Posts Tagged
ichat
If you saw our post earlier, then you know that Apple dropped a bomb on us with a sneak preview of the upcoming Mountain Lion update to OS X. James touched briefly on the handful of new features that Apple announced, all of which are exciting and intend to bring an even more iOS-like experience to your Mac. However, because I’m particularly interested in communication, I’m going to go a little bit more in depth with one particular feature of OS X Mountain Lion: Messages.
Messages is the new Mac app that replaces iChat, and the beta is available for download today. I’ve been toying with it all morning, and I have to say that I’m very pleased with it. Hit the jump to see what it’s all about.
While Apple hasn’t had the best history with cloud computing services, their new iCloud platform promises to bring something completely new to the space. Instead of offering their traditional mix of Google Apps and Dropbox, Apple has reinvented the way they see the Cloud.
That being said, the platform hasn’t seen the rapid adoption of some of Apple’s other products, but we’ve still been able to round up a variety of great “hidden” features, newly-compatible apps, and other little tweaks to help you get the most out of your iCloud experience.
For many OS X users, iChat is a program only opened once. You’ll start a video chat with your other Mac-using friend, or try a screen sharing session as you both race for mouse control supremacy and try to update each other’s Facebook status. Soon, however, the novelty wears off, the Adium .dmg lands in your downloads stack and iChat sits collecting dust in the long forgotten regions of your dock.
That was my situation anyway, until I heard about Chax.
Chax is a free, BSD licensed app that promises to improve the iChat experience. In this way, it’s like a Glims for iChat, but where Glims boosts Safari with big features like full screen browsing, Chax focuses on more modest app improvements – but ones that should no doubt be indispensable for heavy iChat users.
How annoying is it when all of your friends use different types of instant messaging networks? Some use AIM, some MSN, Yahoo! – the list goes on. It can be a real nuisance to have multiple applications and windows open just to keep up the communication.
There are of course applications such as Adium to allow multiple accounts, however many Mac users prefer iChat’s simplistic interface (myself included). In this tutorial I will show you how to set up iChat so that you can keep all of your contacts in one simple window – whether they’re on AIM, MSN, Yahoo, or any other network.
Whilst this isn’t the simplest of tasks, once completed you should never have to worry about it again.
