They're both wicked. They kind of kick the crap out of AIM and even iChat, which only has the "AV" going for it. It doesn't have Buddy groups or a sign in window.
My favorite thing about these two is the "styles" of IM. Tabbed windows are nice too, and also multiservice support is transparent especially in Proteus. Proteus seems a bit more polished, for example it has a really nice introduction to beginners about setting it up and teaching you about instant messaging. I also like those little pop up things like PC AIM. I wonder if Mac AIM will ever not suck? Will it ever have the PC AIM 5.5 feature set? Starting yesterday it has started "Unexpectedly quitting" every few hours, sometimes even when it's doing nothing. Interesting timing... Who needs it when you have Proteus or Adium! 8)
Another thing i noticed: you can't have color or any other formatting in Profiles and Away Messages in Proteus and Adium, like you can in official AIM. Is that AOL's fault or theirs.
OK on closer inspection I noticed it's not just this: they don't support color/formatting period??, at least Proteus, I think that's what I'm sticking with because it's purrdy.
I get kicked off Prot every 10 minutes but I think it's just URI net or AIM net being shady. AIM is really unreliable.
Aother thing I noticed which is my pet peeve because i'm all about groups: you can't rearrange the order of Buddy Groups in the Buddy list in either Adium or Proteus, can you?
Gaim will Fork source to get voice and video support. Adium is based on Gaim, but not sure how this will effect audio/video support in Adium (not exactly sure if this will support AIM/MSN/Yahoo voice/video chat, but interesting nonetheless). I assume if it works well in Gaim, it will be implemented into AdiumX.
I'm really starting to like Adium. It still has some bugs but it it is still beta so I expect that. It has so much potential over the other chat clients, imho.
The latest Proteus 4 beta really offers the best experience by far...the interface is the one that complies the most with Apple HIG. It's got lots of different Contact list options (Show/Hide Status Text, Show/Hide Contact Images, Show/Hide Groups) as well as customizable status icons.
I really don't see how people can like Adium or Fire after using Proteus...but YMMV I guess.
To me:
Proteus 4 > ... > Adium X > Fire
The '...' indicates that a product could probably fit between Proteus and Adium X since there's such a wide gap in usability between the 2.
Fire is really the worst app in the world and I don't feel like talking about it anymore.
I realize this comment is like telling a mom her child is ugly or stupid and get knee jerk reactions from some of you but I'd like to be enlightened:
You see, I'm really scared of missing out on cool things other apps might offer...so, what does Adium X offer over Proteus 4 right now? ...other than being free. If it's the price, then for sure Adium X is the number 1 choice...but if you're not afraid to support an already small Mac dev community by paying for software that's good, why wouldn't you use Proteus 4?
Plus, where else would you get hilarious webkit themes like the Monkey Island Theme?
I'd try one of them out, but I don't know anyone who wants to IM me. Anyone want to talk? (Gotta figure out new and exciting ways to procrastinate working on my dissertation....)
Because most discussions about "favorite X piece of software for reasons Y and Z" typically degenerate into mindless bickering, please create another thread of you want to argue about the superiority of one client over another. This thread was created simply to announce and discuss Adium, not to claim superiority or inferiority of it over any other client (well, except for the official AIM client).
Let's keep it clean. Ok? Thanks.
That said, there should be a new 0.53 build available early this week.
I just want to know know one thing. Where can you change the color/font etc of text in Proteus! It's not in any menu or button! Maybe I'm just stupid and missing it! I won't use it if I can't have a formatted Profile, Away, and text in IMs. If I can find out how to do this I may eventually switch over. And once it adds group chat. Someday it'd be nice to see the AIM 5.5 feature set on Mac either in the official AIM or gaim. Does gaim support Talk yet? Geez. And iChat's just withering. They should switch to the gaim core. Adium is free and open source and works a hell of a lot better than iChat for the majority of things, same to Prot.
Comments
You'll have to re-enter your passwords with this build because they've changed how passwords are stored.
The changelog:
Version 0.52 (4/16/2004)
- Message windows now display a customizable number of lines from the previous conversation when opened
- Added proxy connect options to Yahoo! accounts
- Added proxy connect, host, port, connect via, resource, and encryption options to Jabber accounts
- Added the option to play sounds using the system specified Output Device for System Alerts
- Fixed Jabber message sending and receiving (formatting is not yet supported)
- Fixed MSN and Yahoo reconnect behavior to not attempt a reconnect if you sign on from another location
- An attempt to connect with an invalid password now reprompts for a correct password
- ICQ contacts and accounts are now differentiated from AIM contacts in tooltips and the account lists, respectively
- Fixed address book integration for contacts with spaces in their screennames
- Fixed retrieval of AIM away messages and profiles which contain non-Roman characters
- Fixed autocompletion in the New Message window
- Fixed issues related to the applescript-based substitutions
- Fixed problems related to idle messages
- Fixed problems related to status-based tab coloration
- Fixed vertical resize behavior when deleting groups or when groupless contacts sign on or off
- Fixed a crash when editing saved away messages
- Fixed a crash when deleting a new account
- Fixed a crash when dragging text across the message window tabs
- Fixed a crash if an improperly formed emoticon pack was installed
- Fixed a crash when going away automatically after a certain amount of time idle.
- Fixed a crash if an invalid move was attempted in games
- Fixed several crashes specific to running in OS X 10.2
- Version checker now informs the user if the attempt to check for the latest version failed
- No longer show a blank profile when an AIM account attempts to get the profile of an AOL account (which can not be done)
- Speed improvements: launch time, creation of new accounts
- Cosmetic improvements to the account preferences
Originally posted by KANE
Weekly updates? That's ambitious! Maybe we need to host a "Adium X versus Proteus 4" showdown in here!
That always turns into WW3.
My favorite thing about these two is the "styles" of IM. Tabbed windows are nice too, and also multiservice support is transparent especially in Proteus. Proteus seems a bit more polished, for example it has a really nice introduction to beginners about setting it up and teaching you about instant messaging. I also like those little pop up things like PC AIM. I wonder if Mac AIM will ever not suck? Will it ever have the PC AIM 5.5 feature set? Starting yesterday it has started "Unexpectedly quitting" every few hours, sometimes even when it's doing nothing. Interesting timing... Who needs it when you have Proteus or Adium! 8)
Another thing i noticed: you can't have color or any other formatting in Profiles and Away Messages in Proteus and Adium, like you can in official AIM. Is that AOL's fault or theirs.
OK on closer inspection I noticed it's not just this: they don't support color/formatting period??, at least Proteus, I think that's what I'm sticking with because it's purrdy.
I get kicked off Prot every 10 minutes but I think it's just URI net or AIM net being shady. AIM is really unreliable.
Aother thing I noticed which is my pet peeve because i'm all about groups: you can't rearrange the order of Buddy Groups in the Buddy list in either Adium or Proteus, can you?
here's the link
http://sourceforge.net/projects/gaim-vv/
I'm really starting to like Adium. It still has some bugs but it it is still beta so I expect that. It has so much potential over the other chat clients, imho.
I really don't see how people can like Adium or Fire after using Proteus...but YMMV I guess.
To me:
Proteus 4 > ... > Adium X > Fire
The '...' indicates that a product could probably fit between Proteus and Adium X since there's such a wide gap in usability between the 2.
Fire is really the worst app in the world and I don't feel like talking about it anymore.
I realize this comment is like telling a mom her child is ugly or stupid and get knee jerk reactions from some of you but I'd like to be enlightened:
You see, I'm really scared of missing out on cool things other apps might offer...so, what does Adium X offer over Proteus 4 right now? ...other than being free. If it's the price, then for sure Adium X is the number 1 choice...but if you're not afraid to support an already small Mac dev community by paying for software that's good, why wouldn't you use Proteus 4?
Plus, where else would you get hilarious webkit themes like the Monkey Island Theme?
Let's keep it clean. Ok? Thanks.
That said, there should be a new 0.53 build available early this week.
Originally posted by Brad
Let's keep it clean. Ok? Thanks.
Yeah...sorry.
Originally posted by Brad
That said, there should be a new 0.53 build available early this week.
And so it is, 0.53 available now.. see macupdate for info .. huge list of changes..
i've gotten a bunch of my friends to switch as well...
I just want to know know one thing. Where can you change the color/font etc of text in Proteus! It's not in any menu or button! Maybe I'm just stupid and missing it! I won't use it if I can't have a formatted Profile, Away, and text in IMs. If I can find out how to do this I may eventually switch over. And once it adds group chat. Someday it'd be nice to see the AIM 5.5 feature set on Mac either in the official AIM or gaim. Does gaim support Talk yet? Geez. And iChat's just withering. They should switch to the gaim core. Adium is free and open source and works a hell of a lot better than iChat for the majority of things, same to Prot.