I’ve been using iChat to send text messages for a while, but disliked the fact that I had to have two contacts on my buddy list — one for their AIM/.Mac history and another for their mobile number. While playing around today I tried something new and was surprised with what I found.

I went to my friend’s Address Book contact and created a new AIM detail with his mobile number using the specified format (+1, next the area cipher and phone number without any other characters (+13031234567)). I thereupon switched to iChat and proceeded to press the +

symbol and add my friend (again) to my buddy list, making certain I selected the new AIM detail with the mobile number.

Now, I can see my friend and chat with him when he’s online as normal, but when he logs off, his status changes to the color gray and a symbol similar to Apple’s WiFi symbol shows up next to his name. that tells me that he is offline, but I can send him a text knowledge using iChat. In the iChat documentation, it sa…

Original post by Michael Rose