AOL brings AIM for Mac back from the dead

AOL on Monday quietly released a brand-new version of its instant-messenger application for Mac users. Called "AIM for Mac beta 1," it's a replacement for version 4.7, which has remained untouched since February 2004.

Back then gas was a little over $1.50 a gallon.

Unlike the changes in oil prices, those four years have amounted to little more than what was offered in previous iterations of the program, or Apple's iChat application which comes pre-installed in every Mac computer. In the new version users can change emoticon sets and tweak background chat wallpapers--all things that you can't do with the current version of iChat. There's also tabbed browsing and contact search which the previous version did not have. Otherwise, it's largely playing catch-up to the PC version, which has received the most attention and is currently on version 6.8.

Also worth noting is how much the market has changed since the latest Mac release. iChat and third-party applications like Adium, Digsby, and Pidgin have the upper hand with compatibility for other protocols. AIM for Mac is currently limited to AOL and Yahoo contacts, while the others support things like Jabber, ICQ, and XMPP. In a more frequently fragmented market, with newcomers like Facebook and Google, these open platforms simply end up being more appealing.

[via Macrumors and Ars]

AIM for Mac looks quite similar to iChat, although without the audio and video logos to let you know who is ready for media chatting.

(Credit: AOL Inc.)

[Riquez-001]

Can you do screen sharing, group video conferencing, background video effects etc like you can in iChat?

[skillingssucks]

Sorry AOL, too little, too late. You snooze, you lose.

[jblogg]

I agree. Too late AOL. My firm had to shift away from commercialized instant messengers for several reasons, anyway. Security became a problem as people were quickly sharing files with competitors. We also lost a lot of productivity as employees kept chatting with family and friends. The last straw were the ads.

The main way that AOL shined for us is that our PC users could still video chat through AOL with Mac users. But with an update as belated as this, AOL was just too late.

Justyn
Reference: http://brosix.com

[Penguinisto]

Err, thanks but no thanks. Got no use for the thing, four years later.

[wlerin]

One minor tidbit, last I checked, Jabber and XMPP are the same thing. And GoogleTalk uses the Jabber/XMPP protocol.

[notforpaper]

Still not sure what AIM has to offer over iChat

[kelmon]

I'm rather confused as to why AOL is doing this now. I mean, I'm already using AIM via iChat as my primary IM account so I do not need converting to AIM. What does AOL gain from doing this, particularly given that the client doesn't offer anything significant enough to drive increased AIM adoption on the Mac platform?

Put another way, can we expect advertising to be delivered by the new client or some other form of revenue generation for AOL?

[Thomas, David]

Who at AOL determines what products are developed and released? I need a job, I'll take that persons job.

[myles taylor]

I don't know what they are thinking. By this time the majority of users have found another client to use, especially since v4.7 was so buggy on the Intel Chips and wasn't native. It has nothing over iChat and doesn't even begin to compete with Adium, which is what I use. The clamoring for an update for a Mac client probably is behind this, but until they bring out some new features that really blow everyone away, I don't really see the point.

(goes back to chatting on Adium)

[Shaun822]

So in other words it basically offers tabbed browsing and nothing else i might use? Why would I switch?

[lee.givens]

Hello,
I'm the product lead for the AOL Mac products. Just want to make one clarification, we don't support Yahoo! contacts in our Buddy List, just AIM, Apple .Mac and MobileMe.

Our goal with the AIM for Mac project is to bring the AIM Experience back to Mac. We welcome your comments and suggestions as we bring out new and exciting apps to the Mac and iPhone.

Check out our iPhone apps: http://daol.aol.com/software/mac/iphone/

You can keep up the AOL Mac Team at: http://macblog.aol.com

thanks!

Lee Givens
AOL Mac Product Lead