Flamingo for Mac: A Modern Messaging App
flamingo.im
flamingo.im
> "Where can I change my status? You can't and don't need to. Flamingo automatically updates your status between Available, Idle, Away, and Offline by monitoring the idle time of your computer. And status messages? Come on, it's 2013."
...I do not like that one bit. Saying it's 2013 is very ignorant to how people use the "away" feature. I like manually setting if I'm away or busy, because I'm working and do not want to be disrupted. I think you guys should re-think your understanding of how people use Available/Away/Idle/Etc.
I'd much rather have notifications and invisibility settings separate, but at least invisibility is still possible.
I was thinking about looking at this application, but this is a letdown to me.
Instant messaging is becoming more and more like email in that it is moving from a synchronous to an asynchronous form of communication. When I IM someone and they don't answer instantly, I assume they are busy. Just like with email. Just like when they don't answer the phone. Just like with voice mail. This is even if their status has a green bubble next to it, because that really means nothing, especially when it is user selected.
N.B.: In every enterprise chat program I've used, setting your status as "away" or "busy" does nothing to stop others from contacting you. Microsoft's offerings (OCS/lync) has a "Do Not Disturb" which does this.
Perhaps, to me, the most annoying thing about this sort of "feature" is that it's a deliberate reduction in capabilities. Every client I use now is perfectly capable of automatically setting my status, and allowing me to set custom status states. Eliminating a feature like this from the users is akin to saying, "It's 2013, you shouldn't be saving your documents. We'll know when you're done because you'll have stopped editing it."
EDIT: Examples where custom setting away/present status is very useful to me, my phone and my laptop. My phone is connected to google talk all the time, most of the time it's marked as "away" (particularly during the work day or when I'm at events where the phone isn't appropriate). I mark my status as "available" when I'm actually able to chat, any automatic detection based on idleness would be wrong. It's similar with my laptop at home. It's on the entire time, and since I do my reading and writing at my kitchen table it's also usually within arms reach, playing some music. When I'm doing something that I want to discourage chats (but not prevent), "away" status is perfect. If I really want to prevent chat then I can go "invisible" or close it. Leaving it open versus closing it (in the case of "invisible") gives me the option of watching for other people that I might want to talk to.
Having manual status turned off by default, but available to enable in settings, shouldn't lose you a single customer.
Strange design choice, even stranger justification.
IRC has worked for years without away messages and the like as a feature. I've never once missed a status beyond knowing that my message was delivered.
The psychology of HN's shared response is probably worthy of a blog post.
That said, I would like it much more if it supported more services than just XMPP. Supporting the Adium service plugin API would actually be a really nice way of doing this (from a user's perspective), but if not, a new API would do well also.
When I first read the features, I assumed the Facebook/Hangouts and XMPP were essentially 3 different modules, which would probably make extending it to third party plugins fairly easy. But I realised that all of the services are XMPP at the moment, and therefore I suppose this would mean adding lots more abstraction to internal APIs and stuff.
I've heard about issues with sandboxing and plugins before, but as far as I can tell they are mostly for when plugins need access to the filesystem, as they have a different bundle ID and therefore don't get permissions from the main application? I might be completely wrong there though. As long as the plugins for Flamingo don't need filesystem access, or other privileged access, I would have thought it would be fine. RapidWeaver, for example, has a large plugin community, but is distributed on the App Store.
And I'd also like group chats to be supported. But it is very pretty!
I also agree with others that $10 is a steep price without any form of a trial.
But I feel like I've been cheated out of 10$ because it says its compatible with Messages, but after I bought it I find out I can't add my Apple account and talk with all my friends who have ios devices, so exactly how he can claim its compatible with Messages is beyond me.
I spent hours chatting on those things, but nowadays seem to get by just fine without.
I'm guessing that Facebook Messaging meets the need for most people, but putting IM on the web as a feature within a walled garden is a step backwards for something that was, and still could be, as ubiquitous as email.
I think there's still a gap for someone to innovate in real time messaging. It hasn't really moved on in the last decade as a concept, but I have yet to come across any other platform that replicates the immediacy and connectedness that you used to feel on those long ICQ and MSN chats.
Search is very slow and causes ~500ms input lag.
Needs a lot of polish still.
Why not change that up a bit to be customizable messaging, or the most elegantly powerful messaging on your Mac, or something more than just "modern" messaging?
Looks neat, regardless.
Not that I'm likely to switch from Adium to be honest; most of my friends are still on AIM.
IMO, the lack of true global history is the biggest limitation of a native app for using many IM services.
The price seems alright, if it works like intended though.
Is there a buddy list or menu bar applet, or do you have to have the full app window open to see who is online? Also, I didn't see it mentioned in the list of supported services, but does this work with Apple iMessages?
Also, does all software require a free trial or something? I never got that memo.
Obviously no, but it's hard to convince people to move from software that works (such as Adium) to your software if you can't at least provide a great overview of how it works via video demonstration or better yet allowing the user to try it out.
I think that you would agree that there are a number of features not present that many are used to, according to comments in this thread. Fewer sales due to a trial is far better than a one and two star reviews, which could conceivably sink a product before it could get off the ground.
(No affiliation, just a happy user)
I'm one of those people who do. For $10, if this thing included IRC, I would switch over in a heart beat. If it also included SKYPE? Oh man, the things I would do to the developer who made it...that would be heaven.
Less apps open usually means less memory consumption, and overall less clutter on my desktop.