Microsoft on Tuesday made a significant announcement that may assist iPhone customers who additionally use a Home windows PC as their principal pc. The most recent beta of the corporate’s Cellphone Hyperlink app on Home windows 11 will let customers entry iMessage on the iPhone and carry out primary chat capabilities.
Microsoft supplies particulars on the way it will work in its Home windows Insider Weblog. The Cellphone Hyperlink app, which beforehand used Bluetooth to attach solely to Android telephones, may have a brand new choice for the iPhone. As soon as a connection is established and the setup is carried out, customers may have primary assist for accessing contacts, making calls, and utilizing the iPhone’s Messages for textual content conversations.
Nonetheless, the assist for Messages doesn’t go a lot past one-on-one interactions. In keeping with the Microsoft weblog put up, group messaging isn’t supported, and also you won’t be able to ship pictures, audio, or video. In an interview with The Verge, Microsoft’s Yusuf Mehdi additionally factors out that Cellphone Hyperlink can’t inform the distinction between an ordinary textual content message and one despatched via iMessage–so no inexperienced or blue chat bubbles. Additionally, Cellphone Hyperlink can see solely messages that it has despatched and acquired, so it is not going to show the complete chat historical past on an iPhone.
Microsoft didn’t point out if iMessage options equivalent to enhancing or unsending messages, or the bubble and display screen results shall be out there, however it’s secure to imagine that they gained’t be. Nonetheless, for the very giant variety of iPhone customers who additionally use Home windows PCs as their principal pc, it’s one other welcome new function to permit for entry to Apple gadgets and companies. Final November, Microsoft added to iCloud Images entry to the Home windows 11 Images app. Microsoft additionally has out there preview variations of the Apple Music and Apple TV apps for Home windows; these apps ought to be finalized later this yr.
The brand new model of Cellphone Hyperlink with iOS assist is presently in beta and out there solely via builders within the Home windows Insider program. Microsoft is progressively making the app out there to builders, with extra builders capable of get entry over time. Microsoft didn’t announce when the app shall be out there to most people, however it’ll probably be a part of a Home windows 11 replace.
