14 DAY TRIAL // A new and exciting addition to iOS 5 (the forthcoming major release of Apple’s mobile operating system), iMessage promises to axe traditional texting and MMS forever.
The function, listed among 200 others that are brand new to iOS 5, allows both iPhone and iPad users to text each other and even include pictures on their messages that they send either through WiFi, or cellular waves. iPod touch players are also supported.
The service is free, and it should do well to convince many iPhone owners to give up on their SMS plan.
As if it wasn't exciting enough, it now appears iMessage will be making its way onto Mac OS X under a slightly different moniker.
Spanish blog Maquecitos citing one of its readers who claims to be testing Lion posted a screenshot depicting an error dialog.
The dialog advises the user to update a Mail plug-in to a version that is "compatible with Mail 5.0 and Message 5.0."
Needless to point out, there is currently no ‘Message’ application in Mac OS X, and while the iOS app is dubbed ‘iMessage’ (with an ‘i’ pre-fix), it wouldn’t be too far fetched to assume Apple is preparing a Mac version that bears a slightly different name.
A good example of how Apple works to unify the customer’s experience across devices is FaceTime, the video-chatting application and standard introduced by the company last summer in iOS 4.0 with iPhone 4, to make use of the front facing camera found on the new device.
Not long after the iPhone 4 was released, Mac customers were told that FaceTime was also available as a desktop app.
Users simply download it from the Mac App Store, install it, and they’re immediately able to call any of their iFriends via Apple ID.
So, the way we see it, it’s actually unlikely that Apple doesn’t port iMessage to Mac OS X, be it with a different name.