iMessages

This iOS feature should interest you—if it doesn’t, in fact, make you giggle like

a schoolgirl.

An iMessage looks and works exactly like a text message. You send iMessages and receive them in the same app (Messages). They show up in the same window. You can send the same kinds of things: text, photos, videos, contacts, map locations, whatever. You send and receive them using exactly the same techniques.

The big difference: iMessages are what your phone sends to other iPhones, iPads, iPod Touches, and Macs. If your iPhone determines that the address belongs to any other kind of phone, it automatically switches to sending regular old text messages.

So why would Apple reinvent the text-messaging wheel? Why did it create iMessages to replicate regular text messaging? Because iMessages offer some huge advantages over regular text messages:

• iMessages don’t count as text messages! You don’t have to pay for them.

They look and work exactly like text messages, but they’re transferred over the Internet (WiFi or cellular) instead of your cell company’s voice airwaves. You can send and receive an unlimited number of them and never have to pay a penny more. In fact, if most of the people you text have Apple gadgets, then you can sign up for a cheaper texting plan with a lower monthly message allotment—and save a lot of money every year.

• When you’re typing back and forth with somebody, you don’t have to wonder whether, during a silence, they’re typing a response to you or just ignoring you; when they’re typing a response, you see an ellipsis (…), as you can see on the next page at right.

• You don’t have to wonder if the other guy has received your message. A tiny, light-gray word “delivered” appears under each message you send, briefly, to let you know that the other guy’s device received it.

• You can even turn on a “read receipt” feature that lets the other guy know when you’ve actually seen a message he sent. You’ll see a notation that says, for example, ”Read: 2:34 PM.”

• Your history of iMessages shows up on all your i-gadgets; they’re synchronized through your iCloud account. In other words, you can start a back-and-forth with somebody using your iPhone and later pick up your Mac laptop at home (in its Messages program) and carry right on from where you stopped.

You don’t have to do anything special. Just go into Messages and create a text message as usual. If your recipient is using an Apple gadget running iOS 5 or later, or a Mac using OS X Mountain Lion or later, then your iPhone sends your message as an iMessage automatically. It somehow knows.

You’ll know, too, because the light-gray text in the typing box says “iMessage” instead of “Text Message” (below, right). And each message you send shows up in a blue speech bubble instead of a green one. In fact, when you’re addressing the new text message, a tiny blue icon appears next to the names of each person who has an iMessages gadget, so you know in advance who’s cool and who’s not (below, left).