Whatever Happened to Adium

[knightjp]

It has been a long time since I stopped using Adium. To tell the truth, I stopped using it, when Mavericks was released.
Part of the reason was that Facebook chat was not working with it and most of my friends stopped using MSN and Yahoo messenger.

Is Adium still being developed?

 

[Raz0rEdge]

A beta version came out in March of 2017, but the release prior to that was out in 2015. The beta version was to address some vulnerabilities as opposed to new features..so likely not being actively developed. Most of the chat services have gone to a proprietary scheme which requires constant reverse engineering by apps like Adium and that's a chore to do for free..

Adium and it's kin thrived in an era when there were numerous chat services around..today, the number has dwindled down to a very small handful with dedicated clients..

 

[knightjp]

Yes.. I would agree with you.. Most of the people use either WhatsApp, Viber or Skype for such messaging these days. Now with their own dedicated apps on Desktop, its hard to see why someone would bother with clients like Adium.. Unlike wanting it to be like the old days when everything could be used with one client and one program.

 

[Raz0rEdge]

The big thing was back then these were standalone chat services serving a single purpose..these days, the chatting is just one part of these apps. FB Messenger, for example, was created well after FB became popular. Skype chat is OK, but people using Skype largely use it for the video call functionality. While apps like WhatsApp, Viber and WeChat are largely chat only services, they do offer other features that would be hard to get from a client like Adium. WeChat, for example, offers money transfer in China. Viber has its silly stickers and WhatsApp..hmm..it's just a really simple app with a lousy UI used by a billion people..