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WhatsApp Launches Desktop App for Mac OS X

69Mustang said:
Late for whom? WhatsApp seems to have a massive user base.
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Online services have a very small window of opportunity and if you don't listen to your consumer - today, things can tern pretty fast.

Remember BBM? if not, allow me sketch their story. Not yet 5 years ago, hundreds of millions addicted bbm'ers couldn't imagine their world without bbm. Goverments all over the world where planning to build BBM houses of rehab. But the problem solved itself. Blackberry didn't listen to their consumer base, and crashed, head first, into the septic tank.

Whatsapp was the best alternative and, going going going, and bam, sold for 20 billion to the guy with the white shirt at the back.

Today Telegram is growing very fast in Asia. There is a huge adoption through company endorsement, making it the platform of choice also for domestic usage. Cross platform, multi-client, cloud syncing, easy API, all stuff that Whatsapp doesn't offer.

As said, things can go quick. As a Facebook shareholder I wouldn't be too amused to find out that 10% of the market cap has been spent without a clear future.
 
Piece of crap wrapper app. Need to have the phone when using it. Unlike telegram. God bless telegram app.
 
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aleni said:
Piece of crap wrapper app. Need to have the phone when using it. Unlike telegram. God bless telegram app.
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With my iPhone sleeping it could not synchronise. Had to wake up my phone first. What's the use ? Also noticed there is no calling option on the MAC app. Deleted the app.
 
I already use ChitChat for a while (like 6 months or so)
https://github.com/stonesam92/ChitChat/releases/tag/v1.5

It's a 1,8MB whatsapp-web wrapper which works perfectly fine. (it's virtually the same as the now released 55 MB official whatsapp-web wrapper)

Edit: ChitChat is even better, because closing the window with the red x (or CMD-W) doesn't quit the app. (that's how it should work, only CMD-Q should quit an app)
The official whatsapp client quits with the red x, and doesn't even respond to CMD-W.
(I HATE APPS THAT DON'T CLOSE THIER WINDOWS/TABS WITH CMD-W!!!)
 
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Another strong advocate here of Telegram.

As soon as WhatsApp was bought out by Facebook I deleted my account and moved across to Telegram after my friends recommended it to me.

It was and still is a delight to use, the way it uses a single account and syncs across all of my many ecosystems/devices still pleases me now. I love the groups, the integrated searches and that it has nothing to do with Zuckerberg and his data mining cronies.

Considering the amount of hatred on this forum towards Google and it's suspected approach to users data, it is astonishing to me that Facebook seems to go rather unscathed.
 
Some of us are unable to install 10.9. I tried the web version on OS X 10.6.8 and that worked fine with iOS 8.4.1
If I need to run the actual desktop app I can run it thru VBox 10.11 on Snow Leopard.
 
I've got a lot of friends who have been waiting for this for a while. I don't personally use it, I just use Google Hangouts and iMessage and it seems to work fine.
 
Kajje said:
Online services have a very small window of opportunity and if you don't listen to your consumer - today, things can tern pretty fast.

Remember BBM? if not, allow me sketch their story. Not yet 5 years ago, hundreds of millions addicted bbm'ers couldn't imagine their world without bbm. Goverments all over the world where planning to build BBM houses of rehab. But the problem solved itself. Blackberry didn't listen to their consumer base, and crashed, head first, into the septic tank.

Whatsapp was the best alternative and, going going going, and bam, sold for 20 billion to the guy with the white shirt at the back.

Today Telegram is growing very fast in Asia. There is a huge adoption through company endorsement, making it the platform of choice also for domestic usage. Cross platform, multi-client, cloud syncing, easy API, all stuff that Whatsapp doesn't offer.

As said, things can go quick. As a Facebook shareholder I wouldn't be too amused to find out that 10% of the market cap has been spent without a clear future.
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As informative as your quote is, it doesn't counter anything I asked. Nor is it related to my question. Adding additional services for your users is not an indication of being late. Telegram is growing (100 million monthly users at last count). WhatsApp has 10x that traffic and is still growing as well. The growth of either of those still has nothing to do with being late. You're giving me information on why Telegram is better. That's not what I asked.
 
usamaah said:
I agree, I love Telegram. Arguably though if all parties have updated their Whatsapp app, and you have encrypted your phone, Whatsapp is more secure than Telegram.
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Telegram has had encryption since day 1. Whatsapp is playing catchup
 
Col4bin said:
What's WhatsApp and why do we need another online chat app? Must be cool if your 13 year old.
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It's not an online chat app, it does exactly what iMessage trying to do. Even my mum uses it, it simply replaced texting.
 
Kajje said:
As said, things can go quick. As a Facebook shareholder I wouldn't be too amused to find out that 10% of the market cap has been spent without a clear future.
Click to expand...

I reckon it was all about self preservation, it was making Facebook look stale and slow and before they bought it out I was seeing lots of articles saying that it was going to do to Facebook, what Facebook did to MySpace.

Whatsapp had a user base that was exploding and for their own wellbeing, Facebook needed to be on top of it. It is now reported to be the largest single messaging service, Facebook shareholders would likely be demanding action and a response, if they hadn't already bought it.

The only other business case I can see for it is by making use of the user data it contains. Given the lower barriers to market entry and WhatsApps rather leisurely approach to development (as proven by this article), I can't see that they are going to turn it into a must have, business subscribing app that would start return enough money to even begin to justify the initial outlay.
 
Two things:
  • This likely isn't as "native" as MacRumors suggests. It's just a wrapper around a web view? The Viber team is just as guilty by using Java for their Mac app so that they can cut development time and costs in half. Problem is that they ignore some standard Mac conventions along the away. It's frustrating.
  • WhatsApp on iOS 7.x doesn't support the Web version, and therefore doesn't support this new desktop app. There's no way to scan the QR code.
 
They did a terrible job of communicating to users how to scan the QR code. Nowhere in the process does it explain how, and it's not obvious in the app.
 
So the app is a 50mb download.. In OS X it's so much more convenient to use the browser for whatsapp. If the standalone app didn't require the phone, then that would be cool. Deleted it.
 
usamaah said:
We can't win. If we text you, your messages are green suggesting you aren't using iMessage which would be upsetting to some iPhone/iOS users. iMessage isn't cross platform so we can't use that. So let's use another rich texting client that uses the internet instead of SMS (like iMessage) and it's a burden.

Apple doesn't seem to have any plans to bring iMessage to other platforms, so I think it's in everyone (who isn't an iMessage user) interest to support platforms that work across different OSes (both mobile and desktop).
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Apple should bring iMessage to Android. And add it to iCloud.com. Apple's crazy for not doing that sooner.
 
69Mustang said:
Late for whom? WhatsApp seems to have a massive user base. Seems they would be fairly happy to have the desktop app. I don't use any of the messaging apps so it really has no bearing on my life, but it's always interesting to me when we poo poo new offerings from companies we don't use.
http://www.statista.com/statistics/260819/number-of-monthly-active-whatsapp-users/

Somebody's, a lot of somebody's, is using the heck out of WhatsApp.
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too late for me and my friends. i was using whatsapp, but got tired of typing on phone only. so i switched me and my friends over to telegram.

could care less about what others do or how big whatsapp is.
 
8281 said:
Apple should bring iMessage to Android. And add it to iCloud.com. Apple's crazy for not doing that sooner.
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I think the combination of txt message and Internet-based is truly powerful. Wherever I am I can receive a txt. Seamlessly upgradable to multimedia content and free on wifi.

Greed made the operators stifle progress. *******s then, *******s now. Maybe that's why I hate the sluggishness of the market leaders.

Progress; change; hurts. It's hard to push thru they pain and show people what's on the other side.

Try telling people a tesla is superior; or that metal-keys are useless and crappy. You'll face heavy resistance. Give 'm a tesla, or keyless entry, and you've made new evangelists.

Edit: sigh. The hole I use for the most mundane and universal act of waste disposal is not to be mentioned. Curse some fantasy.
 
Kajje said:
You're not the OP of this thread and I wasn't attempting to answering anything. Cute you assumed I were though.
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You didn't reply to the OP of this thread though. You replied to my quote. Why would I assume otherwise.
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farewelwilliams said:
too late for me and my friends. i was using whatsapp, but got tired of typing on phone only. so i switched me and my friends over to telegram.

could care less about what others do or how big whatsapp is.
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How much less? :D:p
 
Col4bin said:
Oh, okay....? So what's the main point of differentiation and why should I use it over iMessage?
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You should do what you like. But whatsapp runs on every smartphone out there, iMessage just on ~15%.

I hate it, but it's true.
 
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