That isn't the genius of iMessage. The genius is that it's built in, activated by default and seamless with SMS. If my recipient has iMessage, it sends over iMessage. If my recipient does not it sends over SMS.
A few people have mentioned how difficult it will be to get people to upgrade to iOS 5 in order to use iMessage. Yes, a lot of people never sync and a few don't even connect to WiFi, but it's important to remember Apple is in this for the long haul. iPhones are going to be around for a while. When my iPhone 3 dies I'm going to go to the nearest Apple store and get a new iPhone with iOS 5 or higher. In other words, even if I don't sync I will eventually be upgrading. Apple would love it if everyone upgraded tomorrow, but they will settle for everyone upgrading eventually.
Actually, iMessage is a great example of Apple taking a succesful third-party concept and making it their own in the OS, like Dashboard (Konfabulator) before, they now do the same to WhatsApp, only this is iOS only and Whatsapp is crossplatform.
My Dad had never connected his iPhone to a computer, until he ran into a specific problem (the proximity sensor wasn’t working well) and Apple told him to update.<p>On the surface this sounds great… but my Dad has never attached his phone to a WiFi network either.<p>OTA backups and updates would need to work on 3G (so that the user doesn’t have to do anything special to get them) to help everyone.
WhatsApp (<a href="http://www.whatsapp.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.whatsapp.com/</a>) lets you do something similar, and to any other smart phone.<p>I have enough trouble manually updating my iphone's OS and manually syncing it while keeping all my apps and media. The thought of them introducing more automation terrifies me.
I'm sorry but users aren't going to upgrade to iOS 5 for the same reasons they haven't upgraded in the past: they just dont care.<p>Unless a user is actually frustrated with something, they won't bother investigating how to fix it. Most of the time they probably won't even know there IS a fix unless someone tells them.<p>Users aren't going to want to use an iOS only messaging service, and they certainly won't want to use two different services depending on who they're messaging. This has already happened before with FaceTime; some people used it and found it interesting but there was no mass appeal because not everyone has an iOS device.
75% of my contacts who use a smartphone, already use WhatsApp. i dont see this taking off unless they provide some kind of bridge to existing services to ensure cross plattform capabilities.