Enjoying the Messages beta that Apple released yesterday? It’s fantastic, isn’t it? But don’t get too attached to it, because unless you plan to upgrade to Mountain Lion this summer, you’ll lose the application when the beta ends.
Consomac has been digging around within the application’s resources and has found an interesting string that suggests Messages will only be available to users running the OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion operating system when its beta ends.
The message reads:
Thank you for participating in the Messages Beta program. With the inclusion of Messages in OS X Mountain Lion, the Messages Beta program has ended.
To continue using Messages, please visit the Mac App Store and purchase OS X Mountain Lion.
The last sentence indicates users will be forced to upgrade to maintain access to the Messages app.
With many of us already using iMessage on our iOS devices, we’ve been yearning for the same feature on the Mac. This is something, then, that a huge number of users will want to keep. So is this a sneaky way of forcing us to upgrade this summer?
[via MacRumors]