Also last year, Marcel sent me a build of Buddies, an app I had comped up and shared online. We started working on refining it together with Johannes, complete with a retro app icon.


A screenshot of Buddies, a list of contacts to launch directly into Messages and FaceTime.

In the transition from services like AOL Instant Messenger to services like iMessage, I think we lost the intentionality of chatting with friends. Weirdly, I also feel like I lost a very specific buddy-list shaped window on the left side of my screen.
In the days of iChat AV, Apple brought their level of polish to third-party services like AOL and Jabber, now known as XMPP. At that time, being online was not a permanent state, but rather a conscious, temporary one. By signing on, we’d be indicating to our friends that we were available to chat. Email, by contrast, was the asynchronous counterpart.
Those days are over. Now, there’s no indication for when someone’s available to chat and when they’re not. That’s a real loss, and ultimately makes messaging apps more similar to email. It’s not hard for me to imagine a modern chat app having an email interface or a modern email app having a chat interface. They’re effectively the same at this point.
Yet, pinned messages don’t do it for me. I have more than nine friends I want quick access to. Also, why do they take up so much space when pinned? A compact buddy list does much more than the modern Messages window does.
In Buddies, double-clicking any contact opens a Messages window to their chat. Clicking the video button starts a FaceTime call. Holding Option changes the green buttons to audio buttons. The app can hide contact pictures, sort in groups, and display full name, nickname, or screen name. Yes, screen name. In a custom field, you can add a retro-style screen name for each of your friends.
Who needs this? I don't know. I want it. I can totally imagine the scope increasing to a full XMPP chat client with online status, file transfers, custom fonts, who knows what else, something macOS lacks a good app for at the moment. Do you want this? Let me know.

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