Where’s the Mac Love?
What do, among other things, AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google have in common? They all operate IM networks. They all have IM clients. And none of them have an offering worth a damn on the Mac. Actually, Google doesn’t even have a Mac client. They tell you to use a Jabber client.
As far as a basic IM client goes on the Mac, Adium rocks. Think Trillian for the Mac in that it supports multiple IM clients, though unlike Trillian, all the functionality is free. All four of the networks previously mentioned are supported, along with a ton of others I’ve never even heard of.
AIM, Yahoo, MSN, and Google Talk support more functionality than Adium currently supports. Look at AIM. AIM has this wonderful thing called AIM PhoneLine. It’s a softphone, but it’s also an open platform for telephony. It’s available on the PC using the Triton client, and you can bet I’d be using it if I could. However, there’s no Mac version of the Triton client, so I can’t recommend the service.
As I’ve heard numerous times on KenRadio, read, and seen through my own experience, people who have Macs are often alpha-influencers. They will convince many, many others to try the PC version of software available on the Mac. If there’s no Mac version of the software to recommend, they won’t. They’ll recommend a competitor, for example Gizmo Project, which works really nice on the Mac and just works.
Where’s the love, AOL, MSN, Yahoo, Google, and others who fail to recognize the power of the Mac?
