For those of us that are eagerly anticipating the release of OS X Mountain Lion Apple has released Messages Beta as a tease. If you choose to install Messages it will replace iChat on your Mac, but your iChat services will continue to work. Messages brings iMessage to the Mac — just like on iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch running iOS 5.
Features:
*Keep in mind that your iDevice (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch) must be running iOS 5 to be able to receive iMessages. Mac computers must be running Messages Beta to receive iMessages. Messages Beta requires OS X Lion v10.7.3. Also, just like iMessage the person you are looking to Message with must also be running iOS 5 in order to receive your message.
I tried it out with a friend of mine and he responded via his iPad 2. The entire conversation is also on my phone I did appreciate that as long as I was talking on my Mac I did not get a notification on my phone of a new message. I noticed every time I picked up my phone and went to my iMessage it would refresh to load the conversation up to where I left off.
There are a few things that I noticed. I got a red exclamation point next to a majority of my messages saying my messages weren’t delivered but he would receive most of them. At some points the conversation was severely delayed on my Mac but if I sent the iMessage via my phone I got no error messages and he received my messages instantly. When I was waiting for him to answer on iMessage I would look at my phone and see he did respond but when it finally would show up in Message it would be all out of order which caused a slight confusion trying to figure out what we were responding to. 
This is a Beta program so of course kinks are to be expected. I think it’s awesome that if I get tired from sitting at my Mac doing homework or whatever and I feel my eyes getting heavy or just need a break from looking at the screen-I don’t have to grab my phone and text saying
“I logged off iChat but I’m on my phone now so text me”. Just to have them tell me they’re not near their phone now so they’ll talk to me later. Now, I can close my Mac and comfortably lay in bed or go run errands and continue the conversation either from my iPhone or my iPod Touch and pick up where I left off without having to ask-What were we talking about. (That seems to only happen with a juicy conversation).
Overall, The kinks are minor IMHO so I can only imagine what else is in store this summer when OS X Mountain Lion is released. The download is free and is definitely worth checking out. Click on the pictures to enlarge.
So try it out and tell us what you think.
You can download the Messages Beta here
