Stay in Touch - iConnected: Use AirPlay, iCloud, Apps, and More to Bring Your Apple Devices Together - page 129

Figure 6-3
An iMessage conversation in the iPad's Messages app
As wonderful as iMessage is, it's not on by default. But it's not hard to turn on.
On an iOS device, go to the Settings app and open the Messages pane. Set the iMessage switch to
On. Tap Send & Receive to specify which e-mail addresses people can use to find you for iMessage —
if a person enters one of those e-mail addresses in your contacts card on his or her iOS device or Mac,
the Messages app will know you have iMessage enabled and send the text to you that way, rather
than via SMS. You also need to enter your Apple ID, which is how iCloud knows to keep your conver-
sations synced across all your devices.
To ensure that you never send texts via SMS, slide the Send as SMS switch to Off. That prevents
you from sending any texts to non-iMessage users. The Messages app always sends texts to iMessage
users via iMessage, so you don't need to set Send as SMS to Off to ensure you don't waste money
sending these people SMS texts.
To use Messages on a Mac, choose Messages > Preferences, go to the Accounts pane, click the
Add button (the + icon), choose iMessage, and enter your Apple ID and the e-mail addresses and
phone number you want people to be able to send your iMessage texts through.
TIP: iMessage is not the only messaging game in town, of course. The free Trillian service is
available for Windows, iOS, Android, BlackBerry, and Mac OS X — and it's free. Trillian supports
AIM, iCloud, Google Talk, Yahoo, Windows Live Messenger, and more as well as social network ac-