Is there an iPhone/iPod touch version of Adium?

Not at this time. Adium is currently only available for Apple-branded Macintosh computers running  Mac OS X.

Are there plans to make one?

We want to, but it will be a lot of work and we're not sure when we'll start on it.

Apple has at last  dropped the NDA covering the iPhone APIs. Previously, we could not create an iPhone version of Adium without violating either the NDA or the GPL that covers LibPurple.

However, even though Apple now allows developers to publish source code for iPhone applications without violating the NDA, technical challenges remain.

Developing for the iPhone is much harder than developing for the Mac

Developing for the iPhone is similar in many respects to development for Mac OS X. Some of the same frameworks, such as Core Audio, are present. But a lot of them aren't. For example:

• QuickTime (which we use to play sounds) is missing entirely. There's a new Core Audio API to play sounds, but it's Leopard-only, and we still support Adium on versions of Mac OS X before Leopard.
• The Application Kit (on which our interface is built) is replaced with UIKit.
• The iPhone does not have Apple Events nor Open Scripting Architecture. In other words, no AppleScript.
• Animation works a bit differently, and is dramatically different from how animation currently works in Adium on Mac OS X.

The hardware poses challenges as well. The iPhone has less memory than Adium tends to use, and also has a significantly slower processor (and only one of them). Also, maintaining a network connection over WiFi uses a significant amount of battery, which could pose a problem for long-term use.

So porting Adium to the iPhone will certainly be a lot of work. Large portions, if not almost everything, will need to be completely rewritten or scrapped. Other parts will survive, but undergo extensive changes. This is a lot of work.

Currently, Adium's base system requirement is Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4). Some of the iPhone's features, such as Core Animation, were introduced in Leopard (10.5). Therefore, it's likely that we won't start work on Adium for iPhone until Adium requires Leopard. We have made Adium 1.4 require Leopard, so this means that we won't start work on the iPhone version of Adium until sometime after we discontinue the 1.3 series.

Also, keep in mind that we'll want to release that version of Adium for Mac and have it proven by users (that means you) before we go applying that knowledge to Adium for the iPhone. You wouldn't want us to port an unstable version, would you? ☺

So, in summary: We want to do it, but it will be a lot of work. We want to put it off for a little bit so that it can be done with less effort and won't interfere with other development priorities. We don't know how long we'll put it off and we don't know how long it will take once we start.

By the way: Even once we make a version of Adium for the iPhone, you should know that you won't be able to be online all the time.  The iPhone doesn't allow third-party applications to run in the background, so Adium will have to disconnect you when you switch to another application (including the Home screen), because the iPhone will make Adium quit when you do that. We wish it weren't so, but there's nothing we can do about it.

We're not going to make one using  the unofficial iPhone SDK, because it's not an officially-supported programming interface. It could break at any time, and we couldn't predict what would happen if it did.

We also will not be making a Web app (a client that you could use from Safari).

Alternative suggestions

IM clients using Apple's iPhone SDK include:

•  The official AIM client
•  The official Yahoo client, version 1.2.1 (requires iPhone OS 3.0 or later)
•  The official Yahoo client, version 1.1.1 (requires iPhone OS 2.0 or later)
•  The official QQ client

For all other services, we currently recommend  Apollo IM, an existing instant-messaging application that's native to the iPhone. Apollo IM uses libpurple for its support of the instant-messaging protocols, just as we do. However, it requires you to jailbreak your iPhone.

If you don't want to jailbreak your iPhone, you can also use  Meebo, a web-based IM client. You can also use Google Talk from its  web interface (that link will only go straight to the GTalk web interface on an iPhone).

AOL's  AIM Express/ ICQ2Go (a web-based client for AIM, MobileMe, and ICQ) will not work, because it requires Flash or Java, and neither of those is present on the iPhone.