there was some confusion about MSN shutting down its support for Mac. what they actually shut down was support for the client side software for MSN, which is not MSN messenger, though one might wonder, hence confusion.
here is some clarity:
msn messenger is a piece of crap.
<rant mode=”on” style=”techbot: neonerd_rage;”>
about .. randomly, every so often (one to five times per hour), msn decides to disconnect me. and sometimes not deliver messages as illustrated above. i have 150 people on my contact list and msn says that i can’t add anymore because my list is full. i have deleted many contacts but this is it, 150 is the smallest it can be. really, 200 is, okay!? so this means if you are not already on my MSN list, you’re not going to be in the forseeable future unless i go on some random deletia rampage.
the reason i use msn messenger is because most of my friends and contacts are on it — some are for work. the problem is, everyone is on msn. that’s both the problem and the selling point of the damn thing. it is broken. BROKEN! most of the time file transfers do not work in msn, yet they work in iChat (ariz0na at mac.com if you want to add me – on the AIM network; i am finding it much more reliable) just swimmingly. grrr. icq is like a ghost town and has its own set of problems.
the other problem i have with MSN messenger is that MOST people on the windows side of things are using the Beta version of 7 (i hear), and it, by default, treats the newest version of Mac MSN Messenger as an insecure version and doesn’t let the windows user engage in file transfers with the mac user BY DEFAULT. this can be changed but most windows users haven’t got a clue about how to go about doing it and it’s not as if i am set up on a mac to do tech support for a beta windows piece of sssssssss … oftware.
at other times, the application becomes incredibly cumbersome and wont speed up unless i quit and restart the damn thing.
</rant>
have a look at gurton’s photos from the weekend! i am actually in some of them!
have you tried fire or adiumx? I think they both handle MSN on OS X.
http://fire.sourceforge.net/
http://adium.sourceforge.net/
me no usie msn. tried once, but was bombarded by my pre-teen students saying HI… HOW ARE YOU? WHAT ARE YOU UP TO? so… yeah. no usie.
the thing is, which i didn’t mention, is that msn DID deliver the message.
msn lies.
Davin: Another vote for Fire. It’s a handy little IMing app that supports Yahoo, MSN, AIM & other protocols. And I’m pretty sure it has a high user list ceiling too; if any.
Pat, dzl: I used to use Fire, but got tired of MSN and AIM always upgrading their file transfer protocols, and switched back to the official clients. How does MSN/AIM file transfer work in Fire these days?
Oops, forgot a part: “but got tired of MSN and AIM always upgrading their file transfer protocols” –> and breaking Fire.
oh yeah, I’m not a resident of mac land, so I can’t say how Fire is doing in the protocol chase. But it seems like a lot of people are using Fire. And when any OSS project becomes popular with real users you’ll see more active code development and faster fixes. People want to work on stuff that people use, it stokes their ego.