MSN Messenger once again discriminating against .Mac users
Well, it looks like Microsoft is once again discriminating against .Mac users who want to use MSN Messenger. You may recall that back in September people with “@mac.com” e-mail addresses who tried to login in to Messenger were forced to change their e-mail to something else like, oh I don’t know “hotmail” in order to receive messages. Well, faithful Macenstein reader Brethil tells us that for the past 10 days, history is repeating itself.
Apparently Microsoft has made some changes to the way that passports work with external domains, and this is causing problems for non-hotmail users, and .Mac users in particular. What is happening is .Mac users can log in to Messenger and use the Messenger service as usual, however, it only works if they initiate the conversations. If a friend of theirs tries to initiate a chat, they will get an error message. So, if you use Messenger and have noticed you aren’t quite as popular as you used to be the last week or so, there’s your answer.
There is now a healthy support thread detailing this problem on Apple’s support site. Those who were lucky enough to get any sort of reply from Microsoft have so far received stock form e-mails with such helpful trouble-shooting suggestions as:
PROBABLE CAUSE
• The computer is not connected to the Internet.
• Spyware on the computer may be preventing the messages from being delivered.
I guess they assume everyone was using Windows.
🙂
Rofl. The computer you are submitting your error report from is not connected to the internet… but thanks for the email? How does that make any sense?
Microsoft has always taken respose through locking out less secure products, like Firefox, Opera and Linux, BSD and Mac OS X
if you can’t tell, I was sarcastic, by the way, MSN (the site) was locking out Firefox and Opera because their “lack of standard support” a couple of years ago…
Why would you even bother with MSN Messenger? Fool me once and all. It’s not like there aren’t other options (until Microsoft buys them all).
I just don’t get it… I can’t even interpret how stupid Microsoft really is. Every single thing they do always causes some sort of problem. Every single program they make is complete crap. MSN Messenger is the ONLY Microsoft-related thing I use, and I only use it because 99% of my friends use MSN as their primary instant messaging program, and also because it is the “popular” one here in Canada. No Microsoft, I’m not going to switch to shitty Hotmail to use as my e-mail because honestly, it works like crap and is prone to tons of spam, and I’ve also CHOSE to spend money on .Mac just to have a great and reliable IMAP e-mail service ending in @mac.com. What I don’t understand is, Microsoft fully ALLOWS any e-mail to be used with MSN as long as you register it first, which is fine. I have been doing that for YEARS on a couple of old e-mail accounts ending in @rogers.com. So why are ONLY @mac.com e-mail addresses not functioning properly on MSN Messenger? I really wonder why… is Microsoft THAT discriminative? Doesn’t seem very professional for a large corporation. What are they trying to prove to us Mac users? At this point, I don’t care if it gets solved or not. I will NOT change my e-mail address to useless Hotmail or Live just to use already-crappy-enough MSN Messenger, not to mention how purposely watered-down the Mac version of MSN Messenger is. Was that “accidental” too? I think not. I don’t think not adding video and audio support to the Mac version is accidental. Seems like they want to force users to switch to Windows. Wow… just wow…