Using Skype on Mac OS X for the last 4 years has been painful, though today Skype is slightly better than where it started. Some of the annoyances of using Skype include:

• Skype’s Excessive CPU Usage: often you need to quit out of Skype after a period of time
• Lack of “true skype support” in Adium: you can use Eion Robb’s plugin, but group information and contact “merging” is not supported across Adium restarts
• Address Book.app – Why no support for a “Skype” Instant Messenger field?
• Skype’s Ugly Dock Icon and Splash Screen… I’m not the only one.

If you type the following into Terminal.app you can remove the Splash Screen:

defaults write com.skype.skype SKShowSplash NO

For removing from the Dock Icon you can update the Skype.app/Contents/Info.plist XML file to set LSUIElement to 1 (instead of 0) and save the file and open Skype…But this hardly seems like a mainstream way to make this sort of change

On the bright side of Skype, it is the only way I can get a semi-reliable phone or video conference connection going across the Great Firewall, so even though it’s ugly and painful to use, Skype does *work*.

For my dreamlist (like a wishlist but i’m not even going to bother wishing):

• True Skype Protocol support in Adium that includes Video and Phone Call Support without the need to keep Skype running in the background
• Global Hotkeys to conveniently access Adium contacts from any application but without loosing Dock and Screen real-estate, somewhat similar to LaunchBar
• Adium support for IMAP messages and SMS…

Then I would be free of many meaningless “clicks” each day, and free 3 icons on my Dock (Adium, Skype, Mail/Thunderbird)… Yes – that would be quite a dream!