iMessage Is Flawed

BJ McGeever on iMessage and Messages for OS X:

Someone iMessages you on your phone, to your phone number, while you’re on your Mac and you want to continue the conversation — too bad. If you send them a message from your Mac, it will show up in a different conversation on their phone. If you reply to them from your phone, it won’t show up on your Mac. Not everyone will know your phone number, and not everyone will know your email address associated with iMessage.

He’s right. Most people I know own an iPhone, iPad, Mac or an iPod. If they don’t have any of those devices, I’d almost be surprised. That’s how strong of a position Apple have in my life.

Unfortunately, almost no one of these people are aware of iMessage’s excistence. Thus, they don’t know to send messages to email addresses. And thus, they wonder what the hell is going on when there’s a “mail” amongst their SMS messages.

Unless Apple manage to remove the need for phone numbers entirely (highly unlikely), they’ll have to find a way for iCloud to sync messages you get on your iPhone to your Mac and iPad (more likely).

iCloud, iMessage, all of the news in Mountain Lion and iOS 5 all lead Apple’s ecosystem to a better place - but there is, for me, no doubt that there still is a long way to go.