Our good friends in Redmond dropped us a note concerning Messenger for the Mac's future (based on this post). The Mac BU wants all Mac users to rest assured that Messenger for the Mac 6.0 will be included with Microsoft Office 2008 for the Mac. Not only is Messenger for the Mac 6.0 alive and well, the Mac BU's crack team of coders are hard at work on Messenger for Mac 7.0 which will have long awaited audio/video capabilities (and which is soon to be released into the hands of some lucky enterprise beta participants, mostly to test out the Office Communication Server 2007 integration).

This is welcome news to me because I use Messenger for the Mac everyday at my day job. I couldn't do my work without it (and who wants to run a VM for an IM client? Not this guy).

Microsoft is calling it quits on MSN Messenger for Mac, instead choosing to go with an all-new IM client that will work with both AIM/gTalk/ICQ users and folks still on the Messenger network. The Mac version of Messenger was plagued with bugs (and Scott's gripes), and seriously-- why would you use a client like Messenger when you've got iChat and Adium anyway? It's good news that they're planning a new client, and extra good news that it's supposed to work with other protocols.

So no more updates for Messenger on the Mac, but the new client is supposed to be "really, really cool and awesome." Sounds like just what the kids like these days. We'll believe it, of course, when we see it. Messenger 9 for Windows ships next year, so if this new Mac app gets delivered, it'll probably be sometime around then.

Update: A few readers said the post was confusing regarded Microsoft's plans for Messenger on the Mac, so updated for clarity.

Update II: Microsoft has responded, and the rumors of Messenger's demise were exaggerated-- Messenger 6.0 will be included with Office 2008, and Messenger 7.0 will have audio/video capabilities included, and will be beta testing soon. Makes us wonder what Liveside really heard Jenks say, but if you're a Messenger user like our own Scott McNulty, you'll be pretty happy to hear it's not going anywhere.

[via MacBytes]

Meebo, the reigning champion of web-based chat, has just released their entry into the iPhone app arena. I had a chance to speak with meebo's CEO, Seth Sternberg, earlier today about the release, and they truly do have a surprisingly innovating iPhone app on there hands. Simply point MobileSafari at meebo.com and the site will send you to the iPhone portal (a technique about which our own Scott McNulty had a few thoughts to share) where you can sign into any of Meebo's supported services - including AIM, Yahoo!, MSN and Google Talk - or you can sign in with an account you have already registered with meebo. From there, things get very interesting (note that the screenshot below was snapped in Camino since I'm just not cool enough to get Erica's iPhone screenshot utility up and running).


First, if you registered an account with meebo and added your credentials for one or more chat networks, you'll appreciate the fact that everything transfers over to the iPhone app. Custom status messages, your buddy icon, even the history from chat sessions on your desktop computer - they all appear in the iPhone app. Your buddies are listed alphabetically, but any current chats float to the top of the buddy list for easy access, and this is a bit of UI where meebo has some unique innovation going on: the entire iPhone meebo experience centers around a home screen that is your buddy list; it takes up the entire display, and it even rotates and scales gracefully for landscape mode. No tabs here, which can be a mixed bag for the experience.

Tapping on a buddy slides over to a new chat window with nothing but an icon to get back to your buddy list, a box to type in and the send button. Chat history (if there is any) populates pretty quickly, even over EDGE, which is an area that Seth said the company focused quite a bit: ensuring the entire app was light on data, simple to use and ultimately fast. Tapping the buddy list icon of course gets you back to the list, and any chats you started automatically float to the top. This is where the lack of tabs can be both a blessing and a curse: while the buddy list is nice and large, making it far easier to to read and navigate than any previous iPhone chat apps, it still takes at least two taps - not including any potential scrolling - to get out of a chat, back to the list and into another chat; more taps if you need to scroll. It's a unique approach to solving this kind of a problem, but ultimately, I think meebo made the right choice.

All things considered, meebo's iPhone chat app is hands down my new favorite. I haven't been chatting much on my iPhone yet, but meebo's streamlined experience, fast load times and easy navigation make this a slam dunk that has finally sparked my interest in trying out mobile chat. I was even more surprised about how well they've done on this 1.0 app when Seth shared that this is meebo's first mobile app of any kind. While the company has done web-based chat for years now, they've never ventured onto any mobile device platforms. That said, I think they just about knocked this one out of the park. If you own an iPhone and need to chat, meebo.com is easily one of the best options available.

While Meebo is still working on optimizing their web-based chat service for the iPhone, a new player by the name of eBuddy is joining the ranks of FlickIM, JiveTalk and Trillian Astra. Already doing business like Meebo as a web-based, multi-network chat service, eBuddy has just announced an alpha version of their iPhone-optimized chat app that is heavy on the features, though certainly a departure from mimicking the increasingly standard iPhone-ish UI. With support for AIM, Yahoo! and MSN (which I thought was now called Windows Live Messenger?), as well as text styling and the all-too-handy tabbed chatting, eBuddy definitely offers a powerful iPhone chatting experience - if you're willing to wait for the web app to load, that is.

Users can simply visit ebuddy.com on their iPhone to access the optimized app. Alpha tester beware though: eBuddy took a surprisingly long time to load even over my AirPort Express Wi-Fi, which makes me worry about testing it over EDGE.

Still, it's nice to have options for those times when Apple drops the ball, and eBuddy looks like one of the most feature-packed chat alternatives for the iPhone yet.

Thanks Chris

While Nik Fletcher at our sister site Download Squad discovered that Meebo works decently on an iPhone, it isn't without some catches. Meebo, for those who have never experienced, is a leading web-based multi-network chat service; in other words - chatting in a web browser is their business, and they've been doing it for a long time. Even though Nik is right, and Meebo might fill in for the lack of any kind of chat in the iPhone, it isn't without some UI quirks that can make the experience less than pleasing. Of course, it is entirely plausible that the Meebo team are already hard at work on getting their product to play nicely with an iPhone, but until then, I figured some tips and tricks were in order for those who are just dying to chat across AIM, Yahoo!, MSN and even ICQ on their iPhones.

1. Save time logging in: You should probably make it easy on yourself and register a Meebo account with a real desktop browser. While you always have the option of manually signing into one or more services each time you visit Meebo, if you want to chat on more than one network, it's going to be a pain in the butt to keep zooming in and out while typing in your login credentials each time. From what I can tell, iSafari (Safari on the iPhone) doesn't properly save your login name and/or password, so it might simply be easier to create a Meebo account and attach all the network logins you want to it so you can simply log into all of them with one master Meebo account.
2. The buddy list works - mostly: I'm no web 2.0 designer, but from what I can tell, Meebo is a pretty complex web-based chat app. Since Meebo is providing some pretty powerful functionality, I'm not surprised that it doesn't work quite right in iSafari, and the quirky buddy list is probably the first thing you'll notice. If you try to tap on any contacts, the entire buddy list gets that dark translucent overlay as if you just tapped on and selected the entire thing. What's worse, you might not even see a new chat window open up, even in landscape mode. Fret not, however: for some reason, Meebo (at least on my iPhone) places new chat windows far, far to the left. If you pinch and zoom out a bit, maybe even scrolling a tad, you should see any and every new chat window you opened by tapping on the buddy list.
3. Handling windows: Once you get over that buddy list hump, the rest of Meebo works fairly well. Tapping in the text field area of a chat window will bring up the iPhone's keyboard, and I find that, given how much space the keyboard takes up, using the iPhone in typical portrait mode (vertically) here gives you a bit more space to see what you're typing and maybe the last word or line of what your buddy said. Simply pressing the Go button in the lower right of the keyboard will actually send your chat message. While windows don't seem to be drag-able, you can tap on their title bars to bring one or the other to the front, allowing you to tap in the text field and get typing. This, of course, is all going to require you to get real comfortable with zooming in and our frequently, because the iPhone will zoom in on the text field area when you want to chat, forcing you to zoom back out to see what your buddy is saying or any other chat windows you have open.

It isn't perfect, but it works. Chat junkies will likely rejoice since they won't have to burn through SMS, and Meebo offers a better experience and more chat networks than that AIM-only experimental app we found last month. Aside from waiting for Apple to get on the ball here, keep your eyes on Meebo, as I would not be surprised if they're working on optimizing their web app for the iPhone.

Apparently, a lot of our readers are Yahoo Messenger users. A good dozen of you or so sent us this tip that Yahoo Messenger 3.0b1 has been released. I've just taken it for a spin and my early impression is that Yahoo seems to have hired some great developers. This is a really nice application with a great Tiger/Leopard iChat-like interface, cross-platform webcam support, integration with other Yahoo services, chat conferencing, and file transfers. The website says that the ability to chat with MSN Messenger/Microsoft Live users will be coming soon as well. Oh, and it's a universal binary.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in.

TUAW reader varun submitted a good question for an Ask TUAW session on the topic of multi-network chat clients. varun has tried out the likes of Fire, Adium and Proteus, but hasn't come up with a compelling reason to use one over the other.

I thought this would be a nice opportunity to ask you readers to sound off on which multi-network IM client you prefer, and why. When commenting, be sure to mention how the client fits into your workflow, what you like about it and why. The more clients you can bring to the table above and beyond the ones already mentioned, the better.

So what say you, TUAW readers? What is your favorite multi-network IM client, and why?