ROG360  Why not just go with online only and support iChat 100% in the future.If your this far behind the game, You better pick a better position... :)

At least there's not advertising in it...  
(Version 1.5b1)

JEFFISHERETOO  AOL! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE STOP THE INSANITY!

This product is an insult to the Mac and the Mac community! I have both a Mac and Windows so I know what this is missing and it's nothing more than a prettier version on AIM 6 years ago!!!!! Whoa! Sorry you added SMS! WOW!

Just stop!  
(Version 1.5b2)

OVIPAS  lifestream addition is a big enhancement, however it seems that it doesn't allow for ICQ contacts to add a twitter or facebook account.

no possibility to use iTunes song like a status message, which is a standard now for any IM application on macs.

still no A/V capabilities :(  
(Version 2.0b1)

THREEDEE912  I have to say, I'm surprised that AOL is still updating it's Mac client. It's a tad slow and still a little buggy, but the interface is clean, and you can chat to people fine. It's not on par with Adium yet, but it's a lot better than that ancient v4.7 back from 2003 or whatever.  
(Version 1.0)

ST00P!D M0NK3Y  This is way better now than it used to be compared to the old joke of an application. Having said that... this program is a steaming pile of cow dung. Since there is no audio/video chat support... still... after years and years and years... this application is virtually useless. With alternatives such as Adium... and even Apple's default iChat... which needs a lot of work too, but at least there's audio/video chat... there's no point in disgracing your hard drive with this garbage.  
(Version 1.1)

MISHA  I really don't see the advantage of this over iChat, except a slightly different interface. It definitely has advantages over Adium for some things (file transfers, mostly, which still are painful with Adium over AIM), but so does iChat.

Still, it's good to see AOL continuing to develop this, I suppose.  
(Version 1.0b1)

MAC4DREW  I like it. Fast, clean, and stable on an Intel Mac, just like AIM for OS 9 used to be on my old iBook. No ads, just pure classic AIM goodness.

They have attained almost feature parity with the previous Mac version, which is also very cool. Some things missing: notifications and the ability to change sounds (which I believe can both be added via a plugin on the AIM Lite website http://x.aim.com/laim/ ) and video/audio chat, which cannot be added.

I use Adium for most of my instant messaging, but it still doesn't handle Direct IM or AIM chats very well. It crashes ALL THE TIME for me.

If you ever use Direct IM or AIM Chats, you should be pleasantly surprised by this little program. It hasn't crashed once since I started using it.

Only problem is, it only seems possible to save images received from Direct IM as low-quality GIFs. It prints images on the screen in full quality but then won't save them as anything but a low quality GIF.

Please, AOL, update this some more... there are some people out there who appreciate it.   
(Version 0.8.6)

JRWHO  Really, what's the purpose of this? Why not work on like making iChat better?  
(Version 1.1)

JEFFISHERETOO  I can't say it better than it's been said already other than to point out that this is nothing more than the IM part of the equally non-sense AOL Desktop for Mac just ripped out for a twofer deal for AOL. While I am glad to see them doing anything at all for the Mac I am baffled by their continued inability to sync the feature sets for the Mac and Windows products after almost 5 years of nothing. This is why AOL is no longer a player and should just close up shop once and for all. Sad.  
(Version 1.1b1)

TOMIS  Dear AOL. Start by being feature complete against iChat (audio/video), have a clean user interface (kill the style bar), and then improve from there.

Save your bandwidth. There's no reason to choose this over iChat.  
(Version 1.0b5)