Amongst the ton of updates that Apple announced yesterday, one interesting communications update on iOS5 was iMessage. The closest we can relate an iMessage to is the Blackberry Messenger. BBM as it is popularly known, RIM has a ton of people sticking to Blackberry services just to keep in touch with their network. In one swipe, Apple has connected nearly 200 million iOS devices with something more powerful than BBM. To begin with you can bid goodbye to a dedicated Blackberry plan, but built straight into the default Message box, this one looks super integrated.
Apple has taken a different approach to messaging and it has accommodated the fact that many of us own more than one iOS device. Be it an iPhone, iPod touch or and iPad, there is a good possibility that you own more than one iOS device and why wouldn’t you like to have a good messaging support on it? With iMessage rivaling carrier SMS plans and working purely on data connectivity (WiFi + 3G), the concept of having messages only on your phone becomes dated.
The good thing with iMessage is the fact that you aren’t tied down to one single iOS device and all your conversations / iMessage threads are pushed to every device. So I can start a conversation on my iPhone and complete it on my iPad later. It connects using Apple ID login.
With iMessage Apple has the usual suspects like delivery confirmation, read alert, group messages, typing alert (see when others are typing), photo and video sharing etc enabled. As the update trickles down with the iOS 5 later this year, we wonder if smart hackers would find ways of bringing this to other platforms? As for Apple, any love for Mac OS users?
Note: I mention ‘nearly 200 million’ as iOS 5 supports Phone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad 2, iPad, iPod touch (4th gen) & iPod touch (3rd gen). So some 2007/2008 devices are left out.
