On Tuesday we posted the latest AIM for Mac client, Beta3, on our beta website.  AIM for Mac was first released a month ago, and in that time we have made a bunch of changes.  The application is built on top of the Open AIM Cocoa framework that is available as part of the Open AIM Mac SDK.  Here are some highlighted changes in Beta 3:

• Redesigned Buddy List header area and added Quick Status and Away toggle
• Find Buddy search box is now toggled using the magnifying glass icon
• Will now auto-format phone numbers so users can send IMs to SMS text message capable phones**
• Fixed issue for Tiger users to correctly display status messages on the Buddy List
• Preference window will now remember size/screen position
• Fixed auto-accept file transfer preferences when user closes and reopens application

You can download AIM for Mac Beta 3 here.

As always we appreciate feedback on how this client is coming along.

** – I find it interesting that Google Talk launched IM to SMS as a very very burried feature in GTalk today.  It will be 5 years on December 17th this year that we released IM to SMS for AIM.  I along with our mobile team in Seattle and our AIM Host team in Dulles brought this great feature to the client oh so many years ago.

The past few weeks have been a barn burner. We released so many different things it makes me wonder what are we not doing. In this blog post I am going to focus solely on the AIM 6.5 release. Those who have found it at aim.com (and there are many people who already have) can attest this release continues to positive trend of improvements to the client and the Open AIM platform.

The difference between AIM 6.1 and AIM 6.5 is quite significant. We have tried to bubble up some existing technology to give it more prominence in the client. For example, the ability to send SMS text from AIM to your buddy’s cell phone is much easier, and is of course free in the US. We also now support status messages in the buddy list. Status has been part of the platform for a few years, if you have ever used iChat on a Mac you would have seen their implementation of it. I used the status API in the AIM MusicLink plugin I wrote as well as TwitterMan where you can set your status in AIM and Twitter at the same time. Status is a great way to share with your buddies what you are up too.

In AIM 6.5 we of course have full support for expressions and we made a bunch of good improvements to audio and video.

There are a few other features in this release, but I am saving those for their own blog posts.