iMessage is perhaps one of the most understated of iOS 5’s features. Its seamlessness, the fact you only notice you’re using it when your message turns blue rather SMS green, is smart and it never feels as if it gets in the way. There’s no opting in or out, it’s just there, working away whenever you send a message or pic to a fellow iPhone owner.
But, let’s face it, it needs more. Today’s news that iChat code has been discovered lurking in iOS 5’s back end is very welcome and suggests, as per earlier rumours, that Apple is looking to expand its messaging service across platforms. But if iChat isn’t folded into iMessage soon, it could end up a busted flush.
Let’s face it. Apple didn’t include iMessage in iOS 5 as a nifty little add-on to simply users’ lives easier or to annoy networks creaming cash via SMS (although both are happy coincidences). Its dawn is about something a lot wider: an attempt to bring a full-on native IM application to the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.
This is most certainly pointed to by source code which shows references to Jabber and AIM, with the likes of Gtalk also expected to be co-opted. More excitingly, there’s the tantalising mention of being able to access FaceTime from within iMessage. This, on top of iMessage working across OS X and iOS, so you can continue chats even once you’ve powered down your Mac and left the house, makes iMessage’s future all rather rosy.
That’s all if Apple actually makes this happen. Does Cupertino really want to bring rival services on board, diluting the iMessage brand? It would be a very un-Apple move, yet to make this an iMessage-only version of iChat would be foolish in the extreme. iPhone users use stacks of different IM clients, so it’s essential that any updated version of iMessage includes access to as many different services as possible.
It therefore has to be a completely adopt iChat’s approach and become agnostic towards what providers are hooked into it. That way, the iPhone has a native IM client that’s every bit as sharp as rival offerings. If not, it’ll wind up being a feature that few people are aware of, aside from the tech hardcore. That’s not a state that Apple likes and it has to do everything in its power to branch iMessage out.
So, when should it happen? Can we really wait until the dawn of iOS 6? Surely not. This needs to be part of an iterative update that brings a standalone iMessage app to both iOS and OS X, and it needs to happen as soon as possible. Adding a function like this to the iPad 3 would give it added cache at a time when tablet competition is finally starting to hot up. Fail to deliver, and users will stick with third party apps, leaving Apple out in the cold.
