Years ago, there was a time when there were no smartphones, no matter how much the younger generation finds it hard to believe such a reality. iPhones were still drawn on schematic plans, and if we wanted to chat with our friends via instant messaging, we had to wait until we are home to connect to the internet and use the computer.
Back then, there was no WhatsApp, no Telegram, no Facebook Messenger: we depended on services designed only for computers, and some with a level of complication that we would now consider unacceptable. And there weren’t a few, so we ended up with quite a large compendium of messaging apps. But there was one app that managed to simplify this experience on macOS.
An email program for (almost) all services
Many veterans will remember her: Adium, or the green duckwas a free and open-source application that allowed connecting to various messaging services of its time. Google Talk, XMPP, IRC, ICQ, the iChat of yesteryear integrated with AOL and several other services focused on other countries like Gadu-Gadu.
At the time, having all of these services in one app was a joy. And even more so when Adium was open source and completely free, a real gift in the days when running multiple applications at the same time affected Mac performance more. Here’s a window into what the application looked like in 2010:
In addition, Adium had the detail of using a minimal interface: a small window for the list of services and contacts and one more window for conversations that could be organized by tabs. Now, we might do everything in a window with a sidebar, but twenty years ago this setup was considered the best.
And for those of us who liked to modify the macOS interface, we could even show floating contacts on wallpaper without any window. Art web portals like DeviantArt were full of desktop modders sporting their edits with transparent or translucent windows.
At the personalization level, it was also possible to display a dynamic connection status: in 2011, my colleague Pedro Aznar taught us how to personalize it with the song we were listening to at that moment on Spotify:
Its only flaw, I remember, was that it didn’t support MSN Messenger since Microsoft kept that protocol closed. Anyway, this very fact and the passage of years has made Google Talk a golden age based on the number of people who move there. And on Mac, Adium was the perfect app to chat with those users.
Adium isn’t dead, but he’s not quite alive either.
Every golden age comes to an end, and for Adium that moment was the arrival of the iPhone. Suddenly the “apps” industry took over and services like WhatsApp (and later Telegram) became the queens of instant messaging. And since all of these services are proprietary, Adium has slowly become meaningless.
Services like XMPP or Google Talk fell sharply compared to services that were updated more often and were entirely mobile-focused: developers focused their attention entirely on developing these services and not on open services . What did Adium do about it? Nothing.
The developers released a final update in 2012 after a long time without doing so and from there Adium went unnoticed until everyone forgot about it. The program itself is not dead: you can continue to download and install it from its official site. But once installed, you can’t do much about it: the services it offers you to connect no longer exist or have become obsolete:
It gives a bit of nostalgia to see how it offers you to sign in to MobileMe (that’s what iCloud used to be called) or Livejournal. If this there is the option to connect your Twitter account, but don’t bother: it doesn’t work. API changes several years ago disabled this option.
So Adium cannot be said to be dead because it continues to exist, but it does as zombie. We can install the app but it’s no use unless you’re one of those tight old-timers who have their own IRC channel or tinker with old protocols like Jabber on their own servers.
The adium therefore remains as a memory for all of us who used a Mac in the pre-iPhone era. A memory to remember how we could talk to our friends when the ‘Offline’ status still existed and we had the excuse of not being at home to answer messages late.
