Redmond, Washington — It took Microsoft a long time to produce an IM app for the iPhone. Surprising as it may seem, The Redmond company’s latest milestone is that it has wrapped up “Windows Live Messenger” for the iPhone and iPod Touch and is serving the application to customers from iTunes App Store on Monday.
Windows Live Messenger for the iPhone and iPod touch was released Monday, with little publicity from Microsoft. As a matter of fact, the software giant has been extremely soundless about the launch. The app is designed to play nice with the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, requiring iOS 3.0 or later.
Although the primary layout of the app is to stay on top of your Windows Live network and chat with your buddies, the company has added a few additional features sure to please any Live user. Like the PC version of Windows Live Messenger, the latest IM app for iPhone has numbers of features including social networking, email extras etc. The elegant, well-designed app offers four buttons for its four modes: Social updates, buddy list, chats, and photos.
Windows Live Messenger for iPhone has many aesthetic features we would expect to see in an IM app, plus other social networking and e-mail extras. In the chewy center of the app there is your buddy list, which lets user to add friends; allow them to go for chatting and emailing with them; and also enables profile-perusing too. One screen is dedicated to Windows Live, for example, offering space to update your status, follow friends in your network, and change your profile picture. A small button also take you into your e-mail in-box.
The app’s chat screen enables user to start conversations and switch among them. Microsoft has also enabled push notifications, which will notifies the user to new IMs when the app is closed. As long as your buddy has connected their Live account to other social networking sites, you will be able to see what they are sharing on sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, among others on the social stream screen which greets users as they load the application.
There is also a Hotmail icon with an inbox size indicator; you click on this to load the mobile browser version of Hotmail, (you can view it in the screenshot above, its the glowing orange icon in the upper right hand corner), although there is no link provided from the bottom menu.
The “Friends” tab shows your Messenger contact groups, beginning with Favorites. As opposed to Meebo, Facebook contacts is not displayed in your buddy list for chatting. You do not get to set your status, like busy, available or invisible from here — rather you activate this from holding a finger down on your own icon on the Social page. From the slide-out menu, you can also change your buddy image and even sign out from other locations, like your home PC.
The “Photos” mode just displays albums you have on Windows Live SkyDrive and lets you upload more from your iPhone. With last screen, users have option of uploading new photos; can take new ones; and can also view their windows Live Gallery with it. Moreover, the screen also lets users to tag photographs, and can simultaneously send them along via email.
Messenger is the fourth application to be released by Microsoft. On the whole, it is a simple yet fairly complete and good-looking iPhone IM app. By installing Windows Live Messenger on their Apple devices, owners of an iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad can easily become part of the world’s largest instant messaging network. Users of the desktop version of Messenger will feel at home, and unless they want an app that will handle multiple services like Facebook IM and AIM, it is an excellent choice.
The IM client is, of course, available for download free of charge, just as the desktop variant. You can download Windows Live Messenger for iPhone from iTunes starting today, or read more about it from the horse’s mouth on the Windows Live team blog.