I have always loved iChat but now in Leopard I love it even more. Till today though I had to use Adium for my MSN contacts and gTalk contacts. That was the only way to keep my windows to a minimum. I do love Adium but I really want to be in iChat for all of my chatting. The following is what I have found to be the easiest way to get MSN buddies into iChat.
You will need a gmail account and Psi, the jabber client.
I chose gmail because it is very easy to set up in iChat and because Google has many great tools that are worth signing up for anyway.Here are my steps:
1. Get a google account.
2. To set up MSN and basically add MSN to your gTalk account follow this tutorial but only to the point where it says “That’s all.” I found the rest to be unnessasary in iChat: http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2006-05-02-n79.html Note: I used the jabber.no server for my msn transport. I cannot tell you if it is the best choice or not (you don’t actually need a jabber.no account). You can set up other transports in this way too.
3. Now when you set up gTalk in iChat all of your MSN contacts will be there. You will have to authorise them all, and if you have heaps it is quite an experience.
That’s it! Very, very easy. I am sorry to say goodbye to Adium but I don’t need it now.
November 11th, 2007 at 10:09 am
does this allow us to video/webcam in msn?!???
November 11th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
As far as I can tell, no. But for me that is ok. I use iChat first and skype if the other party is not an apple user.
November 11th, 2007 at 3:10 pm
This is a cool ‘hack’ to get msn in iChat, I like it, I’ll give it a go I reckon. I primarily use Skype (to text chat just like i do in MSN). I only use skype to audio or video chat if my wife or I travel. I don’t tend to use iChat much because I don’t really know many people that use it. Bummer, because it’s pretty cool!
November 12th, 2007 at 2:34 am
I only seem to get the connection working between MSN and iChat when Psi is running. Did I do something wrong?
November 12th, 2007 at 2:35 am
steps are confusing, lots of text to read, not very clear.
November 12th, 2007 at 3:28 am
ok i got it working after much fussing around… still the issue of having the contact lists open in two separate windows.
The entire thing is a hassle and not worth it.
srry bad tip
November 12th, 2007 at 3:33 am
As of today Adium offer videochat from protocol to protocol… so it just became a bit better than before.
November 12th, 2007 at 5:21 am
That is interesting about Adium.
Bill,
I am not sure about that one. Have never had that problem. That part just worked for me.
November 12th, 2007 at 5:43 am
I am really happy with this solution. It is not for everyone, and it is a pain to set up, but it did work for me, and get me what I wanted, which was MSN in iChat. The only problem now is that the iChat Jabber server seems to be very unstable. Forever dropping out.
November 13th, 2007 at 10:05 am
I’ve done this shit before only using jabber, still can’t get nick names from other users, it sucks
November 13th, 2007 at 10:09 am
Me quedo con el adium chaparros