Apple’s iMessage: A slap in the face to Blackberry, AT&T and Verizon

Apple announced yesterday their new Apple’s iMessage, the iOS5 instant-messaging app! Apple lauded its iMessage as a system that allows iPad, iPhone or iPod touch users to send unlimited free text messages to another iOS device. Cool beans for those of us who have already taken a bite of the forbidden Apple! Not so cool for Blackberry, AT&T and Verizon…

RIM, the highly popular BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) instant chat service, was the only IM service of its kind and very popular with the teenage market…until Apple’s iMessage announcement. Needless to say, the crackberry isn’t sounding so sweet to both users and investors right about now! If the reports of plunging RIM stock on both the Toronto Stock Exchange and Wall Street Tuesday are any indicator…Apple, in the famous words of Charlie Sheen, is “winning!

As for AT&T and Verizon they are probably still recovering from the shock of Apple’s iMessage announcement on Monday. Rumor has it that Apple’s phone carrier partners around the world found out about iMessages at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) just like the rest of us peons! That’s what happens when you are king…your subjects bow and scrape to your rule! I am guessing that they are still crunching the numbers to figure out what the real impact will be when users drop their texting plan and switch from a standard SMS text, to an iMessage.

So this is all quite comedic at the corporate level, but for us addicts, I mean users, what is the real deal? Let’s talk features people…WIFM!!! iMessage can send text, pictures, contact vCards and video, just like SMS can. In addition, it is embellished, in typical Apple fashion, with the ability to tell when the person you’re chatting with has received and read your messages, and you can see when they are typing a response! Ok, ok…I am getting way too excited, and there is still more…did I mention that iMessage can do group messaging. But my favorite feature of all…wait for it… is that all messages are transferred over your iPhone or iPad’s Wi-Fi or 3G data connections, so it’s free!!!

Clearly the Apple’s iMessage had me at “hello”, but there is one major issue…why are there always issues??? And this is a biggie, because it means more work for me! Unfortunately, the fatal flaw with Apple’s iMessage app replacing SMS is that not everyone uses an iPhone. So the long and short is that I must continue my quest, “unpaid” by Apple, to convert everyone in my life to the iPhone! Oh and btw, I am back on hold with AT&T restoring the unlimited texting plan that accidentally deleted from my account when I heard the announcement about the iMessage app! I hope they will take me back!