Microsoft Messenger 7 Free Download, brings Bonjour support, corporate AV features
Microsoft Messenger 7 Free Download, brings Bonjour support, corporate AV features
Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit (BU) has announced the release of Messenger for Mac 7, its instant messaging client. Version 7 is a free download, available from the Mac BU’s website.
Messenger 7 lets users communicate with buddies on the Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo Messenger services, but not those with .Mac accounts or those on the popular AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) service. Messenger 7 adds a number of new features for personal users, including searching through contacts by name or e-mail address, the ability to assign nicknames to your friends, and support for OS X’s Bonjour.
However, most of Messenger 7’s improvements come in the realm of corporate communications. For those users in an organization running Exchange server and Microsoft Communicator, the biggest addition to the program is support for video and audio chats, including multi-party conference calls. Such functionality is not yet available for personal users, but the Mac BU is continuing to work with the Windows Live team to implement it.
In addition, corporate users can now find contacts via their organization’s Global Address List (GAL) and display a personal status message, including a “Do Not Disturb” status. The program also features improved online status integration with Office Communicator 2007.
Messenger 7 requires Mac OS X 10.4.9 or later and a Windows Live ID for personal accounts, or a Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 account for corporate accounts.
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After seeing how ad-laden and generally yucky Microsoft’s Windows chat client is, I don’t see myself using Microsoft’s official client anytime soon.
For text chat, Adium still has my vote since it is infinitely customizable and allows me to use a single piece of software to sign in to AIM/.Mac/ICQ, Yahoo, MSN, and Jabber/Google Talk.
STILL no video for personal users? Really, really unbelievable. And I think macworld could have done a better job asking about that, rather than just reconfiguring a press release.
And yes, I saw the Mac Mojo post about the “challenges” faced by the team (seemingly not faced by Skype, iChat developers)… from November 2007. Five months later and no change.
Second, Adium: it comes up every single time Microsoft updates Messenger. It does not do video. End of story. Yes, in a perfect world all my friends and family would use Skype or AIM, but I don’t live in that world. Outside the US, MSN (as people still call it) is the standard, and all the wishful thinking in the world won’t change that.
Final point: I referenced the November 2007 blog post from Microsoft. The one before that entitled “Messenger: haves and hA/Ve nots” was dated September 2006. People may remember that one, thinking, well it’s a tough job, but at least they are communicating. Good on them. Pah - that was 19 months ago. We’ve had one follow-up post. In the meantime Microsoft have pushed out a complete update to Office, as well as Silverlight, and seems to have resources for Live Mesh. I get that it’s free and they prioritise accordingly, but I get the real impression that this is the summer project Microsoft gives to its less-able interns. Does this make me want to give them money for a new version of Office? Does this even make me want to get an X-box. No - and I’m not actually a hater. Well not till today, anyway!
No, no ads at all.
Second, Adium: it comes up every single time Microsoft updates Messenger. It does not do video. End of story. Yes, in a perfect world all my friends and family would use Skype or AIM, but I don’t live in that world. Outside the US, MSN (as people still call it) is the standard, and all the wishful thinking in the world won’t change that.
I’m glad there’s no ads… but it does make me wonder why the Windows chat client is so dang ugly then.
Frankly, I have little use for traditional video chat - although the screen sharing feature in Leopard’s iChat has been indispensable for troubleshooting problems that my father-in-law was having with his iMac. (Sure, VNC has been around forever, but it’s never been that easy to do)
On Adium: Yep, there’s no video, which is why I said it’s my choice for text chat. FWIW, Adium also doesn’t handle file transfers well for some reason (poor NAT transversal, it works if you forward the appropriate ports).
If you have read the Mac Mojo post, then I don’t know what there isn’t to understand about the reason why their is no consumer A/V support. Simply put, Windows corporate Messenger uses a new A/V standard and Live Messenger is transitioning to that new A/V stack too. So it’s perfectly reasonable for Mac Messenger 7 to also be built using the new A/V stack. The reason why there is no consumer A/V support is because Live Messenger hasn’t finished transitioning to the new A/V stack. So in fact, Mac Messenger is ahead of Live Messenger, not behind. And so when Mac Messenger is behind in technology we complain and when it is ahead in technology, we complain more. Admittedly, it’d be nice to have consumer A/V working right now, but it would have been pointless to port over an old A/V stack which is going to be replaced in a few months anyways.
Personally, I hope that Mac BU manages to update Mac Messenger quickly to activate A/V functionality once the next version of Live Messenger is released. If there is too much of a delay, then I’d agree they’re coasting.
Whaaaaat?!? No Silverlight required? Redmond’s idea of a marketing group must be slipping. Surely they would make it mandatory in EVERYTHING by now…
Microsoft Messenger is a great client for users needing to connect to a corporate IM server and chat with Office Communicator users. This works great for me, and I genuinely enjoy using this application to communicate with my Windows-using colleagues.
However, 7.0 seems to break connectivity to my work’s IM system. I fought with the settings for a bit, and then with the help of Time Machine, I was able to restore to 6.0.3. I’m a little bummed I don’t get to try the video or other new features.
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