Messages In OSX Mountain Lion May Spell Doom For SMS

One of the more exciting aspects of the new Mac OS X release by Apple is the repackaging of the iMessage app, which was first introduced in 2011 along with iOS 5 for the iPad and the iPhone. This is now being called Messages in Mac, and will replace the Mac’s old chat app, called iChat. With this new application, Mac owners can now send messages to iPads and iPhones that use iMessage. Mac users do not necessarily have to wait for the new OS to get this new app and can download the beta version of the app from Apple’s website. Apple is also expected to eventually release a Windows version of this app, although it has yet to release any information on this front.

The results of initial testing appear to be positive for the most part with the detection software on Apple’s mobile devices working well in terms of working out whether the sender of a message is using iMessages and hence putting the message in the iMessage or the SMS category accordingly. However, some users who have multiple addresses, that is, email and phone number, have been reporting problems regarding where their messages ended up.

The release of iMessage had many in the technology sector pronouncing the death of SMS. A release like Messages is bound to hasten this process for SMS. While it is hard to believe that SMSes will die out anytime in the near future, there is a definite trend amongst users of moving towards the internet to carry out their messaging needs. The widespread use of mobile broadband is slowly ensuring that pretty soon it will be much cheaper and easier to be perpetually connected to the internet and hence use the internet to fulfill one’s messaging needs than SMS.

While most beta testers have announced that this new Messages app on the OS X needs more work in order to be successful, the cross-platform capability is proving to be a pointer in terms of where the world’s communications future lies. The likes of Kik, Viber, WhatsApp and Pingchat, which are mostly free across devices, already give a lot of options in terms of internet-based messaging. This is apart from IM services like Yahoo! Messenger and Google Chat which already have plenty of mobile support. Apple’s iMessage and Message chat system is said to be superior to all of these options, however.