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I use the libpurple-based Mac OS X client Adium, and there is a plug-in available called Challenge/Response. This plug-in will intercept any messages from users not already on my buddy list and ask any question I like; if the user gets it right, I am asked to block/allow the user as if the plug-in wasn't even there. I used to be flooded with spam whenever I used my old MSN/Windows Live! account, but now I never get one bit of spam.

Windows and Linux/*NIX users should check out Adium's sister project Pidgin, and you can use the Bot Sentry or pidgin-privacy-please plug-ins to the same effect.

There is no version of Pidgin for OS X, you may install it (using Fink) but it is unsupported.
There is however a port called adium

Tracking this problem with Adium here.

Adium 1.2.6 is now out which fixes ICQ connectivity.

On OS X, sandboxing is different. Please read couple of pages from Apple mailing lists before comparing it to its bad photocopy. OS X hasn't got a problem with Applications running under normal user account so there is no community to educate with stick (like MS does).

Safari.app will be able to say "Here are my directories and the system calls I will make". So Safari won't even see a Framework or System folder. Way more detail at http://www.318.com/techjournal/?p=107

On OS X Leopard, there are couple of deep level technologies already having sandbox technology (spotlight and bonjour) and Apple is preparing it for general developer use.

OS X "stupid security" dialogue works well, so damn well that it is able to figure out Adobe AIR Applications user installed over the web. The "stupid dialogue" could be a life saver in future. I am not speaking about the Windows horrible copy.

Code signing is not like the Verisign pyramid scheme on Windows, ANY Developer can sign their application free. People actually adopt it, even including Adium X like open source applications. There is no "Apple certified" or "Verisign Secure" junk, it is application signing which is meant to benefit the user and developer. By signing it, you just make sure your files aren't tampered after user trusts it so no lamers taking advantage of your application (and users trust). There are no other advantages, OS X treats your Application just like unsigned Applications. It is not the signing in Microsoft Windows. If user updates unsigned Application, OS will prompt if he/she wants to grant access since there is no way making sure that it is the same binary from very same developer user trusted at first place. If user updates a developer signed binary in a normal way and the signature is the same, it doesn't prompt.

Read this for more info:
http://adiumx.com/blog/2008/04/adium-application-security-and-your-keychain/

Apple OS X marks the _executable_ files which are downloaded from internet, once only (if they weren't maliciously replaced). I saw MS copied it on XP3 completely wrong. The MS photocopy will make users click happy indeed.

If user replaces an executable by hand, e.g. new version- drag/drop overwriting old executable, it doesn't ask.

Also, if Developer is not lazy or doesn't have a philosophical reason to ignore free application signing (Adium/Omniweb has signed binaries), user is never, ever prompted when executable replaced legimately (app firewall). If the binary is hacked , the Firewall directly stops its "server" functions.

I understand the GNU command line guys but I don't get why normal .app people still doesn't sign their applications. http://adiumx.com/blog/2008/04/adium-application-security-and-your-keychain/

Before anyone starts pestering me on this, I want to mention that I've been using *nix based systems for a long while now. I'm a software engineer, and I worked at a linux based ISP for two years on top of it. I've installed countless distro's and eventually stopped using them all (mostly for gaming reasons). The one problem I have every time I go back to loading up gentoo (still my fav) is lack of applications I like.

Example: Trillian for windows / Adium for mac (click on Xtras, top right of screen). They're pretty looking, they're functional and have lots of addons. Linux has gaim (which I love actually, but it's the point of the matter. I don't have the option to switch from "clean and basic interface" to "fun with extras").

I'm a web developer, and my favorite database program to date was for Mac (Yoursql .. or look at this image). It's small, it's light, and it does 99% of what I need (which is just quick look ups and checking data). In this case, I LIKE not having 20 ways to do the same thing with an interface with a billion options. And no, don't tell me to use phpMyAdmin, or to use the command line, that's the easiest way to DETER someone from using linux. Yes I CAN use the command line (all my queries are written from scratch, I dislike those gui query builders).

Next is editors. Simple fixes here and there, I use Vi(m). But for my Php/xml/html/javascript/css, I want to see a program that just does web languages. For Windows and Mac there are TONS of them. For linux, there are a few, and most are either bloated to hell (eclipse, since it handles ALL programming languages for the most part) or just unstable with practically no features (line numbers? good color switching between php/html/css? tabs for multiple windows?). Given Bluefish is good stuff, but programs like this (IMHO) are few and far between.

Mac, I believe has it down the best. There are many programs, and (which is also the problem IMHO) many of them are not meant to do EVERYTHING. In the end though, you have a bunch of options(programs) to choose from, and they're really well built for what they need to do (lots of planning to put only what is generally NEEDED, while spending time to make sure the DESIGNS look good and are simple. The whole "i don't like it because it took too many mouse clicks" mentality that mac users have), instead of one or two programs that are meant to try and do everything =/. As much as I hate to admit it, eye candy is a major player. It's sad because Desktop wise, linux is AMAZING at it Linux vs Vista (I'm not trying to bash Vista here, i'm just making a point).

While I mentioned web development based things, I'm sure this is generally true for most people in most aspects of computing (I've had a lot of friends mention this about various things). I believe that biggest problem is the idea that "a program should do everything" mentality. When we build some more basic programs that are quick, clean and easy to use for any and all purposes (even basic text editors), then I believe that many more people will start to use linux because they won't be so lost from needing to search all over the internet for "a program to do X" (ubuntu / gentoo / suse all that those threads in their forums, the stuff really isn't that easy to find...) or overwhelmed by seeing the 500 options when they just wanted to write a few notes to themselves. Ubuntu was a great step at simplifying and getting people curious to install, now we just need to add more "stuff" to keep people here! The "Ready for Desktop" can be thrown out as it IS ready for desktop. Now we just need to work on the "Simple and Easy to Use" .. which will eventually lead to the new,shi

http://trac.adiumx.com/wiki/VoiceAndVideo

I love Adium, and I think they have the OP's problem solved pretty well, but as far as video and audio you're wrong. It does not support video or audio chat.

There is an IM client for Mac OS X called Adium that does it "the right way", IMO. You can manually resize the input box vertically, and it grows vertically if you type in enough to overfill it. Once you send or delete the message, it snaps back to the size you manually set it to.

Statistics gathered by the Adium team report more GTalk than ICQ usage (not surprising, and of course there are all the web client users.

At the very least, Microsoft's Live Hotmail doesn't scan your email like Gmail does.

You should consider Adium, then.

Unless you need custom smilies and webcam support.

With OTR built-in I can even send it via Google's servers.

Adium is a sweet, multi-service, OSS IM client.

Yeah, and in MSN Messenger as well, where they'll just censor out anything multiplication-related. :-p

Hey here's some of my thoughts:

2. I want to adjust mouse acceleration. I can't figure out how without buying an expensive 3rd party app.
Just poke around the settings in the system prefs. Mouse accel is different in OS X. Not better or worse; just different.

3. I want to be able to launch my apps with one or two-key keyboard shortcuts. I can't figure this one out either.
Yeah again just poke around in the system preferences, you can specify this in there somewhere.

4. My scrollbar in firefox doesn't work right. Is this normal?
Firefox sucks on the Mac IMO. Try Camino, Safari, or FF3 should be out soon which is supposed to be much better for OS X.

5. Many open source apps that I love don't have standard maintained OS X distributions (gvim, pidgin, etc). I could try compiling myself, or I've found older versions that other people have built for them, but that's rather a step backwards instead of forwards.
Try Adium for an OS X-like Pidgin client. It's nice!


And check out Fink and MacPorts to bring and Linux apps to OS X. I find it nice to have wget, scons, and other random but useful *nix tools right there in the terminal.

Again, I'm not trying to troll...I just thought I'd finally give the thing an honest try, but I'm not yet seeing what the big deal is. Can I get one of you fanboys to point me towards what I'm missing?

Viruses, spyware, WGA, reinstalling your OS every 6 months, a machine that constantly communicates to Microsoft, etc. OS X is simplicity, but with powerful Unix tools underneath. That's my take on things. I didn't realize what a pain maintaining a Windows box was until I ran another OS.

...as noted in the article but not in the summary, the "client to beat" is the excellent free, open source, GPL-licensed, and highly customizable Adium (more info).

(The summary does mention the other five of the six clients reviewed in the article.)

...as noted in the article but not in the summary, the "client to beat" is the excellent free, open source, GPL-licensed, and highly customizable Adium (more info).

(The summary does mention the other five of the six clients reviewed in the article.)

OTR is miles better than the gaim-encryption/pidgin-encrypt. Honestly, I don't understand why they won't just kill it and move to OTR for good; it's a fundamentally better security model for something transient like instant messages.

Particularly since having two mutually-incompatible encryption packages is a pretty crummy state of affairs; it just means that the few users who do use encryption, are going to be fragmented between incompatible systems.

OTR probably has the greatest market penetration of any IM-encryption system, outside of corporate clients (Sametime, I think, uses encryption by default, although I don't think it's end-to-end, only client-server, because there they want the ability to intercept on the server), because it's built into the fairly popular OS X Adium client. So there's already quite a few users out there who have software that supports it. If only some of the other IM clients would start building it in by default, rather than making it an optional addon, I think it would quickly gain traction as a de facto standard. (And that would be a good thing, since it's a good system and open source.)

Adium has a cute duck logo. If anything, Popfly's logo, being a duck, should be compared to Adium's.

But uh ... yeah, all of that resemblence thing is just flaimbait.

Well, for one, users do react better to a UI that's visually appealing (but non-invasive). Although I personally think that Apple's Mail.app shown in the grandparent post violates this principle, OS X on a whole conforms to it pretty well.

As far as "amateurish UI element spacing and layouts", I refer you to this KDE Print Settins dialogue. Although the screenshot's somewhat dated (2004), I came across a similar dialogue this past week when using my University's linux cluster. Although the font configuration doesn't appear to have been borked like in the screenshot I linked to, the element spacing was the same, despite the smaller fonts (ie. huge window, small fonts).

There are a few examples of good UIs on KDE/GTK apps, but for the most part, they tend to look very sloppy. Win32 apps tend to look neutral and professional. OS X apps are a bit more flashy, but are on a similar level of "neatness".

I would doubt that it's even an issue with "open-sourceness". Adium, a (free) GAIM-based multi-platform IM client for OS X has what is easily one of the best UIs I've seen on an application regardless of license or platform.

Another complaint I have is that FOSS GUIs tend to rely a lot on toolbars and icons. Although this isn't necessarily a terrible thing in and of itself, It is more often than not the case that WAY too many icons are presented, and that the design of said icons gives very few visual cues as to the function of the button. Konqueror is a terrible offender of this crime. Although virtually every other browser on the planet gets by just fine with 4 or 5 buttons in the toolbar, Konqueror somehow feels that it's perfectly acceptable to put 17 buttons in the default toolbar.

www.adiumx.com. No need to mess with MSN for Mac. :)

I remember going to FreeBSD channel and getting laughed at back in day...

I was being complete GNU Nerd those times and my daily browsing included FreeBSD. Whoever overlooked my monitor wanted to buy FreeBSD symbol's toy! I tried so hard to explain that is is logo of the OS running Yahoo.com (always works).

I had this genius idea that time. Make FreeBSD mascots available for sale and use the money to fund project.

Same thing happens on Adium (OS X chat app) site now and they didn't listen when I suggested. Look at that Duck :)
http://www.adiumx.com/images/logo.png

Funny, the Adium developers don't seem to have a particular problem with this. Perhaps nobody told them when they scarted using TLFKA libgaim?

I beg to differ. Although it is Gaim-Based, and only runs on one platform, Adium is the undisputed champion of textual messaging.

It's really really rare to come across a program that is extremely easy to use, but is completely extensible and customizable (with minimal effort). Winamp is the only other widely-popular program I can think of that fits that description (and perhaps Firefox to a somewhat lesser extent...)

If you've got a mac to play around with, I highly reccommend checking it out.

(Non-cross platform plug)

It's called AdiumX, and it's easily the best IM client I've ever used (also, built off of libgaim (I mean, libpurple (easily the most disappointing name in all this name change))). Alas, it's only for OS X. If you ever pick up an OS X box, do yourself a favour, and pick it up.

Adium is still looking for participants.

http://trac.adiumx.com/wiki/SummerOfCode

More significant, IMO, than the lack of Quicksilver, is the lack of Adium.

Seriously -- iChat AV? Who do they think they're kidding? iChat is only useful if all of your contacts are using either AIM or Jabber, and that means it's a nonstarter if you have many contacts outside the U.S., where AIM is a distant second or third (usually to MSN Messenger). Sure, if I could, I'd get them to all ditch MSN and move to a protocol that's not owned by the Great Satan, but that's just not an option in most cases.

The only thing iChat offers over Adium is video and audio chat, and to most people, I think those are mostly eye-candy features rather than something they'll use every day, particularly since they really tax your hardware, software, and internet connection. I can only think of a few people that I would be able to conduct video chat with, if I wanted to. And this is out of the literally hundreds of people across the four major (AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Google) IM networks that I communicate with.

The 'killer feature' of instant messaging isn't video or audio. If people want those, they'll use a purpose-built application that does the job better than an IM client will -- c.f. the success of Skype. The key feature is telepresence and quick, effortless communication. It's being able to glance at a Buddy List and see whether someone on the other side of the planet is there at their desk, or if they're away, and sending them a quick message.

The value provided by an IM application (really, any communications application), is directly related to how many people it lets you interact with. In this, Adium kicks the bejeezus out of iChat.

You are hideously miseducated. Allow me to bring in some words of wisdom.

I've seen radical departure in Microsoft's IE7, couldn't completely figure it out.
Vista (Remember IE 3?)

I've seen a radical departure in Gaim's interface, still scratching my head.
I will agree with you, why they didn't model Adium's interface is beyond me. Not to mention, it doesn't really follow any kind of UI standard and leaves the user mindless clicking through all the menus looking for a certain option.

The gist of the discussion was we "had to have" a file menu, and it had to be on the top left of the application even though there was no notion of "File" for this application. The rationale? Because that's the way Microsoft did all of their applications.
Microsoft UI Design document recommended a File, Edit and Help menu for all Windows applications. If you don't have it, you risk users thinking your product is inferiour since it doesn't adapt to The Windows Standard(TM). If you still think this is crazy, just boot up your favorite linux distro sometime and look for a UI design standard across the apps.. there is none (or if there is, its loosly enforced giving the presentation of a mismash of second-rate products.

I give Microsoft credit for taking a chance on a radical departure from what I've always thought was a stilted and stupid "required" interface (menus)... I hold little hope they get (got) it right considering Microsoft carried the old standard into the 21st century.
Remember Office 6.0 to Office 2000? That was considered a R-A-D-I-C-A-L change. I remembered telling myself I would never learn it and refused to use it for the longest time. After being dumped into the environment I learned it was actually a welcome change. With the Ribbon, I think it has a chance. There will be people who hold onto XP, 2003, etc until Office 2012 comes out.. but they will eventually make the switch and the old UI will look ancient.

I find it curious they offer no way to use the old menu system. I'd be inclined not to want the old way, but for the sake of familiarity, it'd seem the more sane thing to do to offer the old menu interface as an option.
Now you're just talking out of your ass. Anyone that's anyone that used Office 2007 knows they can press the Alt button and get all of their old menu's back. Think along the lines of Wordperfect Help that was part of Office 6.0 and 2000.

Oh yeah, because no one appreciates what the Adium guys have done with libgaim. It doesn't have a legion of users swearing by the application as the best IM client, anywhere, ever.

Mac users appreciate native apps very, very much. Why do you think no one is worried about cannibalized Mac development now that you can run Windows natively on Macs? Because if one software vendor says, "Screw you Mac users, just use our app within Parallels", then the competition has low-hanging fruit which can be picked. If a competitor releases a native Mac application, even if it's not as featured as the Windows one, Mac users will buy it. Know why? Because it runs natively and doesn't force them into haphazard workarounds and hacks to get their work done.

The issue here is that open source programmers may be good programmers, but they generally aren't UI designers. And if they are, they aren't Mac UI designers. So even if they write a native Mac app, it will be implemented with UI conventions from another platform. They'll overuse tabs, make every dialog modal, put the Preferences menu option in the wrong place, etc ... You often see this stuff in Qt apps on OS X. Hell, you see it in Carbon ports of old Mac applications which ran on OS 9. But the worst offenders are Java apps. Jesus god, they look and feel like ass on OS X. I hate that Azureus is the most featured BT client out there because it sucks when it's not running on Linux or Windows, where looking robotic and using tabs for everything is apparently acceptable.

Image compositing? I can think of plenty of applications on Windows that do that...in fact, here's one that only does image compositing just for you...and it's free...
http://www.topshareware.com/Image-Inc.-download-44 355.htm

Er, yeah, it's kind of like that, except it does movies, CG effects, and is actually used by professionals in the field it was written for. You didn't read GP's link, did you?

Anyway, I use Mac regularly, and I think that Quicksilver and Adium are the killer apps. iChat AV is pretty nice too if you want to video chat (granted, it sucks for AIM but that's what Adium is for), and the UNIX subsystem is nice for running POSIX-based OSS (I'm a CS student, so I do a lot of work with OSS). I also think that the interface is, on average, more polished than Linux or Windows. Finder looks terrible with brushed metal, but hey, why use Finder when you can use Quicksilver.

I'm not sure it's worth it, though. Those apps are really nice, and Apple's support is really good. On the other hand, their hardware is mediocre (one button, heavy for its size, runs hot and whiny, mediocre battery life) and slightly more expensive than the competition (at least in what I was looking for). For my next laptop, I might just get a Dell/Toshiba/HP/Sony/Lenovo/whatever and slap Linux on it.

Adium is built on libgaim, too, of all things. My hunch is that they use some OS-X-y thing to negotiate file transfer. I don't know the first thing about OS X specific development, but that would seem to me to be a reasonable explanation for why their stuff works and why GAIM is still freaky spotty.

I wonder what the recent developments will mean for adiumx. The adiumx betas have been pretty nice but the builds are so huge because of debug stuff that I had to switch back to stable. I know adium uses libgaim so I hope that as gaim improves adium continues to as well

Free, or gratis? There's some really nice OS X software out there, it's all Shareware though. I'd love to see some really high-quality, OS X native (F?)OSS. There a few out there though. Some goodies include, Adium, Colloquy, Smultron and Cyberduck. I just wish skEdit were Free though.

Microsoft has released nothing to date that is a Universal Binary. They are currently promising a universal version of Messenger 6.0 later this year, and a free universal version of Remote Desktop Client. There isn't a date set on the next version of Office. Virtual PC and Windows Media Player for Mac have been cancelled.They are currently promising a universal version of Messenger 6.0 later this year, and a free universal version of Remote Desktop Client

Microsoft isn't planning to release a UB of Media Player for Mac. Their site links to a free UB version of the Flip4Mac QT plugin. I replaced Messenger with Adium and RDC with rdesktop.. Adium supports 12 different account types along with MSN Messenger which is a huge advantage. As for rdesktop it requires Apple's X11.app and you have to launch it from the command line but at least it allows you to open multiple connections simultaneously.

To be honest that's never a feature I've played with at all, but you might find this Adium bug thread an interesting read, since it discusses it.

Short answer: apparently libgaim has support for receiving/viewing custom emoticons, but not sending them. Adium (being based on libgaim) does the same thing -- receive but not send -- although the receiving seems to be broken in some releases. When it's broken they just appear as questionmarks.

That bug (#506) is for sending, and it's on hold pending support in libgaim.

I think this is the SourceForge bug tracking page for the feature in Gaim. This is for "support" generally, which assumedly includes send and receive, and the status is open.

When I switched, I used Fire too... (previous Trillian user). But I found Fire to be unstable, etc... The IM client of choice on OS X seems to be Adium X.

Adium beats out all other IM clients I've ever used. It's for Mac OS X, it's free & it's got a stupid icon. http://www.adiumx.com/

Now if you're talking features like VOIP and Video, then you have a point, at least for people who actually use these features. There certainly needs to be some work done on libraries that can also handle these features. Adium uses libgaim, so some concerted effort on getting the required protocols, codecs, etc, in place would be great. Actually, getting gaim's direct connect to work correctly when using NAT would be a good (and probably required) start.

For the Mac, try http://www.adiumx.com/.

Need an open source, multi-protocol IM client for Mac?

Adium: http://adiumx.com/

It's been said above but I think it deserves more than one mention.

I cackled with glee as I deleted the atrocious Yahoo Messenger from my Mac. AdiumX is one of the only perfect apps I have used in my 21 years of computing.

My niece stood on my once beloved Dell 8200 the other day and cracked the LCD. I said, "era, what the hell...".

http://adiumx.com/screenshots.php

he said "I have to use it, I need MSN to stay in contact with my friends".

Oh really?

At least, that's what I would've said to the cab driver.

Since we're on the topic of shameless plugs, Adium got the nod too. But they knew last week. Any reason why it took so long for this to be published? Also, is there any way of insuring that all the projects get a fair shake at volunteers? I mean, everyone's gonna see Mozilla and GNU and friends on the list and jump on it.

For instance,Adium is, in my opinion, a far superior multi-protocol chat client to Trillian.

I use Quicksilver almost constantly at home. I've got nothing like that at work.

There still isn't a good Exposé solution for Windows. I've tried the knock-offs and they're all pretty pathetic attempts.

There's nothing like Growl that I know of. Each application has to implement its own alert system. This would be great for letting me know when a source control sync or a compile is finished.

The one great app that I've found for Windows is Slickedit, which has pretty decent Emacs emulation, but does the whole intellisense thing better than I've been able to get Emacs to do (yes, I've tried Semantic and ECB).

Since the only game I play these days is WoW, my Mac is fantastic on its own. Bootcamp holds no pull for me. If I want more games, I'll buy a console. For the work that I do, there's nothing that I can do on a Windows PC that my Mac can't do better. (I'm not saying that this is true for everyone, just me.)

So if someone can point me in the direction of apps that are as good as the ones that I mentioned for Windows, I'd actually appreciate that. I'm sick of trying to hit Command-Space and not getting Quicksilver.

It's a very nice client.

I *think* you meant http://www.adiumx.com/ (for Mac OS X).
The site www.adium.com is about "financial, management, consulting and investment services"

It is no longer limited to subversion actually - there are already plugins for mercurial, perforce and more (see http://projects.edgewall.com/trac/wiki/VersioningS ystemBackend).

Some other open-source projects that use Trac include adium, catalyst, ruby on rails and madwifi - see http://projects.edgewall.com/trac/wiki/TracUsers for more.

And if you've got a mac, Adium is a fantastic, cute and open-source client that does all that GAIM stuff too :)

"Couple projects have tried to fork gaim, now you don't really hear any of them."

Adium is the single most popular non-bundled IM client for OS X.

It is essentially a gaim fork.