Last Autumn I traded in my Blackberry for an iPhone 4S. There were a few things that led up to the decision: my husband had recently switched to an iPhone, my Blackberry was dying and I bought into the iPhone 5 hype. I was reading every rumour and myth online about the upcoming “rethink” and all the magical features that it should, could, would have.
The transition wasn’t without its hitches and blips (not unlike going from a PC to a Mac), but there is something to be said for being in sync (literally) with all your devices and for being on the same wavelength as the rest of your family. With the arrival of iOS 5, all our Apple units can wirelessly update and connect. My son texted me from his iPad at school on Valentine’s Day that he had forgotten the Valentines for his class. I ran them over before lunchtime.
I miss all the BBM (BlackBerry Messenger) contacts that I had amassed, but now I am filling up my contacts with iMessage peeps. I do prefer that it is integrated with text messaging, so I only have to go to one place, the speech bubbles format is also easier to read and review conversations. One thing that has made these iMessage chat-a-thons more fun is activating the built in emoticons. No need to download an app, all your smiley friends are already there! Just go to Settings, General, Keyboard, International Keyboards, Add New Keyboard…, Emoji. After all that, when your keyboard pops up there will be a little globe icon to the left of the space bar. Tap the globe and it will switch to hundreds of faces and icons and awesomeness. This works for iPads and iPod Touches as well. I have tested sending some of these with a Blackberry pal and all she got was black squares.
The latest thing to get even more excited about is the new upgrade for Mac’s will include Messages as well! This will make our world a little smaller and bring us all a bit closer and I’m all for that!
Fuel Becomes You 