What’s new in Messages, the big deal, is that iMessages thing. But under its skin, Messages is still an instant-messaging program that connects you to chat partners on several different networks: AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), Yahoo, Jabber, or Google Talk.
Note
Jabber is a chat network whose key virtue is its open-source origins. In other words, it wasn’t masterminded by some corporate media behemoth; it’s an all-volunteer effort, joined by thousands of programmers all over the world. There’s no one Jabber chat program (like AOL Instant Messenger). There are dozens, available for OS X, Windows, Linux, Unix, iPhone, and so on. They can all chat with one another across the Internet in one glorious frenzy of typing.
Behind the scenes, Google Talk uses the Jabber network, so Google Talk doesn’t really count as a different network. But it does mean you can use Messages to converse with all those Google Talkers, too.
Finally, thanks to the Bonjour network-recognition technology, you can communicate with other Macs on your own office network without signing up for anything at all—and without being online. This is a terrific feature when you’re sitting around a conference table, idly chatting with colleagues using your wireless laptop (and the boss thinks you’re taking notes). It’s also handy when you want to type little messages throughout the day to a family member downstairs, or a roommate 15 feet away.
Your contacts from all of these services are consolidated into a single buddy list.
You log into each network separately using the Messages→Accounts submenu, but you can also be logged into all of them at once. This is a great option if your friends are spread out among different chat networks.
Note
If you’re on AOL’s AIM service or Yahoo’s Messenger service, why would you want to use Messages instead of those companies’ dedicated chat programs? Easy: Because Messages is a nice, cleanly designed program that’s free of advertisements, chatbots, and clunky interface elements.
On the other hand, there are some great chat apps that Messages can’t touch. One is the popular Adium, a single program that works with Messages’s chat services and many others, including MSN and ICQ. And then, of course, there’s Skype, the granddaddy of all chat programs, which offers audio and video chats like Messages, but happily connects to Skype running on Windows, iPhones, Android phones, and so on.
Chatting and videoconferencing work identically on all of these networks. Keep that in mind as you read the following pages.
When you open Messages for the first time, you’re invited to enter (or sign up for) your iCloud or Apple account. Or, to use Messages with a different chat service, click Not Now; you’re now offered a more generic Account Setup window; see Figure 12-17.
If you already have an AIM, Yahoo, Google Talk, or Jabber account, enter your name and password and click Continue. (If you’re an AOL member, your existing screen name and password work for AIM purposes.)
If you don’t have one, it’s easy enough to get one. Sign up for a free account at the relevant company’s Web site (at gmail.com or yahoo.com, for example).
You can also input account information later—the setup assistant isn’t your only opportunity. You can do it in either of two places:
In System Preferences, click Mail, Contacts & Calendars, described in Chapter 9.
In Messages, choose Messages→Preferences, click the Accounts button, click the
button, and proceed as shown in Figure 12-17,
bottom.
Figure 12-17. When you open Messages for the first time, it really, really wants you to enter (or sign up for) an iCloud/Apple ID, so you can become part of the great iMessages global family. Bottom: But you can, instead, or in addition, enter Google, Jabber, Yahoo, or AIM account details.
Once you’ve set up your accounts, you can activate or deactivate them either in Messages→Preferences→Accounts or by using the Messages→Accounts submenu. You might want to deactivate an account when, for example, you don’t want to be bugged by the rabble on that particular service.
Note
Incidentally, it’s possible to get good mileage out of Messages even if you don’t have a chat account. Messages comes ready to connect you with other people in your building, over the office network, thanks to a technology called Bonjour. You can’t add names to your Bonjour list; anyone who’s on the network and running Messages appears there automatically.
Once you’ve entered your account information, you’re technically ready to start chatting. All you need now is a chatting companion, or, as he’s called in instant-messaging circles, a buddy. Messages comes with a unified Messages Buddies window where you can house the chat “addresses” for all your chat partners from all the different chat services, in a single list.
Tip
If you like, you can restore Messages to the old way of doing things, where each service (AIM, Yahoo, and so on) had its own separate buddy list window. To do that, choose Messages→Preferences→General; turn off “Show all my accounts in one list.” Now you can use the Window menu to reveal each service’s buddy list separately.
A tiny icon appears next to each name in your list, indicating
that person’s availability to chat—and what kinds of multimedia
chats are available. A phone icon means “equipped for an audio
chat”; a camcorder means “equipped for a video chat.” The little
colored dots mean “available” (green), “away” (red), “idle”
(orange), and “undetermined—probably on a cellphone” (gray). A
little 
icon means you’re chatting with someone on a
cellphone.
When you start Messages, your buddy list automatically appears (Figure 12-18). If you don’t see it, choose Buddies from the Window menu.
Adding a buddy to this list entails knowing that person’s account name/address (for example, [email protected] or [email protected]).
Once you have it, click the button in the bottom-left corner of the Buddies
window; in the resulting window, click Add Buddy.
Down slides a sheet attached to the buddy list window, offering a window into your Contacts program (Chapter 18). Using the “Add to” pop-up menu, choose the service you want to use for chatting with this person (Yahoo, Google, AIM, whatever).
If your companion’s chat address is already in Contacts, then double-click the person’s name, or click it and then click Add.
If not, enter your pal’s chat address in “Account name.” Enter this person’s real first and last names in the appropriate boxes, if you like.
Tip
Just to make things more complicated—er, flexible—Messages lets you organize buddies into groups, like Work, Family, and Fantasy Badminton League. Use the “Add to group” pop-up menu here to specify which group you want—or just choose Buddies to leave the new person in the general sloshing bucket of humanity.
When everything looks good, click Add.
Using the pop-up menu just below your name (Figure 12-18, right), you can display your current mental status to other people’s chat programs. You can announce that you’re Available, Away, On the Phone, Drunk, and so on. (You have to choose Edit Status Menu for that last one; see Figure 12-18, right.)
Figure 12-18. Left: The buddy list combines all your contacts from all chat services. Each chat account has its own status menu at the top. Right: You can also choose Edit Status Menu to set up more creative alternatives to “Available” and “Away.”
Better yet, if you have music playing in iTunes, you can tell the world what you’re listening to by choosing Current iTunes Song. (Your buddy can even click that song’s name to open its screen in the iTunes Store, all for instant purchase gratification.)
For some people, by far the juiciest status option is Invisible (available for me.com and AIM accounts only). It’s like a Star Trek cloaking device for your onscreen presence. Great for stalkers!
You can display the same status to your friends on all the different chat networks—Available, say, or Out to Lunch. Or you can set the status for each account separately, so that the lowlifes on Yahoo believe you to be “In a meeting” but the sophisticates on AIM realize that you’re “Available.”
To control whether your status message appears identically to all services, choose Use Same Status for All Accounts from the Status pop-up menu (Figure 12-18, right).
In View→Sort Buddies, you can rearrange your buddies as they’re listed in the buddy list (by availability, name, or manually—drag the names up and down).
Once you get a lot of people piled on your list, all with their buddy pictures and audio/video chat icons, you may feel like Messages is taking up way too much screen real estate. If you want a more space-efficient view of your buddy list, go to the View menu and turn off Show Buddy Pictures, Show Audio Status, or Show Video Status. You can turn off Buddy Groups here as well, if you’d prefer to see your buddies in one undivided list.