Get ready to party like it’s 1997—AOL has shredded the space-time continuum to bring us AIM for Mac 1.0 Beta 1. If the Wikipedia timeline is correct, that makes this the first version of the AIM client for OS X since 2004, when AOL released version 4.7. Alright, guys, with four years under your belt, this better be good.
In the meantime, most users have jumped ship for the likes of iChat and Adium, and the influence of those clients clearly shows in AIM’s new UI. The real question is whether or not AIM can steal users from those two clients. In order to do so, it’ll need to provide some pretty compelling functionality that can’t be had by the competition. So far, the only thing it offers that the others don’t seems to be integration with AOL Mail, which may draw in some users, but isn’t exactly mass appeal.
Having played around with the app a little bit, I’ve already discovered a couple of missing features that take it out of the running for me: for example, there’s no support for logging into more than one account at a time, nor does it integrate with OS X’s Address Book. This is only be a beta at the moment, of course, but it faces stiff competition: without the mass customization possible with Adium or the slick polish of iChat’s interface, I don’t think AIM’s going to be picking up a lot of users anytime soon.
[via Infinite Loop]
