The Future of Messages

It’s no secret, that Apple’s intention is to bring the iOS experience to the OSX and vice versa towards an as unified OS experience as possible. One of the apps that made it through, is Messages. Now, let’s elaborate how important that is.

Many people I discuss with, keep nagging that Apple is releasing something that considers it to be a novelty, most of the times is just a modified or simplified version of an existing product. Messages triggered similar discussions. “Skype does the same thing”, “Adium is better”, “What about Google chat, MSN, e.t.c.”, “So what now, Apple reinvented chatting?”. Yes, there are so many free services out there with official iOS/android apps to support messaging on the go. But there are 2 fundamental differences:

1. Availability.
In order to start chatting with someone via the above services, he/she has to have them installed in their mobile device, be logged in and “available”. Now imagine someone sees your availability and starts bombarding you with messages. If you don’t respond, or change your status to “unavailable” or “offline”, that person might be offended and the next time you talk online or in person, you feel the need to apologise. And what if that someone was your girlfriend? Yikes. But imagine this. A contact, sends you an SMS. He doesn’t know if you are available or not, if you phone is on silent mode, or if you have no reception in that area. You haven’t explicitly announced you are available, so his expectations are lowered. This is what happens with Messages. It’s an “always on” free of charge chatting system but with the benefits of the SMS social norms.

2. More than just chat.
Chat, is a very informal communication between two people, usually friends, who happen to be available at a specific time online. SMS, is used mostly for information exchange that is too urgent to wait until the other person is online, and at the same time less urgent to start a phone call. E-mail, is the exact opposite of chat; a formal way of messaging and creating appointments, and a way of exchanging small-sized files.

What Messages has brought to the table, is the unification of all three. The casual, immediate and continuous message exchange, initiated only when the other person responds, signifying he is online. At the same time, it’s a very easy way to share documents, videos, photos, and other files (currently only from Messages on the Mac) to every iOS device.

Oh, what I’d give to replace that:

“Dear X,

Upon your request, I hereby respectfully send you this email where you can find the document of that cupcake recipe you disclosed to me that you are longing for, attached.

Kind regards,

Dimitris Kontaris”

with that:

“Dimitris sent you a message: superdupercupcakerecipe.pdf”.