Adium is a popular and, probably, the best instant messaging client for you Mac.
Adium is a popular and, probably, the best instant messaging client for you Mac at the moment. It supports a great number of services, including MSN, Yahoo!
Among the numerous features of the application, I would emphasize Tabbed Messaging and Encrypted Messaging. Adium allows you to combine multiple chats into a number of windows with tabs, which make your work more convenient and gives you more free screen volume. You can enable the option in General Preferences. Also, there you are able to set the program organize tabs into new windows by group. Due to the Off-the-Record Messaging support Adium allows you to send encrypted messages. Therefore you can be sure that no one will read your private message but your recipient and you.
In addition to all above, Adium gratifies you with cute interface and offers a lot of 'Xtras': sounds, emoticons, images, styles and many more. By the way, it is translated into 27 languages and some more localizations are in progress.
Unfortunately, Adium does not support voice and video chat, which, to my mind, is the only disadvantage of the program.
Pros
- Cute UI
- Lots of IM services supported
- High customizability
- Lots of options
Cons
- Voice and video chat unsupported
It is simple, but does its job right.
I prefer to use video chats in most cases, but with Adium I have no possibility for that and it is a pity. But in all other aspects and functions it works quite nicely.
As the program review rightly states, it is the best IM client on Mac. To be honest, it's not that great in comparison with its counterparts on Mac, but still, it is quite a mighty thing, if you take into account how bad the other IM clients for this platform are. If you want to hat with your friends, than, most likely, you have almost no alternative to this thing. At least, I haven't heard about the one so far.