Sorry, freeloaders. Er, beta testers. Apple is officially starting to notify those enrolled in its preview test of the company's Messages app – OS X Lion users, that is – that the preview program will officially end on Friday, December 14.
The app, basically a combination of iMessages and iChat, allows users to perform the simple task of talking to their friends while engaging in more advanced features like sharing their screens or jumping into a video chat, to name a few fun tricks.
Additionally, Messages synchronizes up with the iMessages app on a user's iPhone: In other words, users can jump between Messages and iMessages and they'll be able to continue their conversations without fuss. Unlike some conventional messaging apps, the desktop and mobile Messages worlds aren't two mutually exclusive entities.
Unfortunately, that world will be forever lost to those running OS X Lion come mid-December. The app, which started out as a free beta download for OS X Lion users, has now been officially integrated directly into OS X Mountain Lion – the official successor to version 10.7 of OS X, for those not down with Apple's naming conventions.
What does that mean? If you're currently enjoying Messages on your OS X Lion installation, you're going to be almost completely out of luck once the cutoff date hits. Your only real option, if you want to continue reaping the benefits of the Messages, is to upgrade to Mountain Lion itself.
On the plus side, said upgrade would currently only set you back $20 – that's the price, as of this article's writing, for the download of OS X Mountain Lion via the Mac App Store. Given that Trillian costs $12 per year for a similar chat experience that isn't quite as wired into Apple's OS as Messages, and $8 more gives you all the benefits of a full operating system upgrade, it's not that much of a burden to plunk down for Mountain Lion if you really think you're going to miss out on Messages come December.
For more tech tidbits from David Murphy, follow him on Facebook or Twitter (@thedavidmurphy).
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