Adium – Pick of the Week
February 24, 2008
This pick could have been the first Pick of the Week, but I decided to hold it in reserve. I share with you Adium, the best IM client out there, and it isn’t even close. Built on the same libraries as Gaim Pidgin, Adium is the Mac port and ends up looking and being many times more polished and enjoyable to use.
First off, it looks like a Mac app, not a Linux app. This by itself would make it better. Then you add on the flexibility of add-ons and themes and this becomes a well supported application with a community of developers making useful additions and attractive themes. Pidgin on the other hand, has no themes available and limited add-ons.
As much as I am knocking Pidgin, it is the best, free multi-IM client on the Windows and Linux side, so that is why I am comparing it to that. I know Digsby is on its way, but without a public beta being available, I won’t include that in the discussion at this time. I would also put Pidgin above Trillian, just because you have to pay for the pro version of Trillian to get Jabber/XMPP functionality. So if you followed that, you noticed that the free product on the Mac is better than all of the IM clients on the Windows side, even the ones you pay for. Adium is a program that made me jealous of Mac users before I became one, and I imagine for Windows users, you are feeling the same thing still.
Pick of the Week is my way of highlighting cool/new services and software on the web or the Mac. A few Windows applications might sneak in from time to time, but it will be rare. You can find an archive of services and software at http://www.marktopia.net/tag/potw/.