Tabs, Transparency, Animated Buddy Icons, Better Logging, Warning, Reconnection, and some way to execute shell/apple scripts on events.

profiles

Add: first and foremost the ability to connect to ICQ and MSN services, where lots of my non iChatting buddies hang out...

I'm with Ton - it would be great to use iChat like I use Proteus. Proteus is great (as Slava already mentioned) but there are still lots of rough edges in the basic chat implementation, where iChat is pretty complete. If I could connect to MSN, ICQ, and Yahoo chat servers with iChat, that would kick butt.

Tabs. And also I don't like the word bubbles, and even less the alternative. Normal text would be nice. I still use Adium.

I don't get it - isn't iChat free?

Fire offers the use of GPG for encryption, and does it in a really beautiful way. Plus, it supports all the major chat protocols (AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, MSN, Jabber...). http://fire.sourceforge.net/

Ah, yes, but Fire looks like pants. That counts for something, in my book.

Profiles profiles profiles profiles.

Groups. That's the only real reason I don't use it now.

iChat AV has "groups", but all that that does is swap out your entire buddy list. All I want is the ability to organize buddies.

Grrr.

i wish iChat had the "/me" emote ability. I'm sure iChat could even make it look pretty cool, what with the word bubbles and icons.

/me leaves the room

I second (third? fourth?) the comments regarding MSN and Yahoo! support. I don't have a single friend/colleague who uses AIM so iChat is useless to me. I use Proteus and, although it's great at most things, I find a few basic things missing (file transfer, group chats).

I also want to be able to connect to MSN (other services would be nice too). The official client is still sort of crappy.

Tabs (that allow you to group conversations into one window), profiles, folders in list (real groups), more textual layout controls (not just bubbles and their ugly text alternative), iSight camera control options (for adjusting white balance, etc), persistant reconnect, and move 'Buddy List...' menubar option to ABOVE available buddies list, so I don't have to move all the way to the bottom of the screen sometimes.

I would like to see tabbed chatting like Adium offers. I leave chat windows open, and they fill up my screen, but with tabbed chatting, all chats are in 1 little tabbed window. I can even keystroke to change between tabs.

In response to other comments, iChat AV beta has the ability to turn off the Comic style word bubbles and just use plain text.

I'd like much more control of how chats are displayed.

for example I'd like a simple text option:

tim: hi
someonelse: hi
tim: now we're cookin'
someone else: with gas

Or an option where you just see the icons... or text on alternate sides....

I just want control.

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connectivity to other systems would be good.
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ability to have a one way video chat would be good (I video other person types)... same deal with one way sound....

I just want options.

Would be nice if iChat would stop showing the same away message for AIM users even hours after they changed it. I'll look at a buddy's away message in the Buddy List, send him a funny message (pertinent to his away message), and then his auto-response is completely different and makes my message look dumb.

Also, smart away messages. You know, the %n, %t, etc.

What would *REALLY* be cool would be if iChat were to implement a way to run scripts and whatnot. I actually...heh-heh...wrote a K Widget to do this, but nothing beats built-in functionality.

http://www.widgetgallery.com/?author=104

Actually, since I'm here, I don't get it, either.

Isn't iChat free?