Skype has rolled out a new public beta for Mac users. Among the new features is tighter integration with Apple’s Address Book and new features for organize contacts into groups. The beta ships with some predefined groups like Online, Waiting Authorization, Recently Contacted, but you can also create your own contact organization scheme.

Even more useful is the new Address Book integration which allows Skype to use the contacts listed in the system-wide contact management app — sort of (see below).

Other new features in this latest beta include (from the Skype blog):

• Create and manage public chats by clicking on Chats in the menu bar and choosing Start Public Chat. A public-chat assistant will walk you through the necessary steps.
• Auto Redial for busy or unconnected calls. When your call hits the busy signal, Skype will give you the option of automatic redial every two minutes until the call goes through. This setting can also be adjusted in Skype > Preferences > Calls.
• Easy sound-level controls — when you need to tweak the sound level during a call, use a simple slider in the call window
• Overhauled file transfer — wearing a more fashionable jacket, file-transfer now looks elegant and acts even nicer, especially when receiving many files at once

It all sounds quite nice, but unfortunately the implementation of some features is bit clumsy. The ability to arrange contacts into groups is really nice, except that it’s not a drag and drop process (at least that didn’t work for me). Instead you need to first switch to the new “group view” using the cog menu at the bottom of the main window, then create a new group (also in the cog menu) and then click the arrow icon on each contact and add it to a group.

Even worse, pulling a contact from the Address Book import and then adding it to a group added the phone number but failed to bring over the name and additional information, somewhat mungling the integration features.

I suppose some of this clumsiness has to do with the fact that contacts can be in multiple groups (which complicates the drag-n-drop metaphor), but the number of steps necessary to get a contact into a group almost makes it more effort than its worth.

The second main issue is that your Address Book contacts are auto-imported, which will be fine for some people, but for me it unnecessarily cluttered up my Skype contact windows with hundreds of addresses I will probably never contact via Skype.

Overall the new beta was quite buggy. It had a lot of trouble logging in, constantly dropped connections and generally turned Skype into a frustrating hassle to use, but it is a beta after all so I’ll withhold final judgment. [Update: The connection problems I experienced were most likely due to a software outage at Skype, not the Mac client. The outage is serious enough that Skype has temporarily suspended downloads of its client software. Since the issues aren’t related to the Mac beta, I’ve also altered the title of this review slightly.] The brave can grab the new version from the Skype site.