July 8, 2005
better msn messenger on mac?
Hey Robert,
My friend, Sigurd‘s son, Edward, wants to know why the new neato MSN Messenger is only available for Windows, and not Macs.
Since I don’t regularly use either MSN or Macs, I have no idea why not. I assume it’s because you guys in Redmond care more about Windows than Macs, which is perfectly understandable.
But still, you guys have an opportunity here to make a new customer/fan/maven with a very switched-on 14-year-old, so I thought I’d throw you guys a bone.
Besides that, part of my post-Cluetrain schtick thinks it would be kinda neat to believe that, thanks to the power of blogs, the opinion of a young chap in Southern France could actually get on the radar screen of the groovy cats in Redmond, without a lot of fuss.
Any insights or new product development news from you or your colleagues would be much appreciated etc etc.
Thank you in advance!
Yeah, I know. Ten years ago this would have qualified as an insane idea. No longer. You know that; I know that. We live in interesting times etc.
Say Hi to Maryam for me!
Hugh
PS: It’s now official: I hate French keyboards. If I were French I’d probably hate them less. C’est la vie.
Hugh, I believe there was an MSN Messenger client for the Mac out there, though I’d suggest Edward check out the open source app Adium (assuming he’s on Mac OS X).
http://www.adiumx.com/
This free app handles not only MSN chats, but also AIM, .Mac, Yahoo Messenger and Jabber accounts, in one place. It makes dealing with various services a reasonable task.
Glad to hear you made it through London OK.
MSN Messenger for Mac is produced by a separate team to MSN Messenger (for Windows). Version 5 was supposed to be released in the first half of 2005, but it looks like the release has slipped. It still won’t have all the features of MSN Messenger 7, but it looks to be moving in the right direction.
http://www.macworld.com/news/2005/01/11/microsoft/index.php
There is also Mac Messenger 3.5.3 that works on OS 9 or 10 and is free. Only does MSN though.
http://www.oemfoe.org/echelon/macmessenger/
Proteus is a very good mac app that handles MSN, Yahoo, AIM, and other protocols.
http://www.defaultware.com/proteus/
aMSN is a free, open-source MSN client that has a few features that the standard mac MSN client is sorely lacking (user photos, etc.)
http://amsn.sourceforge.net
Proteus
aMSN
(for the anti-copy-and-paste crowd… i don’t know why those didn’t show up as links.)
It’s because most Mac users are smart enough not to solely be MSN users and want to connect to multiple networks, so probably use Adium or similar. The only reason MSN Messenger took off at all was due to its forced running up whenever you install Windows.
Interestingly, MSN’s saturation seems to be far higher in the UK/Europe than even the US where more people tend to use AIM. I imagine this is due to AOL’s reasonably weak presence in Europe, and their very strong presence in the US as IM took off around the turn of the century.
French keyboards are indeed terrible. I have to use them sometimes in Paris or In Belgium, and the most annoying thing about them is that the Azerty is a bit non-standard, but the numbers are on the shift key, and not the punctuations marks. Number of time I have written !”
While we all love and cherish Scoble, young Edward should learn that there are often alternatives to Microsoft products which are as good (or better), cheaper (even free!) and don’t require you to have a pile of other MS stuff installed to work.
Robert is the lovable face of Microsoft; the other face is a convicted monopolist on two continents. I can only hope that Robert’s influence pervades the business model.
I love how the first thing anyone ever does when someone asks why X client doesn’t exist for a platform in a certain way is to suggest another product.
The point I think here is that the COOL FEATURES of MSN Messenger on Windows just don’t exist on the Mac. It doesn’t matter if you use Adium X or GAIM or ClientXYZ you don’t get the cool things those Windows users get, like being able to send/receive ink drawings (sure, no Mac tablet, but the mouse still works), winks, nudges, and of course video chat and whatever other cool features you’re looking for from MSN.
It’s not just MSN Messenger that lags on the Mac though, Windows Media Player (funny name for a Mac product, but I can understand the branding) is horrible on the Mac. Streaming video is worthless 99% of the time and no matter what resolution the video was created at, it looks blocked and chopping on the Mac. Seriously, is that any way to treat the Mac customer?
Its not just MSN, the most recent yahoo messenger with any mac compatability dates from 2002 and sbc-yahoo dsl will not link with macs for video-conferencing using messenger.
There *is* MSN Messenger for Mac:
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/default.aspx?pid=msnmessenger
Hugh,
Re: Keyboard issues
If you touch type, there are easy ways to change the configuration of the keyboard to make your computer (Mac or PC) think that it’s using a UK (or other version). Not knowing the operating system you’re on, I can’t be of much further help, unfortunately.
Oh, and I hate French keyboards too!
I’ll throw in my vote for adium as well
It still doesn’t have all the “cool features” of Messenger 7.0 for windows, but it’s a *lot* better than MS’s horrible outdated official MSN Mac version.
And in retort Apple don’t have iChat for Windows either. Not only that, but certain features of iChat are only available for certain versions of MacOS, such as group video conferencing in the MacOS 10.4 version of iChat… another subtle forcing of the customer’s hand in upgrading to the latest and greatest.
Said Ryan: “cool things those Windows users get, like being able to send/receive ink drawings (sure, no Mac tablet, but the mouse still works), winks, nudges, and of course video chat”
… *snicker* yes, cooool. That’ is REALLY what people want in CHAT clients. Oh well, maybe when you’re 14 you do.
Hey you forgot about Fire