News, info, and opinion by Mac users, for Mac users.

April 29, 2008

updates

Microsoft releases Messenger 7, thinks it’s 2003

Posted Apr. 29, ’08, 3:45 PM PT by Thomas Gagnon-van Leeuwen
Category | Software » Updates

messenger7.jpgTo my surprise, Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit today released a new “major” version of their MSN (and Yahoo) chat client, Messenger for Mac 7. Oh, you mean it still exists?

Now, I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but Messenger for Mac has to be the most neglected, behind-the-Windows-version piece of software the MacBU puts out. For proof of this, look no further than the exciting new features this version brings: contact search by name or email, contact nicknames and Bonjour support.

Excuse me? Adium has had these features — with the exception of contact search, which is a decent idea — for years. If I hadn’t had nicknames all this time, I would’ve gone nuts: how am I supposed to know who “··¤(`×[¤ ναии ¤]×´)¤·· ..:: мємσяιєѕ ::..* (W)¸.´)(`· [ ѕιιѕтααz ]·´)(` .¸” is? (And yes, that is the actual screen name of one of my MSN buddies.)

The one good thing in this release I was ready to applaud Microsoft for is A/V chat capabilities, but that’s only for corporate users, who also get a few other niceties.

As someone who cares about the survival of the Mac platform, it’s my duty to thank Microsoft for not killing the darn thing, but please, if you’re going to keep it alive, don’t leave it in a coma.


8 Comments

leonardodamian Author Profile Page said:

Yes, girls always put all that crap in the nickname. I hate it.

What's all that about?

April 29, 2008 4:18 PM
Kathryn Marshall Author Profile Page said:

I think I used Messenger for Mac once, when I first installed MS Office, just to try it out. That was probably 3+ years ago and the experiment lasted all of 3 minutes. Count me in the "didn't know Messenger still existed" camp. And the "doesn't put weird characters randomly in her IM handles" camp too.

April 29, 2008 6:14 PM
Equinox said:

He, funny. I'm really glad that this came out. I'm a switcher and can't still let go of the Messenger, that's the app that I use the most after Safari, Mail and iTunes, so I give a warm welcome to this new update. The bad thing is, as you say, it's eons behind the windows version which, well, sucks. But hey, "sumthin' is sumthin".

By the way, I hate Adium and I've tried all the Messenger Killers and still go back to it.

April 29, 2008 6:43 PM
wesg Author Profile Page said:

Let this be my pledge to never use Messenger for Mac ever again.

Once you go Adium, you never go back.

April 29, 2008 7:16 PM
netdog Author Profile Page said:

This is fairly disappointing. I really had thought that 7.0 would catch up with Windows MSN Messenger, or at least come very close. As a non-corporate user, this is a real letdown.

April 30, 2008 3:45 AM
jayH said:

what's the difference between corporate and non corporate users?

so no way for a non corporate user to use a camera?? why is taking them so long to ad this feature??

April 30, 2008 6:39 AM
Erik said:

The main difference between corporate and non-corporate users, is that corporate users connect to an IM server that is provided by their employer.

Non-corporate users connect to Microsoft's public IM servers.

There are also differences in the protocols that are used in each of the different environments.

April 30, 2008 7:30 AM
Grant said:

I wish iChat would offer support for the MSN protocol. I hate the Microsoft client, but I hate Adium and other multi-protocol clients even worse. And using Jabber to connect iChat to MSN Messenger is a royal pain.

Come on, Apple. Throw us a bone here and put MSN support in the next version of iChat!

April 30, 2008 9:38 AM

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