Microsoft now has an official version of Windows Live Messenger on the App Store. It’s free, it’s awesome, and it’s well worth a look if you still remember the password to your hotmail account (remember that old thing?).
Desktop-like experience
It’s surprising how much Messenger resembles its desktop counterpart. Microsoft really nailed every part of talking on MSN — from the annoying spam bot friend invites to the absolutely classic new message chime. You can send pictures, emoticons, and engage in multiple chats, and receive push notifications while outside of the app. Messenger even shows one-line previews of incoming messages, in case you’ve navigated to one of the other areas of the app (Photos, Social, Hotmail, etc.).
One feature I was surprised to find was the ‘is typing… ‘ indicator at the top of the screen. I remember reading somewhere that mobile messaging apps couldn ‘t afford to implement this functionality because it required apps to constantly listen for messages, instead of simply waiting for new ones to be pushed to the device. Well, whatever voodoo Microsoft used seems to be working, and you can now (finally) see when someone is typing while using an IM client on your iPhone. It makes a world of difference and makes instant messaging feel more like a conversation, instead of two people throwing text at each other in a blind game of catch.
Taking ‘Live ‘ too seriously
Now this portion of my review may ensure that I never enter Microsoft PR ‘s good graces, but I ‘ll have to live with that. I honestly think Microsoft takes Live too seriously. I realize that every other giant corporation out there has a social networking program of some sort, but I ‘ve never seen any of my friends use Live as more than a chatting service.
Maybe I don ‘t have enough Xbox Live buddies (I don ‘t own an X360), but I do know that Windows Live Messenger (a.k.a. MSN) is as big in Canada as AIM is in the US. Many of my friends still use MSN, but none of them keep any of their pictures or social profiles there. MSN is strictly for chatting, and seeing two out of the four tabs in Messenger being used for something other than chatting just seems silly to me. I ‘d love to see a ‘just chat ‘ option to hide all of these other unnecessary features, but, then again, minimalism has never been Microsoft ‘s strong point.
Conclusion
Criticisms of the whole ‘Live ‘ umbrella aside, I think Windows Live Messenger is a great v1.0 IM client. Microsoft used a lot of elbow grease, and it shows (err, in the good way ” not an elbow greasy way). The only things I ‘d want from the client are options for logout time limit, a toggle to hide offline contacts, and a speed increase (loading can take 4-5 seconds). However, for the low, low price of FREE, it ‘s easy to look past those kinks and just hit the App Store INSTALL button.
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Windows Live Messenger is available for exactly $0.00 on the App Store.
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TAGS: iphone instant messenger
