What Adium Spoiled

The ICQ 6 beta arrived today, and I gave it a proper test on a Windows machine—coming at it, for context, as someone who’s been using Adium long enough to find the concept of a designed buddy list mildly absurd.

The new version is a real improvement over 5.1. More coherent, less like something assembled from leftover interface parts. It’s very green. Flash-heavy. Built, apparently, for someone who doesn’t have a large contact list but wants the experience of managing a small one to feel rich and feature-complete. There’s even a design logic here that the old version never had. If you live on Windows and grew up clicking around a buddy list, you’ll probably love it.

Coming from Adium, the whole thing feels like it’s performing. ICQ 6 announces itself constantly—sounds, animated emoticons, advertising baked in like it’s a feature. The Windows IM world has always been like this, loud and chromatic and cheerful about it, and ICQ 6 is an honest expression of that culture. I just can’t get back there.