For about two years now, there are always heated debates in the Chat sector of the Mac, debating if iChat or Adium is the best Mac Chatting client. I've used both Adium and iChat for an extensive amount of time, and I personally prefer iChat since it has a simplistic UI and I don't use the platforms it doesn't support anyways, so I don't have a problem with that. So, I've decided to make a few rounds of head to head competition on the major aspects of what is expected of a chat client. Then, at the end, I'll post comments from people who I've asked the preference of client.
Round 1 - Platform Support
iChat and Adium both support multiple chatting platforms, such as AIM, Jabber, MobileMe, and usually work fine. However, Adium supports almost 4 times more of what iChat supports, and it also works fine. What Adium supports that iChat doesn't:
- Yahoo! Messenger
- MySpace IM
- Facebook
- QQ
- LiveJournal
- ICQ
- Novell GroupWise
- MSN Messenger
Adium definitely is the winner in Round 1. iChat doesn't have a wide selection of different chat support, it only supports the basics.
Round 2 - User Interface
Now, here is where things get kind of tough. Adium has an OK basic UI, however you can fully customize it to whatever fits you. iChat has an amazing basic nice and bland UI, however you can't change the font, UI, or colors unless you use a 3rd party application, such as chax. However, the latest version of Chax is no longer an add-on, its an actual app. But it looks exactly like iChat and you can fully edit it. So who wins this one? Its really a tie because Adium's base UI is weaker than iChat's, but you can edit the UI completely and make it just like you want it. You can change fonts and order of how iChat's buddy list is sent by using Chax, but you can't change the actual UI like it's colors. You can change the format which is included in the actual iChat(meaning you can change format w/o Chax), to Bubbles, Boxes, or Compact. Round 2 is a tie between iChat and Adium.
Round 3 - What you think
I asked a few people of what they thought of iChat and what they thought of Adium and also asked them what the better client was. Here's what they Said:
TrueSongmedia answered Adium is better: "because it 1) is more stable ... 2) supports more protocols ... 3) looks better ... 4) can log/organize chats". He also went on to add "iChat is okay, but Apple should get a clue and use the libpurple library for IM instead of writing their own crappy one".
Jeff answered Adium because it had multiple platform support.
So, it looks like the majority of people prefer Adium because of the reasons I've stated in the blog post. It would be nice to see Apple make iChat more customizable, but seeing how pretty much every other Apple-made Application is nice and basic, I don't see that happening in the near future. But since I do LOVE the simplistic interface on iChat, I'll keep to iChat.
If you'd like to follow me on Twitter, I'm @Knunez.
Isaiah Vann