

The Genius of iMessage - worldvoyageur
http://uxhero.com/blog/the-genius-of-imessage/

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jackvalentine
That isn't the genius of iMessage. The genius is that it's built in, activated
by default and seamless with SMS. If my recipient has iMessage, it sends over
iMessage. If my recipient does not it sends over SMS.

~~~
mike-cardwell
The carriers will love this

~~~
nopal
The rumor is that the carriers didn't hear about iMessage until Jobs announced
it at WWDC.

<http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/06/06/imessage>

~~~
RyanKearney
Don't worry, I'm sure AT&T will filter all your iPhone traffic and count 1
iMessage as 1 SMS message regardless so there's no "confusion" for the end
user trying to figure out why their SMS usage has gone down by 80%.

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dhyasama
A few people have mentioned how difficult it will be to get people to upgrade
to iOS 5 in order to use iMessage. Yes, a lot of people never sync and a few
don't even connect to WiFi, but it's important to remember Apple is in this
for the long haul. iPhones are going to be around for a while. When my iPhone
3 dies I'm going to go to the nearest Apple store and get a new iPhone with
iOS 5 or higher. In other words, even if I don't sync I will eventually be
upgrading. Apple would love it if everyone upgraded tomorrow, but they will
settle for everyone upgrading eventually.

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mahrain
Actually, iMessage is a great example of Apple taking a succesful third-party
concept and making it their own in the OS, like Dashboard (Konfabulator)
before, they now do the same to WhatsApp, only this is iOS only and Whatsapp
is crossplatform.

~~~
beaumartinez
iMessage is more akin to BBM than to WhatsApp.

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Sidnicious
My Dad had never connected his iPhone to a computer, until he ran into a
specific problem (the proximity sensor wasn’t working well) and Apple told him
to update.

On the surface this sounds great… but my Dad has never attached his phone to a
WiFi network either.

OTA backups and updates would need to work on 3G (so that the user doesn’t
have to do anything special to get them) to help everyone.

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power
WhatsApp (<http://www.whatsapp.com/>) lets you do something similar, and to
any other smart phone.

I have enough trouble manually updating my iphone's OS and manually syncing it
while keeping all my apps and media. The thought of them introducing more
automation terrifies me.

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captain-asshat
I'm sorry but users aren't going to upgrade to iOS 5 for the same reasons they
haven't upgraded in the past: they just dont care.

Unless a user is actually frustrated with something, they won't bother
investigating how to fix it. Most of the time they probably won't even know
there IS a fix unless someone tells them.

Users aren't going to want to use an iOS only messaging service, and they
certainly won't want to use two different services depending on who they're
messaging. This has already happened before with FaceTime; some people used it
and found it interesting but there was no mass appeal because not everyone has
an iOS device.

~~~
rimantas

      > I'm sorry but users aren't going to upgrade to iOS 5 for
      > the same reasons they haven't upgraded in the past: they
      > just dont care.
    

What are you talking about? [http://www.macpost.net/221/apple-ios-
distribution-stats-95-o...](http://www.macpost.net/221/apple-ios-distribution-
stats-95-of-iphones-adopts-ios-4/)

~~~
Wilya
The article points to [http://onefps.net/post/6496478249/50-percent-of-iphone-
owner...](http://onefps.net/post/6496478249/50-percent-of-iphone-owners-dont-
backup) which tells a somewhat different story.

One article sources "A little bird" and the other its own customer base. I
wouldn't take neither as a definitive answer..

~~~
rimantas
There is one more: [http://www.marco.org/2011/03/24/ios-device-and-os-version-
st...](http://www.marco.org/2011/03/24/ios-device-and-os-version-stats-from-
instapaper-3-0)

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trin_
75% of my contacts who use a smartphone, already use WhatsApp. i dont see this
taking off unless they provide some kind of bridge to existing services to
ensure cross plattform capabilities.

~~~
ugh
The bridge is SMS. It's seamless with SMS. I would guess that mobile usage of
SMS is still more common than mobile usage of IM. Instead of picking some IM
app as a brdige Apple decided to pick SMS which seems like the right choice to
me.

I don't think iMessage will convince many people to update. Most people
probably won't even know that they are using iMessage. The only effect they
will see is a shrinking phone bill.

