I appreciate that they are actually working on it - it hasn't been abandoned like we thought it was around the 2.x timeframe - and they are adding features, like WLM interop, improvements to block the ever-present spammers, history archive, and so forth. But this beta cycle's been going on for 16 months (first beta: June 26, 2006).

But there haven't really been *that* many new features. I keep running up against feature limitations all the time, like voice calls, and I guess there must be some kind of image sharing (as opposed to file transfer) feature in the Windows version? Because I've certainly had people asking me why I don't accept their <whatever> that they're trying to initiate.

Don't get me wrong - it's appreciated, and Microsoft haven't added any actual, real features to their Messenger for Mac for, well, it's gonna be counted in years, not months, and they still can't/won't fix a SOCKS proxy bug that's been in there for 3 years that prevents all 5000 computers in my corporate network from connecting (happily, Windows users can't connect either due to another bug). But how long is this beta cycle supposed to take? Yeah, they could just label them 3.0.1, 3.0.1.2, 3.0.1.4, 3.0.2, 3.0.2.1 as if they were full versions. But when you run them, you realize that they are indeed betas. There have been, and still are, features that are unimplemented or incomplete (history archiving was a non-functional mockup in earlier builds).

Like I said, it's just frustrating. Particularly when the Windows one has progressed from 8.0b1 to 8.1.0.421, spanning 15 versions. They will no doubt include security fixes, but they cover 2 significant milestones: 8.0 and 8.1.

So, when do we get our milestone?