I think, among Mac users, there’s an almost universal hatred for Messages on Mac OS X. Don’t get me wrong, iChat needed an update, and it’s great to have iMessage integration on the Mac, but Messages is not a stable app. It’s an overly annoying app to use 90% of the time.
While Messages works, it should work a hell of a lot better than it does, so when Flexibits told me they made a companion app to Messages called [Chatology][1] I was pretty excited to see it.
Chatology does not replace Messages, and you don’t send things from Chatology to people. What Chatology does do is give you incredibly fast and stable search results of conversations from iChat and Messages.
That alone is pretty cool, but unlike Messages search you get drilled down right to the specific message — the best part about Chatology is that you can filter to just show links or photos too. That’s what I really love about Chatology.
I have a friend, we’ll call him SB for short, and we often send back and forth design comps to get feedback and when I want to pull one up to look at again Messages has a seizure. ((Ok, that’s an understatement.)) So something like Chatology really makes Messages a much more reliable tool when you want the content of your chats to be searchable later on. The bonus to that is that if most of the messages you send on your iPhone are through iMessage, then they also become searchable (easily so) on the Mac — I love that.
This is not an app for everybody, but those that could use an app like this, are really going to love it.
[It’s $19.99 and it’s *not* on the App Store][2].
[1]: http://flexibits.com/chatology
[2]: http://flexibits.com/chatology
Note: This site makes use of affiliate links, which may earn the site money when you buy using those links.