Yahoo Messenger for Vista discontinued

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One of the first applications designed to run only on Windows Vista has been discontinued.

Yahoo said on Friday that it has stopped development of Yahoo Messenger for Vista, a Vista-specific version of its instant-messaging program.

The custom implementation of Yahoo Messenger was one of the earliest, most mainstream and highest-profile programs to only run on Windows Vista.

"Yahoo has made the strategic decision to discontinue external releases of the stand-alone Yahoo Messenger for Vista client and focus on delivering one Windows experience that is optimised for Windows users today," Yahoo's Terrell Karlsten said in a statement to ZDNet.co.uk sister site CNET News.com.

"This decision will help Yahoo increase efficiencies and deliver one consistent, full-featured solution for Windows users, whether they are using XP or Vista," said Karlsten.

Yahoo released a public preview version in December and issued a beta version in March. The internet company won't stop users who have already downloaded the program from continuing to use it, but it won't be offering any further updates.

"Moving forward, we encourage Vista users to download our full-featured Yahoo Messenger 9.0 client, which is compatible with XP and Vista," Karlsten said.

Yahoo also said it will continue to experiment with Windows Presentation Foundation, the graphics layer that powers Windows Vista.

Talkback

Buying a box of Windows Vista PC users didn't buy just an operating system for their "bare" PC. They bought promises of (finally!) better looking and more user-friendly system. The stories given by software developers led by Microsoft showed us the nice-looking, cool, 3D, animated etc. applications and Microsoft presented a wide range of appliances of the WPF.

After almost two years of having Vista on the market, the only application that is really better-looking than on XP is... the Vista itself. As more and more companies are ignoring the Windows possibilities (and Windows is still and will still be the most popular operating system on Earth for a long time), the question is: why?
I am not sure if designing and creating WPF-based apps is too difficult for developers. Is it perhaps political decision? Hating the Redmond's giant became a good style even for IT branch. The mood around Microsoft is discouraging, no matter what the company does. Trying to discourage users to not using Windows Vista is, however, not the way to get popularity among them.

To be honest: none of my friends (including myself) are using original Yahoo Messenger. We all do communicate by Yahoo's protocol, but we all use different application for that. The promise of creating a nice-looking, "cool" app for IM was encouraging. The screenshots made a great advert of the app: yes, we wanted the messegner. Now, the promise was broken and users were left with nothing (ok, with same "old-looking" app the XP users can have installed). There is nothing new, nothing fresh.
Shame on Yahoo.

LadyRoot 28 October, 2008 09:27
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