Microsoft's PATHETIC messenger application for Macintosh.

[NightH...@officeformac.com]

Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Processor: Intel When are Microsoft going to wake up and give us a proper messenger application for Mac and not just some pathetic Friday afternoon attempt at one?!

There are so many faults/things missing that it's unbelievable!

This aimed at 7.0.2 & 8 Beta, because they're both useless.

1. The text box in 8 Beta, it doesn't alert you when your message is too long, it just lets you write as much as you want and then it wont let you send it because it's too long. Why? Messenger 7 stopped you from typing when your message was too long. Bring back that feature!

2. A/V, What's going on with this one? Are you seriously telling me that third party freeware applications like aMSN can get the webcam feature to work where as a company such as Microsoft can't? Pathetic...

3. Display pictures in 8 Beta... Or rather the lack of... Even in 7.0.2, 9 times out of 10 it didn't display the display picture of the person I was talking to.

4. Custom emoticons in 8 Beta... Or rather the lack of...

5. Games on Messenger for Mac... Or rather the lack of...

6. Why can it NEVER remember my screen name?

7. The ability to send files... Or rather the lack of (8 Beta).

8. You can be talking to one person, typing out a message and as soon as somebody else sends you a message, the text you were typing in the first conversation window appears in the new one. Which can lead to embarrassing moments. When a new conversation window opens it should stay in the background until you choose to look at it, not just pop up in the foreground and suddenly be the active text box! That REALLY frustrates me!

9. IT CONSTANTLY CRASHES! I'm using a MacBook Pro with a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor... 4Gb of DDR3 RAM and a high speed broadband connection... It can handle the performance required to play games online, however, Messenger constantly crashes! How can such a simple application crash so much? It's exactly the same situation on my iMac!

Seriously Microsoft, go to Apple or Skype and ask for help! Because unlike you, their instant messenger applications WORK!

[Mac...@officeformac.com]

1. Well - it's a beta to test A/V functionality. Not a full application. Live with it.
2. Read the forum and the MS Blog. MS is changing the A/V technology. In a while aMSN will stop functioning (which will be adressed in aMSN2) as the old technology is closed down.
3. Agreed. This can't be too difficult to fix.
4. See 1.
5. Who on Earth needs them anyway???
6. Because of the move to msnp18 for Live Messenger. 7.0.2 doesn't support it since it didn't exist when it was coded. The beta is based on v 7 (I suppose).
7. Agreed again - but aMSN has exactly the same problem.
8. This has never happened to me in any version of Messenger.
9. I use the beta every day. It has crashed ONCE. I don't know what you're doing to it...

I do agree that the Mac OS version is WAY behind the Win version, but please get the facts right before posting...

[Mac...@officeformac.com]

Just to clarify point 2 above:
As I understand it, A/V functionality in aMSN won't work when the transition to the new technology has been completed.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

[NightH...@officeformac.com]

I have done research into it but frankly I don't see why I should. I'm the end user, it's not my problem to find out why these functions don't work or why they are not present.

Beta's are all very well and good but the fact is (and yes, I know it was optional to download it), they should be closed beta's in my opinion... Products should only be released when they are fully functional.

As for "who the hell needs" games anyway, they are fun little things to socialise with, if I'm chatting to a friend you can just start up a little game to play during the conversation if there is nothing else to do. You could argue that video is pointless, seeing the person wont usually effect the conversation... I know what my friends look like, I see them in person, why would I need to see them on my computer... I just use that function because it's there...

Obviously your user habits are different to mine, but I find the application to be very unstable and some of it's habits frankly frustrating (in particular point 8). Just because you rarely experience the problem doesn't mean it doesn't exist or that I'm exaggerating it.

[NightH...@officeformac.com]

Amendment:

Beta's are all very well and good but the fact is, it is simply nowhere near an acceptable quality (and yes, I know it was optional to download it). They should be closed beta's in my opinion... Products should only be released when they are fully functional.