Thinking of getting an Apple...

busenbust

Live Messenger even on a PC is a rather 'weighty' application, considering all it's designed for is instantaneous chat. Having said that, I still use it as well as Yahoo Messenger.

You know, I might just give Adium a try;)

asininity

Pidgin does the job of both, and runs on Macs.

busenbust

^Don't have a Mac - as yet. But still craving for that new and luscious 27" iMac
Below: Wow, that's a nice set-up. :drool:

Marty_J

alexjohnson wrote: »

Unfortunately not. Even then, "webcam" is not quite the same thing and even if it did work (which it doesn't) you would have to create a new account and get your friends to add you to their buddy lists, which is a hassle like changing an email address or phone number.

Windows Live Messenger ("MSN") does work perfectly in Fusion or Parallels especially in Unity (etc.) mode and can automatically start up and log itself in with the Mac so it's about as easy to use as a native app. The slight drawback is that it doesn't share the camera so you have to quit in order to use Skype or iChat video. If you get a computer fair / eBay OEM copy of XP the whole thing will cost under £100 and whether that's money well spent I guess depends on what's important to you.

Hopefully interoperability will come, and hopefully also Messenger 8.0 will finally be released in a final and stable version...

I'm sure it'll be released at some point.

I don't think Windows Live Messenger is worth £100 (and not to mention the associated performance drain), but that's just my opinion. Both Messenger (or Adium in my case) and Skype have played a rather large part in my life. I met my wife on the internet, and we didn't get to spend a lot of time together (what with living 4,000 miles apart). She had a PC, Windows Messenger and a webcam, and I had a Mac, Windows Messenger and a webcam. So unfortunately, using the webcam with our current setup was out. However, we both just switched to using Skype for when we wanted to video chat, and it didn't seem such a big deal.

asininity wrote: »

Pidgin does the job of both, and runs on Macs.

Both what?

The Pidgin website suggests Mac users try Adium.

busenbust wrote: »

^Don't have a Mac - as yet. But still craving for that new and luscious 27" iMac
Below: Wow, that's a nice set-up. :drool:

And look at those prices. You can get a 30 inch display for $1,799 or, if you're prepared to drop 3 inches, you can get a 27 inch LED display with a Mac thrown in free for $100 less.

busenbust

^Yep, but size - as well as beauty - matters - 27" it is:D

"
Originally Posted by asininity
Pidgin does the job of both, and runs on Macs.
Both what?

The Pidgin website suggests Mac users try Adium."

Caters for both Live Messenger and Yahoo Messenger.

Marty_J

busenbust wrote: »

^Yep, but size - as well as beauty - matters - 27" it is:D

A friend has just ordered the 27 inch quad-core model. I think I'll have to wait until they release the 12 core Mac Pro just to make him jealous.

Caters for both Live Messenger and Yahoo Messenger.

So does Adium. They're both front-ends for the libpurple library, so support the same chat networks.

Adium is written in Cocoa however, so it's preferred for Mac users.

busenbust

"So does Adium. They're both front-ends for the libpurple library, so support the same chat networks.

Adium is written in Cocoa however, so it's preferred for Mac users."
^^
Ah, so Adium only supports OS X; Pidgin supports Windows et al. but not OS X.

asininity

The link below is the download, it supports both Yahoo and MSN, as to whether you want to use Adium thats up to you, however the wording is:

"For a more native Mac OS X experience, you may be interested in using Adium instead, which uses libpurple (the core of Pidgin) for much of its protocol support."

They dont suggest should use Adium just that you might be interested as its an OSX offshoot.

http://www.pidgin.im/download/mac/

Pidgin supports windows linux and mac.

Marty_J

asininity wrote: »

The link below is the download, it supports both Yahoo and MSN, as to whether you want to use Adium thats up to you, however the wording is:

"For a more native Mac OS X experience, you may be interested in using Adium instead, which uses libpurple (the core of Pidgin) for much of its protocol support."

They dont suggest should use Adium just that you might be interested as its an OSX offshoot.

http://www.pidgin.im/download/mac/

Pidgin supports windows linux and mac.

The "About" page states:

Pidgin runs on Windows, Linux, and other UNIX operating systems. Looking for Pidgin for OS X? Try Adium!

That sounds like a suggestion to me.

Regardless, Adium is a native OS X Cocoa app, so it would normally be preferred by Mac users.

asininity

And the actual mac os download page states:

"For a more native Mac OS X experience, you may be interested in using Adium instead, which uses libpurple (the core of Pidgin) for much of its protocol support."

HHhhhmmmm... wonder why they have provided a link to download Pidgin for Mac?????

Maybe they didn't mean it.