The newly released includes iChat 6.0. It's the first iteration that really can rival some of Adium's advances in the IM software space. That's because iChat finally adds features it's missed for far too long.

For example, iChat 6.0 allows you to sign into the Yahoo instant messaging platform. The integration is complete: you see your Yahoo buddies' avatars, availability, and current chat status. iChat already offered out-of-the-virtual-box support for the AIM, me.com, Mac.com, and Google Talk IM networks. The software also includes Jabber support, which means you can use iChat to connect to other IM networks--including Facebook Chat. Adium offers built-in Facebook support; iChat still requires that you .

Even more welcome than the addition of Yahoo support is iChat's implementation of a unified buddy list. Most of us don't mentally organize our friends by which IM service they use; iChat's former reliance on separating them that way made little sense. iChat 6.0 combines all your friends into a single list, which is an improvement, but still falls short in comparison to Adium.

There's no obvious way to distinguish which service a friend is logged into just by looking at your buddy list. (Adium can show a service icon next to each buddy's name.) And if you have a friend with accounts on multiple services, iChat's approach for combing your friends' accounts into a single buddy entry on your list isn't as intuitive as Adium's. In Adium, you drag usernames on top of each other to merge them. In iChat, you must Command-click on each name, and then choose "Add to Address Book as One Card" from the contextual or Buddies menu. Do that, and you'll lose any custom name you've given the contact (say, "John Smith" instead of "jsmith88"), requiring you to edit it all over again.