CALIFORNIA: When it was released in February 2009, WhatsApp was first available for iOS. Android and other mobile platforms followed. In 2014, it was purchased by Facebook and in only two years, the total number of active users had increased from 600 million to 1 billion.
Many new features have been added during that time and more are expected to come, but its developers haven’t managed to create a native application for Windows and OS X. Currently, users are able to access their accounts from a computer only using the Web client which mirrors messages from smartphones. They’ve long requested a standalone WhatsApp application for desktop PCs and soon, their dream might come true soon.
Users who want to send messages on WhatsApp from a computer must visit web.whatsapp.com and scan the QR code using their smartphone’s camera while running the application. It’s an annoying procedure because as long as WhatsApp runs on a smartphone, it will run on a computer as well. While it’s better than nothing, it would be even better if WhatsApp were to release a native application for Microsoft’s Windows and Apple’s OS X.
And this might happen soon: in the screenshots published by WABetaInfo on Twitter, the download page fields contained “Download for Windows” and “Download for Mac OS X”. WhatsApp has yet to confirm that the Windows PC and Mac versions are in the pipeline but if those screenshots are legit, then the WhatsApp development team has already made translation requests for the two versions.
This would mean that users will no longer need to be logged on their smartphones, a boon to the billion of users out there. It’s not sure how they will register, though, because WhatsApp depends on a mobile number and it scans all phone book numbers to find friends who are using this application in order to add them to the list of contacts.
Also, in the near future, the development team is expected to roll out the video calling feature which has been leaked in screenshots in the past months.
