant

I agree with Adam (again). Trillian was horrible on Windows. Complicated interface and preferences. Plus, they charged for it. The free version was under-featured. Gaim for Windows looks and works better.

That new Astra looks pretty cool — compared to Meebo. Trillian as a desktop app is way behind Adium in terms of usability and elegance, in my opinion. I used to use it all the time when I was still a Windows user, but when I found Adium I couldn't have been happier about leaving Trillian behind.

The Astra thing is nice but I'm curious how that'll actually work on a Mac. The screencast is on an XP machine (even though he has an Apple display and an iSight there).

Guess we'll have to wait a few months to see how it compares to Meebo on a Mac…