My Love Hate Relationship with iChat

[Jay42]

Okay, let me start out by saying that iChat is the only IM client that I use right now. I love it. The UI is super smooth, looks better than anything else, and is usually ok to use.

However, there are some instances where we have had some friction. First of all, I hate adding hyperlinks in the new iChat that came with Tiger. Its such a chore that I resist it if possible (see ).

Also, while I do like the little pop up for away messages that appears when you mouse over buddies, I couldn't figure out how to follow a link that someone had posted as an away message. I couldn't click it from the pop-up and it didn't show up in get info. So I was forced to clear the location bar in Safari (with the cursor there) and manually type in the URL! C'mon Apple, this isn't even your most complicated app and everyone else's (while being hideous) does this fine!

My only hope is for 10.4.3 to patch things up between the two of us and possibly start rebuilding the trust that has been lost.

 

[iGary]

Be done with it, use Adium.

 

[Jay42]

hmm, I had forgotten about Adium. Can I import AIM screen names stored in address book? This would be a deal breaker if not possible.

 

[iGary]

Yes, I believe so.

I stopped using it because I can't get any work done with the thing on.

 

[antrabbit]

If you want to get to a hyperlink in an away message, just send the person who's away a message, their away message will come back as a reply and you can click the link. As far as I can remember that's the case.

 

[hyperpasta]

I agree

iChat is soooo close to being perfect, but there are a few glaring problems. I really hope teh do some interface adjustments in Leopard, and rumors point to a new interface with tabbed browsing! Yay!

 

[Bern]

iChat would be perfect if you could use it to talk to Yahoo or MSN users (I don't want to use Jabber to do it either). The rest of the world does not use iChat or AIM unfortunately. So for me it's Adium and iChat just sits untouched in my applications folder.

 

[Jay42]

If you want to get to a hyperlink in an away message, just send the person who's away a message, their away message will come back as a reply and you can click the link. As far as I can remember that's the case.

There's no way that I'm gonna send someone a message explaining I just want to check out their away message link everytime I would like to do this. Frankly there are cases in which I would like to check out their message without talking to them. This should be entirely possible (and is with others) with an Apple app!

 

[antrabbit]

Ahhh well you didn't say you wanted to be sneaky

As another point brought up in this thread you can use iChat with MSN well you can according to this thread...

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/118007/

 

[paulypants]

iChat would be perfect if you could use it to talk to Yahoo or MSN users (I don't want to use Jabber to do it either). The rest of the world does not use iChat or AIM unfortunately. So for me it's Adium and iChat just sits untouched in my applications folder.

The rest of the world? Wow, what planet am I on?

I know exactly 0 people who use Yahoo and 1 that uses MSN.

Everyone I know has an AIM name or .mac...

Guess I'm lucky!

 

[Jay42]

The rest of the world? Wow, what planet am I on?

I know exactly 0 people who use Yahoo and 1 that uses MSN.

Everyone I know has an AIM name or .mac...

I think people outside the us mostly use services other than AOL (like canada). I also don't know anyone not on aol or .mac.

 

[Dark]

I would use adium in a heartbeat, its just send and receive files often, i mean not like constantly, but often. and the fact that adiums file transfer is still in the works kills me.

 

[Steven1621]

Be done with it, use Adium.

eh, i disagree. i find the lack of consistent file transfer ability in adium to be a factor preventing me from using it. hopefully, the future versions will correct this problem.

 

[Chip NoVaMac]

And then there are those of us that have been trying to get our iSights to get past the dam n Yahoo servers to communicate with the rest of the Wndows world.

 

[davebl]

ichat has such nice integration with the os.... but adium does have the features.

 

[MrSugar]

Personally I just can't let iChat get away with not having tabbed messaging. It's by far the best way to chat, and I just feel adium has more of the tweaks that I want.

Really I think it depends how much control you want over your IMing environment. iChat is a great program, but really if it doesn't do everything you want than it's hard to settle for less.

 

[Bern]

The rest of the world? Wow, what planet am I on?

I know exactly 0 people who use Yahoo and 1 that uses MSN.

Everyone I know has an AIM name or .mac...

Guess I'm lucky!

Perhaps you are

I have 33 people on my MSN and 9 on Yahoo....

I know only 2 people on AIM or .Mac. I'm sure there are other countries that may use .Mac or AOL other than the US, but it seems to me the rest of the world prefer not to.

 

[Sca1pel]

I chat is like second nature now...I just dont like automaticly logging in sometimes so I'll turn off my airport to have a certain sn on first

 

[pmoyniha]

I live in Canada, and I definately do not know anyone that uses AIM or well, anything other than MSN. Using another program isn't even considered among the people I know. Guess that's just our backwards cold ways!

 

[MUCKYFINGERS]

I live in CA and EVERYONE uses AIM ...

 

[QCassidy352]

Now that I've gone adium, ichat seems like such crap. And just for the record, living on the east coast of the US the past few years, I've never known anyone who uses any messaging client but AIM.