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If only someone would code this idea.

I have yet to find a version of minesweeper on Mac OS X that is as good and/or easy to play as the one that comes with windows.

As it happens, I've solved the problem of insufficient CPU usage by having the Life board rotate in 3d. If you run OS X, grab these screensavers, and then use this program to run LifeSaver as your desktop background. (Or as a transparent foreground if you're especially insane).

This minesweeper game works great for me...

NSMine

.. running screensavers in the root window.. Particularly the Atlantis OpenGL screensaver port.. Wow your friends and cow-orkers.. Just don't run snood or anything else intensive while you're doing so..

On the Mac front, we have two major Cocoa multi-client contenders. Fire and a very beautiful client which is called Proteus, link unrecalled. Anyways, there the OS X answer to Trillian and Fire is open source to boot.

Yes, everyone has their own favorite for their favorite . One platform without most of the usual is Mac OS X, but we're blessed with the Cocoa quality and GPL love of Fire.

Fire for OS X integrates AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, IRC, and Jabber. Plus it is GPL source, and uses GPL libraries.

Jabber is, simply put, a universal IM client.

If you use AIM, ICQ, Y!M, or MSN Messenger (or any combination thereof), you can connect to them with Jabber.

It's great if you have, say, family members on AIM, friends on ICQ, and co-workers on MSN.

It also has its own, internal protocol.

However, AIM and Jabber have a history of not working together all that well...so if you have to have AIM connectivity in your IM client, I'd go with Trillian if you use Windows, IMCI for Linux or FreeBSD, or Fire if you use OS X (which doesn't support MSN...but if you're on a Mac, you probably don't need it anyway).

• Adium (my preference)
• Fire

h@oblems with how you went about the switch.

In your first post you said you sold the laptop after several days. No offense, but any major platform switch should be given several weeks at least. You can't expect to sit down and be proficient.

Second, do you have and did you take advantage of Mac using friends? Or a Mac user group? They probably could've pointed you towards fixing some of what you perceived as shortcomings.

Switching between an app's windows (including iconified windows) is usually done with Apple-~. This is a standard key combo, though Mozilla may not follow (Mozilla's fault, not Apple's).

For IM'ing you should've tried Fire. Connects to six of the major IM networks and has aliases.

Have you tried Fire?

http://www.epicware.com/fire.html

With Fire, IM has already been united. Fire "is a Multiplatform Instant Messenger client based off of freely available libraries for each "service". Currently Fire handles ICQ communication, and Yahoo! Pager communciation. All "services" are built off of gpl'd libraries, including firetalk, icqlib, msnlib, and gtkyahoo (linux libraries).
Fire looks somewhat like AIM [..] but is much much more. It can handle similtaneous connections to AIM, ICQ, Yahoo , IRC, MSN and Jabber IM."
Nothing to see here. Move along now.

So, get a Mac that can run OS X and download Fire.app - lets you chat with AOL, ICQ, Yahoo!, MSN, Jabber, and at least one other client that I'm forgetting ... in any case, its the closest I've found to a fully integrated client. They all show up in the same list, with different icons indicating what service they're coming from. Here's a link:

http://www.epicware.com/fire.html

I found it extremely interesting that AOL has evidently given their blessing to iChat, making it the first external client to be offcially endorsed by AOL for operation on their network. Nice to see AOL sort of playing a little nice with a single other entity in IM space. I don't know if iChat will support any other systems however. If not, I'll be sticking with Fire.

I thought EpicWare's Fire did a great job.

Check out Fire and Proteus. Both are tremendous IM clients... the only thing lacking from either - unfortunately - is file transfer. Proteus has this coming RSN, apparently.

Oh, I forgot to mention....

There's also a great little instant messaging client available for OS X (called Fire) that connects you to all the major services at once, and it has built-in GPG support. And very good support, too.

I'm not yet to the point that I feel I need to either sign or encrypt my instant messages, but that time may come, and it's nice to know that Fire is ready.

RP

Epicware's Fire for Mac OS X has well integrated PGP support (via the GPGME Framework for Mac OS X). It supports the usuall slew of services (AIM, ICQ, etc). It's GPLed and works quite nicely (though, not quite as nice a client as Adium, which unfortunately doesn't support encrypted communications yet...)

There are two popular IM clients for OS X-- Fire and Proteus.

From the author of Fire, on the Fire development mailing list


{#} Replies are directed back to fire@firelist.org
{#} To reply to the author, write to Eric Peyton

Also to note some other "relationships" ...

Proteus uses many of the same underlying libraries but is violating the
GPL by not releasing the source to code to either those libraries or the
application itself.

Fire releases all of it's source code as specified by the GPL.

Proteus may one day attempt to charge users for it's application.

Fire will never attempt to do such a thing.

Proteus has no open source contributions.

Fire is mostly open source contributions at this time.

Eric


(a discussion on Proteus's site is here. The author says "As of now, proteus is in violation of GPL.")

It should be noted that the bug does not, "enable remote users to execute code on any machine logged into the AOL IM service," but is specific to Windows versions 4.3 and newer. They have confirmed that it does not affect Netscape's built in AIM, and assumably alternative OSes and alternative clients are safe. So let me include another shameless endorsement of Fire ;)

Fire can do AIM just fine because it uses the libfaim library, which is GPL.

RTFP (http://www.epicware.com/fire-features.html)

Avi

Why? Why not just take all the banned clients and switch them over to TOC?

I'm not trying ot say they should; that's just an honest question. I'm curious. Why not use TOC? What is the reasoning here? AOL's request that people stick to the public TOC protocol and let AOL use their OSCAR protocol for official use seems completely reasonable to me; am i missing something? Please explain.

I am a user of Mac OS X. Until the week after AOL banned all the IM clients, there was no official AOLIM client for mac os x and no way to run TCL/Tk scripts, so i-- everyone-- used a nifty little program called Fire. Fire is wonderful. Fire is usable. Fire is open source. Fire was blocked along with all the other TOC/OSCAR clients, and the AOLIM program that AOL finally released was so bad as to be literally unusable. I for one would occationally launch the thing to see if anyone really important was on, then quit it and go back to micq in terminal. Thankfully, a couple weeks ago, Fire switched to TOC, and i have had NO problems since then. Why don't the linux clients do the same? Jabber is staying away from TOC because they're afraid that if they use TOC AOL will ban TOC altogether (see the public statement on their website), thus ruining things for everyone. What is everyone else's excuse?

By the way, Many people in this thread have suggested that we do not have a right to use AOL's service. This may be correct; I don't care. I am going to use AOL's servers. Capitalism is a nice thing, but capitalism does not often work as a system with the communications market, and does not work here at all. There are no market forces. I'll say this; If Southwestern Bell attempts to set unreasonable demands on my usage of their network, that's PERFECTLY FINE with me, because i can walk away at any time. I can, if i want, cancel my Southwestern Bell telephone service, and go to Birch. If both Birch and Southwestern Bell offer terms i am not happy with, that's fine too, because it is theoretically possible for me to go start my own telephone company. See? Capitalism. But meanwhile if i am NOT a Southwestern Bell customer, and they tell me that i can't dial IN to their network because i use a Primeco cellular phone, well, you can bet your ass that i for one am going to start breaking out the little yellow boxes. I will willingly break into SWBell's network if i have to (i don't) and i will willingly break into AOL's if i have to (i might eventually).And i don't care much if i am using expensive resources belonging to AOL or Ma Bell or whatever, i am not at all comfortable with any non-governmental entity having that kind of power. I'm not really comfortable with the government having it either, but at least as a voting citizen i have some tiny amount of control over what the government does, which means i am more comfortable with the government having split up the telephone network away from Ma Bell and making it open and would be more comfortable were the government to split up AOL and make their system open.

I don't want to use AIM.
I don't want to use their servers. I don't want to use their client. I am not given a choice. There are people on that network i need to talk to, and that is why i have suffered through dealing their awful bloated software for three years. (Over most of which time, i believe i rebooted more times because AIM had crashed than for all other reasons put together.) If i could get the people i know to switch to Jabber, i would be ecstatic. I can't. If you tell me that if i want to talk to those people i have to pay someone to use the network infrastructure, that's actually fine, sort of. But if i don't have a choice of who gets paid-- if i don't have the ability to walk away and change providers-- i am not ok with that. And if you are comparing communication networks, i don't think you can ever quite have that one single right, the right which the consumer has to have in order for capitalism to be capitalism. "You can go use the Jabber network but not talk to anyone there because AOL is specifically banning the Jabber network from communicating with theirs" Is not an alright situation to me, "you can't send e-mail to an aol user if you're using the linux sendmail server" is not an alright situation to me, and i am not going to pay much attention to what the law says in such a situation unless the police will come after me personally because i am trying to communicate with AOL users on my own terms. I doubt they will, and if they do i suspect the EFF will pay for everything anyway.

Fire talks AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and MSN.

Fire talks AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and MSN.