OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion won’t be available for most users to play with this summer, but if you’d like to try out a little slice of it already, you can already download the Messages beta for Mac, which replaces iChat and allows you to send unlimited free messages to any Mac, iPad, iPhone or iPod touch through the iMessage protocol!
The beta can be downloaded by anyone here. The features are:
Send unlimited iMessages to any Mac, iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch.*
Start an iMessage conversation on your Mac and continue it on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch.
Send photos, videos, attachments, contacts, locations, and more.
Launch a FaceTime video call and bring the conversation face-to-face.
Messages supports iMessage, AIM, Yahoo!, Google Talk, and Jabber accounts.
We’re already running it, and it feels like a substantial update to iChat, which I always thought was a pretty terrible IM program. What do you think?
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
