MSN Messenger through iChat?

[Noisemaker]

I've been googling this for a bit, and I'm only seeing a single tutorial being copy pasted around from back on OSX 10.4. Since iChat has been updated several times since then, I'm not sure how viable the tutorial is.

How do I add MSN contacts to iChat now?

 

[Grannyville7989]

I don't believe you can chat to people on Windows Live Messenger through the iChat client. It doesn't support the appropriate protocols to do so.

Where did you find this article? Have you got a link?

 

[Noisemaker]

Just google "iChat MSN Messenger" - it's one of the first couple results.

It mentions doing it through Jabber, but the process seems more annoying than it should be. I figured that with iChat being updated so much since then that there may be an alternative way that works better.

 

[Grannyville7989]

Could you not use something like Adium as your chat client? It allows you to chat with people on all of the popular chat clients in one place.

 

[Middling]

It mentions doing it through Jabber, but the process seems more annoying than it should be. I figured that with iChat being updated so much since then that there may be an alternative way that works better.

There isn't.

iChat doesn't seem to get much love from Apple and it only really supports basic Jabber functionality.

I'm assuming the guide you're talking about is the AllForces one. Despite being old it's still relevant (although if you've a Gmail account i'd advise using that and registering a transport on a different server rather than creating a new Jabber account).

You should note that once set up you will only be able to text chat to people on WLM; the transports don't translate audio/video and even if they did it wouldn't work with iChat because iChat only supports its own proprietary method of audio/video.

As Grannyville7989 mentioned, Adium may be a better solution for you.

 

[DoobieBrother]

Can anyone shed some light into updates on this? The article referenced is 7 years old. I'm guessing there have been changes, especially since Microsoft now supports XMPP.