Why invent another proprietary message service? Apple could have easily expanded Jabber-protocol support in a revamped instant messaging client and provided the following:
- Clients on Mac and iOS with the ability to message many millions of more people using Jabber-protocol servers and clients.
- Integrated FaceTime with a real presense service like Jabber and opened the spec on FaceTime to allow non-Apple products into the game. Sure Apple couldn't guarantee the quality of the video, but they could easily have a watermark on all non-Apple products as a reminder "this video/audio looks like junk because someone isn't using an Apple lens." This would also solidify Apple's "standard" as an actual real-world standard and invite others to build on it rather that build to compete against it.
- Combined messaging clients on all devices. Maybe you want to leave email in it's own application (maybe not.. ?) but you could easily have transports for SMS, MMS, FaceTime and IM communication in 1 application. All non-email messaging to and from contacts would be streamlined and in 1 place. On second thought I wouldn't mind all of that being in the email client as well. Then when you go to lookup a contact in your address book you could easily see all email, SMS, MMS, and IM messages in one spot.
- Kill off many add-on IM clients. If iMessage was actually a Jabber client then you could easily connect to Google's Talk service & Facebook's chat service.
In summary, I am disappointed by the announcement of iMessage. Apple has created another service that could have been much better for everyone (including Apple).
