posted
Well, of course there was Steve Job's so-called "deal with the devil" about five years ago when Microsoft invested money in Apple, establishing a "strategic partnership." Since then, Internet Explorer and Outlook Express have come bundled with most of the shipped systems... though of course they're not chained to the operating system itself like SOME program we all know...
Actually... I'm not positive because I haven't explored the inner workings and hidden files, but I'm pretty certain that Apple's iChat program is integrated with with the operating system. Not so that the OS relies on iChat, but so that iChat offers special features like integration with the Apple-provided Mail.app client to let you know when a "buddy" is online, and a special menu on the top bar that is supposedly now reserved specifically for system functions and the normal application drop-down menus, and not extras. (It's one of the few decisions from Apple that's genuinely annoyed me.)
Anyway... I've never touched iChat yet, though I keep it sitting in the Applications folder in case I change my mind...
Back on topic, there ARE some multi-service instant messenger programs for OS X out there. There's one called Fire that was supposedly pretty good, but for whatever reason didn't work on my system, so I dumped it.
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
Registered: Nov 2000
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