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I am looking for a combo of two IM applications, one for the Mac and the other for the iPhone. The main features I am looking for are as follows:

  1. supports MSN (Microsoft messenger)
  2. has Push Notifications on the iPhone
  3. has a unified session (will explain below)
  4. doesn't have stupid bugs (Trillian will not let you copy with ⌘C)
  5. does not ask me to email someone that is invisible/offline (instead of messaging)

Unified session - I want the two apps (iOS and OSX) to share the same session, so when I leave the one and fire up the other, it should have my chats already there, exactly as I left them on the other device.

I have tried Meebo and Trillian thus far.

Meebo not being a Mac application did not feel right (not even when I applified it using Fluid) but its unified session (in the cloud) was pretty good. The iOS app was good.

Trillian is a great application on both iOS and OSX but has some stupidities built in (like the copy to clipboard bug I mentioned earlier).

What I'm actually looking for is something better than Trillian.

PS: since I'm a developer, open-source is a plus

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I'd guess there isn't any and I'm surprised Meebo is that good. – Cawas May 10 '11 at 11:06
Skype does this, but 1) it's awful, 2) doesn't support MSN :( – Martín Marconcini May 10 '11 at 19:16
Trillian is the only option, but the Mac app drives me crazy – Max Ried Dec 6 '11 at 20:49

3 Answers

up vote 1 down vote

You stated that you've looked at Meebo, and it has worked fairly well for me, though I've found IMO.im to work better for unified sessions. Again it's not a Mac app on the desktop, but you can pop-out the session and get a semblance of a native application.

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sounds nice and I will probably try it to see how it is performance-wise – vrinek Dec 7 '11 at 9:51
up vote 0 down vote

I'm not sure about the unified session requirement - I've never seen that in any IM client.

However, I find Adium (http://adium.im/) is the best Mac IM application (and it's open source!).

As for the iPhone, have you considered IM+ (http://www.shapeservices.com)? It works quite well for me.

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1  
Adium is good on its own and IM+ is good on its own. There is no inter-compatibility though. There is no way to do what Trillian does, which is to open a chat with the one (let's say iOS) and have it running on the other as well (OSX). It's the single most important feature of Trillian for me. – vrinek May 10 '11 at 11:26
up vote 0 down vote

Have you heard of SkyChat?

It's pretty awesome, and it works on both iPhone and Mac. I use it all the time!

Plus, as a developer, I know that the nuts and bolts in this open-source bad boy are up to scratch.

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1  
While self-promotion is acceptable per se (apple.stackexchange.com/faq#promotion) it provides more value if you can show why/on which features your app is better than the alternatives. – patrix♦ Nov 6 '12 at 16:58
Also, the link for SkyChat is broken. – vrinek Nov 7 '12 at 8:14

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