AOL Instant Messenger Officially Discontinuing This December After Twenty Years Online

[itsmilo]

„Are you coming on after school?“ sentence i havent heard in years.

This and MSN helped me learn english! F grammar lessons at school.

Rip

 

[eatrains]

Let's hear that door close sound effect one last time...

 

[oneMadRssn]

Anyone feeling nostalgic - I hightly recommend this game: http://store.steampowered.com/app/417860/Emily_is_Away/

It's for Mac. Pretty fun, pretty accurate.

 

[PG(Austin)]

This was actually still alive? Oh lord....I thought it went out with 30 day trial CD-ROMs in the mail.
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To this day I believe my iCloud login works with AIM in Messages. Apple used the AIM protocol for screen-sharing as well. It worked perfectly and Apple never replaced it with anything else quite as easy.

I don’t do Facebook (and never will) so I’m not sure what else is replacing this and the already defunct MSN.

Adium also had the “Now playing in iTunes” feature.

You use AIM and are worried about using Facebook? Wow...

 

[yg17]

wats ur a/s/l? i'm 16/f/cali

 

[thadoggfather]

How will GRANDPARENTS get access to the internet ever again without AOL?

 

[PG(Austin)]

Let's hear that door close sound effect one last time...

 

[obitow]

I think Death is looking for Jabber now.

 

[bearda]

I remember AIM being huge in high school and even more so in college. You could tell which dorms were having network issues when large portions of your buddy list would all drop off at the same time.

 

[vista.john]

oh, my! Bring back some memories...

 

[OldSchoolMacGuy]

Someday we'll read about the parent company of Apple discontinuing iMessage thanks to the bad management from the former CEO of Apple, Mr. Cook.

Record profits. Record sales. Record stock price. Soon to be a trillion dollar company. Yeah, Tim is doing really poorly.

 

[Glassed Silver]

It was ICQ for my country.

Same. That and good old MSN Messenger.

I miss old-school messengers.

You sat down at the desk and dedicated time to talking people. Nowadays we just dabble away and check our chat apps on the go everytime it's convenient, because we're out and about, replying later on "when I get home".

It's not like you can't have the same hours long chats in iMessage and Co., but fact of the matter is I always dedicated a lot more attention to my chats in Adium, ICQ Pro as did the people I talked to. (ohhh, the best first-party messenger ever! So many options, so customizable! A true legend.)

Glassed Silver:ios

 

[riverfreak]

After I got tired of constantly updating my AIM status to let friends know what I was doing (very old-school Twitter TBH), I had a plugin on my Mac that would update my status with the current iTunes Song. A lot of my friends used it too and it was a great way to find new music.

When iChatAV Came out, You can start a random chat so I started a chat called "Jaguar" for the OS. People would cycle in and out and eventually, there were 20 of us in the Jaguar chat. I met a few of them in real life over the years at Macworld. We moved to Panther when that came out and eventually it fizzled out but a lot of my social time in high school was spent in the AIM chat with other Mac users just talking about random stuff. I recently emailed one of my buddies from there and am visiting him in Toronto in a few months.

AIM kept me in touch with friends and family but I also met new people and established friendships with them. It was a wonderful service and served a unique purpose.

Edit: Here's a screen shot

This is AWESOME!!

Yeah, the early days of iChat AV was fun. I remember just talking to random people because not many people had it installed yet. Seem to recall discussion lists online where people would broadcast screen names.

And I can’t help but notice you are running KDX. Now THAT takes me back.

 

[Hastings101]

We had already all moved onto Windows/MSN Messenger in my middle school and high school days, but it's always kind of sad to see these things shut down.

 

[dampfnudel]

Record profits. Record sales. Record stock price. Soon to be a trillion dollar company. Yeah, Tim is doing really poorly.

None of us have a crystal ball to predict the future, but if you use history as a guide, it's quite probable that Apple's current good fortunes will come to an end someday. When that happens, people will want to trace back to what, who, whatever it was that mainly contributed the seeds to that particular downfall of the company. It's possible that those seeds are currently being planted and we just don't realize it.

 

[OldSchoolMacGuy]

None of us have a crystal ball to predict the future, but if you use history as a guide, it's quite probable that Apple's current good fortunes will come to an end someday. When that happens, people will want to trace back to what, who, whatever it was that mainly contributed the seeds to that particular downfall of the company. It's possible that those seeds are currently being planted and we just don't realize it.

Sure that's a possibility but a very very slim one. Even if Apple's profits plateau, there is very little chance of them dropping Cook. He's far more likely to retire than be ousted from his position based on his history with Apple and performance.

 

[NomadicTy]

None of us have a crystal ball to predict the future, but if you use history as a guide, it's quite probable that Apple's current good fortunes will come to an end someday. When that happens, people will want to trace back to what, who, whatever it was that mainly contributed the seeds to that particular downfall of the company. It's possible that those seeds are currently being planted and we just don't realize it.

Agreed. Just like the roots of financial crisis of 08 were not planted in the mid 2000's, but rather all the way back to the Clinton years. And if you look at the corporations that have fallen, their fall started gradually as well, with little changes that got them away from their original winning formulas.

One example that I think Apple is starting to get away from what made is successful is the moving away from having 3 choices max for every product line. This adds complexities and higher costs throughout the supply chain. Apple is the popular choice right now, but once they are not, those higher costs will start eating away at profits. Another is the accelerated bumping of prices. The top of the line MBP's used to be the same just about every year. Now, they've really jacked it up the last iterations (move to SSD's, and then Touchbar). The same with iPhones. I would guess that the 1k+ USD for the X will from now on will be the price point for the top of the line iPhones. I would guess that even if the XS only brings very little innovation, that price will still at that level.

I think the points above demonstrate the bean counter nature of Cook. He was smart enough to try and retain the creative minds from the Jobs era. But once those go away, or can no longer come up with anything innovative, Apple will just be another electronics company.

 

[Will.O.Bie]

All jokes and snark remarks aside, they pioneered instant messaging, at least for me, in middle school and high school. Paved a way for the messaging apps we can't live without nowadays. RIP Running Man!

 

[Solomani]

Welcome! You've got mail!
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Make no mistake: AOL was a pioneer in both email and texting. We laugh now, but back then, it changed the world in a way that almost certainly left Steve Jobs impressed.

And then Jobs came in and killed off eWorld (Apple's 1990s AOL clone online service).

 

[lovehateapple]

I wish Apple would make FaceTime more like the old iChat / iMessage where you could video chat and screen share with multiple people at the same time. I used to be able to help my parents with their computers using screen share. Now we have to use Skype and its not nearly as easy or elegant as AIM / iChat. Sigh...

 

[WWPD]

wats ur a/s/l? i'm 16/f/cali

 

[JackieInCo]

now AOL will get a small up-tick in logins after this announcement

Last time I logged into AOL, the chatrooms were empty except for a few bots randomly chating. That was about 2-3 years ago. Surprised it's still around.

 

[SoundJudgment]

"You've Got ---- Oh, no, wait, you haven't."

 

[lovehateapple]

To this day I believe my iCloud login works with AIM in Messages. Apple used the AIM protocol for screen-sharing as well. It worked perfectly and Apple never replaced it with anything else quite as easy.

I don’t do Facebook (and never will) so I’m not sure what else is replacing this and the already defunct MSN.

Adium also had the “Now playing in iTunes” feature.

 

[Swampthing]

I was one of the very active users on Quantum Link a.k.a. Q-Link in the 1980’s before it ever became American Online. I don’t think they even had a messaging client for Q-Link. They specialized in Apple and Commodore 64 computers