Nitro, my current jabber client is now in hibernation. After dizzyd left the project it seems nobody is motivated enough to keep adding features. This is fine, as Adium is almost “gold” in my opinion. More on that later.
OS X has three really popular instant messengers that have multi-protocol support:
It’s no coincidence that Apple has hired the creator of proteus (Justin Wood) and also the creator of fire (Eric Peyton) into the iChat divisions at Apple. They both created outstanding products. It’s unfortunate that the people now running proteus and fire aren’t showing any progress with their software.
Now steps in Adium. It currently has at least as many features as Proteus, and just a few less than Fire. With the .64 release rumored to have now only meta contacts (something that proteus and fire have had for some time) but also group chat support for Yahoo, MSN, AIM, and jabber. This means you will be able to accept invitations to chat rooms from users, invite users to chat rooms on those networks, and create your own chat rooms if they do not already exist. This is something proteus does not do, and fire does for just AIM.
Adium also says (on their homepage) that they will soon be releasing new versions twice a week. Something no other messenger can even think of offering due to their lack of direction.
So i’m chomping at the bit for Adium .64.