Clean Signal

Half the day staring at a screen anyway, so the software you use to reach the outside world matters more than it should. My choice lately is iChat AV—Apple’s instant messenger—and what sells it is what it doesn’t have. No games, no banner ads, no animated emoticons, no bloat. Just you and whoever’s on the other end. That’s it. That’s the whole thing. It sounds like a low bar but apparently it isn’t, because everything else I tried couldn’t manage it. When the interface gets out of the way you remember that chatting is actually just talking to people—and talking to people, occasionally, is nice.