Macworld – watch for us!
January 15, 2008 on 10:45 am | In Events, Mac version | 37 Comments
In case you’re headed to Macworld this week in San Francisco, keep an eye out for a team of Yahoo! Messenger for Mac engineers. They’ve been working hard so we thought we’d give them a chance to catch up on all things Mac. They are clad in Yahoo! Messenger for Mac t-shirts so feel free to stop one of them and catch up on the most recent features of our Mac application.
And as Mr. Jobs says, “One more thing…” – we are working hard to add voice capabilities to our next release. Stay tuned for more updates.
Sarah Bacon
Product Manager
Give us archiving! Format-compatible with the Windows Messenger! And make photo-sharing transparent across platforms!
Comment by Joaquín — January 15, 2008 #
I have a relatively new iMac running Leopard with the updates installed that were just released today after Macworld (Jan 15). Since the update, my iSight camera (built in) doesn’t work with Yahoo Messenger. I just get a blank/black screen and a red X over the camera in the Yahoo Messenger window.
I have reinstalled the Beta 2 software and rebooted my Mac as well. It still doesn’t work. I opened Photobooth and my cam does work in that application. Also, when I try to start my cam with Yahoo Messenger, the little green light next to the cam comes on, but again, a blank/black screen. It seems to me that it is an interface issue between Yahoo Messenger and the cam.
Could this have been caused by the new Leopard updates? Perhaps Messenger needs an update as well?
Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.
Derek
Comment by Derek Armstrong — January 15, 2008 #
Too bad his royal Steveness didn’t have any “one more thing” announcement. Oh well.
Keep up the good work guys! Looking forward to the final release version!
Comment by Ryan Weaver — January 15, 2008 #
That’s what you said last year. “Voice coming soon..” aha . . sure..
One more thing.. the latest verision of Y! Messenger for Mac lags (interface completely blocked) after Iogin for a few seconds then it’s okay. Why is that?
I’m using Leopard 10.5.1
Comment by Lucky — January 16, 2008 #
C’mon folks you are getting better at this but still long way to go.
I thank You for your effort and Mac support.
Comment by Enrique Garcia — January 16, 2008 #
Thanks for the update and the hard work you guys are doing for the Mac side. I appreciate it and I’m looking forward to seeing what you guys will roll out.
Thanks again!
Comment by Shannon — January 16, 2008 #
[...] Messenger for Mac, is getting voice feature on it soon !! Well, isn’t it good enough to avoid your mobile bills and just pay the bill for [...]
Pingback by Is iPhone the next big thing for Yahoo! and Google ? | Things To Live About, dinsan — January 17, 2008 #
The interface lags because the entire interface is a webkit view using css and javascript to render the UI, in other words, it’s not a native nib to the OS but rather a series of mini webpages that use way way more cpu than any instant messenger app should use. But then again, PC yahoo is the same thing (only it uses IE and not webkit) so at least one thing is right on par with the PC version right? heh. Although at least PC version only renders the text field in a browser frame, not chatters list or buddy icons, which makes it not as slow as mac version since mac version, especially in chat, gets real slow since the ENTIRE frame is a laggy CSS layout to include buddy icons and the chatters list which really makes it crawl. I have a 2ghz mac and after I’ve been in chat for a good hour I see beach-balls or lagged typing, truly poor performance application.
The user having cam problem, make sure the right video source is selected, ichat and photobooth are smart enough to figure out where the camera is and choose right driver. Yahoo may choose wrong one from time to time, especially of camtwist or some other 3rd party software is in play. Make sure your default camera is set to isight (or whatever it should be) in preferences. If anything third party like camtwist is installed try removing and trying again. When it comes to cam 3.0b2 is fairly reliable as long as your connection is stable…of course you get on dial up, or a high latency bandwidth connection like satellite and yahoo messenger becomes highly unstable and prone to crashes from webcam use. The app strongly disagrees with packet delays in webcam transfers.
Comment by MysticalOS — January 17, 2008 #
First thing, be sure you’ve got the latest build of Beta 2 off the site, it has been updated several times with various fixes, including performance tweaks.
Some of the interface is embedded webkit, some of it is Cocoa. It’s a hybrid, and we have good reasons for that. We do know that DHTML can be a performance issue, and we’re sensitive to that, but obviously your experience will vary greatly depending on your machine specs, your OS, your version of webkit, etc.
For the webcam issues we believe the latest release of Beta 2 has solved the issues with network sensitivity. If you have the latest build and are still seeing crashes we are certainly interested in hearing about that!
Thanks,
Chris Saari
Comment by Chris Saari — January 18, 2008 #
Since upgrading to the latest release, now when my girlfriend goes to view my webcam she is saying that after like 2 minutes her window goes black. My side still says she is viewing but all she gets is a black screen. What’s up with that?
Comment by Gary Fletcher — January 18, 2008 #
Which client version is she using and which OS version?
Thanks,
Chris Saari
Comment by Chris Saari — January 18, 2008 #
I did an experiment with a chat room, I let a chat room run on Mac Messenger Beta 2 public build until the backlog filled up to the limit and started purging old messages. Typing was a little sluggish but still usable, memory consumption was stable, CPU would spike up to 60% for Messenger and back to zero, bouncing around in there as messages come in and webkit lays out again. This is on a 1.3GHz G4 PowerBook running fully up to date 10.4
If people out there are running chat on a slower machine we could reduce the amount of messages displayed in a chat window and adjust the performance easily that way if need be.
Thanks,
Chris Saari
Comment by Chris Saari — January 18, 2008 #
I was wondering if you could look into some things for the new build for the Mac version of Y! Messenger.
1. Chat room button on the bottom of the list
2. An option to send Mass IM’s.
I doubt you’ll listen but it would be really helpful for the people who are useto the Windows version who converted over to mack because of Vista.
Comment by Erased — January 18, 2008 #
Erased, you’re better of with Vista than mack and no mass IM’s …
I mean . .what can one do without all those IM’s appearing on your screen containing the SAME message, but from different friends? Don’t you love them? ahh..
Comment by Lucky — January 20, 2008 #
Just wanted to congratulate you guys (Y! developers) for making me feel like a second class citizen for using a mac. Your skills as programmers really suck (i mean that). 334 MB of RAM used by Y! Messenger? I have whole virtual machines running Windows using less RAM than your idiotic attempt at an OSX port.
Comment by Sorin — January 22, 2008 #
Could we have that t-shirt too? It would be great. Keep going on improving Y!M for Mac, please. We are waiting the newer version. Therefore, we can be as equal as PC user, not a second citizen anymore.
Comment by munggur — January 22, 2008 #
I agree on that one with Sorin..
Try open-sourcing it
or call it quits and help Adium get all the features that Y! Messenger for Mac has.
Comment by Lucky — January 23, 2008 #
Sorin,
You’ll be happy to know the next build is using ~ 1/2 the RAM, which for me used to be about 70MB and is far less than that. I think you’re looking at the VM size, not actual wired memory in use which isn’t really something to worry about.
Thanks,
Chris Saari
Comment by Chris Saari — January 25, 2008 #
It’s good to know, Chris
Comment by Lucky — January 25, 2008 #
I have the latest download on my Macbook, and my cam stops broadcasting anywhere from 2-7 minutes. It still shows as broadcasting on my end, but not on theirs.
HELP!
Comment by lady.seattle — January 26, 2008 #
guys, you really need to stop leaving the mac users in the dark. There are a lot more Mac users now than ever. Its very frustrating not to have the same features as our PC using friends. Id love to be able to leave my windows PC off all the time, but when i want to use Photosharing, im forced to use windows.
Lets get with the times. If youre going to support both platforms, give us all the same features. Not a dumbed down verson.
Comment by jeremy — January 27, 2008 #
We want Voice ASAP. I also would love to leave Windows behind but cant. The Mac numbers are growing fast. Time to but Mac Yahoo IM in overdrive and get us on equal
grounds as PCs.
Comment by keith — January 28, 2008 #
I’ve just downloaded build 78326 and installed on my MacBook. But I’m not able to connect to Y!m, no matter whether I choose Default or Behind Firewall, and throws “The application is not able to connect to the messenger servers. The servers may be busy. Please try again.”. I’m on Mac OS X 10.5.1 btw…
Comment by mojims — January 28, 2008 #
It took some doing, but my yahoo cam is finally working. Reinstalling the newest version (for the third time) did something to disable my internet, but once I finished doing a network repair, it works.
I am frustrated that YIM seems to have so many issues with Macs. I’m on a couple of discussion boards and there are so many complaints about crashing internet, cams now working, etc.
I’m glad mine is working now though, even if I was pulling my hair out for a while there.
Comment by lady.seattle — January 29, 2008 #
I’d also LOVE to leave my Windows PC behind and only use my MAC, however I use the Voice function extensively which is not supported on the Mac.
I also run the latest build of Yahoo Messenger and still have friends telling me my camera has gone black, but it still shows them viewing on my end.
I am running a fresh copy of Leopard.
Comment by Alex — January 29, 2008 #
Hi Team,
First of all I must say nice looking interface. That’s pretty much all I have to say that is good.
Now, yes we keep hearing about Y!M with Voice. We’ve been hearing the same thing for over 2 years. I agree with one of the previous posters give us the same features as our Windows counter parts. Otherwise you’re doing the same to us that Microsoft is doing MSN/WLM users on Mac and Windows. Giving all the “goodies” to the PC users and leaving the Mac users out in the cold.
One thing I would like to see added is the functionality to change the interface *skins* like what is available on the PC version for Windows.
Comment by Cal — January 31, 2008 #
Where can I go to get tutorials on Messenger and Mess for the Web?
I don’t want to sit through some hour-long tour pointing out all the features (that I’ll never use) & benefits (that are not beeneficial to me)- I want to know where to get specific questions answered. I’m new to Mess for the Web but have used Messnger for almost a year before changing over due to sign-in problems and losing my group data.
I never received useful instruction for either. My specific questions:
1.) How do I broadcast to several people or a group?
2.) Can groups be moved from Messenger to MftW and vice-versa? How?
3.) How do I get an old Messenger account out of my start-up sequence and get MftW to open at startup?
4.) Why in the world didn’t installing MftW do this (or at least ask if I wanted to?)
Very disappointed in the non-intuitive clunkiness of both products. I use them ONLY because I have to keep in contact with others who do. Maybe, just maybe, it’s the lack of appropriate training. Help me like them if you can.
Comment by Alex — February 5, 2008 #
Hi Alex,
Here are some resources for learning more about:
Yahoo! Messenger for Mac
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/messenger/mac/mac3/index.html
Yahoo! Messenger for the Web
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/messenger/web/web1/
There is also a very short overview video on Yahoo! Messenger for the Web on this page:
http://messenger.yahoo.com/webmessenger.php
Any contacts (including Windows Live friends) and groups you set up in the full version of Yahoo! Messenger will appear in Yahoo! Messenger for the Web (along with an additional group showing friends that you can send SMS messages to).
Yahoo! Messenger for the Web is just a webpage, so if you want it to run at Startup, you’ll need to put a shortcut to the Yahoo! Messenger for the Web site in your startup folder in Windows.
Sarah Bacon
Comment by Administrator — February 5, 2008 #
I’ve just downloaded build 78326 and installed on my Mac. But I’m not able to connect to Y!m, there is always said “The application is not able to connect to the messenger servers. The servers may be busy. Please try again.”.
Comment by gelewo — February 11, 2008 #
to be honest I have given up on yahoo voice long time ago. I setup my own asterisk server now and I am more than happy to provide my entire family with voice support. Some PCs, macs and even Unix!
Enjoy the wait
Comment by bazzoola — February 13, 2008 #
Does anyone else have issues with YIM crashing when they try to get to the Messenger Archive? Do you also have problems with cams crashing that require a full reboot before it works? (This is on the newest version of YIM for macs.)
Comment by lady.seattle — February 14, 2008 #
You know I was just reading the blogs, when I see that yahoo is going to release voice in the next beta for vista and here us MAC users are still waiting for voice for years. That just shows you that yahoo is geared for Microsoft and not the MAC users. Maybe Yahoo should sell to microsoft since everything is done for Windows. I have been waiting like everyone else for them to do voice for Mac, now they are releasing for Vista, well all I can say is so long yahoo, you are very dissapionting. I will take my business to someone else. Now I think you should sell to Microsoft, since you work for windows only you should be microsoft now. SO LONG!!!!!!!
Comment by Bill — March 7, 2008 #
Skype sent me a really insulting reply to an inquiry regarding the cost of renewing my account, so I switched to Yahoo Voice for incoming and outgoing phone calls. (We have a cell phone but it is pre-paid and just for emergencies and when we are out).
I have a PC but my wife has a Mac, and we have been using her computer for the phone… imagine my surprise after signing up when I discovered we can’t actually use the service I just paid for on her machine!!! Now I can’t log into YM with my Yahoo screen name on my PC nor take it with me because we have to use MY computer for our phone…
While this is annoying it’s not really a huge deal in the short term, but I really really hope you guys are serious about getting voice support for the Mac rsn, even if it is just a Beta or Preview… that would be terrific!
It would also be great if there was a feature for Yahoo Voice where you could share minutes between multiple accounts, but I suppose that is a request for a different department
Comment by Michael — March 7, 2008 #
The lack off audio has been a major irritation to me. Especially since the guy at the mac store insisted I could do voice chats on yahoo. Needles to say I was going to put the mac back in the box and return it as I struggled to find another audio program to no avil. A friend of mine told me about the free skpe. We have been using that incombination with the yahoo mesemger. It works for us nut is FREE!
Comment by Copper — March 16, 2008 #
I have just downloaded another new version of YIM for Macs that includes voice. YAY! I also notice that the archive doesn’t crash the program when I try to use it. Also an exciting development. I have noticed though that cams are freezing quite frequently on it now, and they weren’t with the last version. My cam seems to die more on Mac users than others. Others cams only seem to die when they are on a Mac. Is anyone else finding this to be true?
Comment by ladyseattle — April 1, 2008 #
[...] Messenger for Mac, is getting voice feature on it soon !! Well, isn’t it good enough to avoid your mobile bills and just pay the bill for [...]
Pingback by Is iPhone the next big thing on Yahoo! and Google ? | The Offline Blog — May 1, 2008 #
When I tried to log on to ours dekstop, a message saying “there are not sufficient resources to load” my account with the default something-or-other popped up. The message had a timer that was going to close the box, and then when it closed it would not log me on. I could not turn it on normally so I cut the power. When I turned it back on I logged on fine?
I read here PC Repair but couldnt make sense?
Comment by ClearlyPro — July 7, 2009 #