10 Amazing New Messages Features In Mac OS X Yosemite and iOS 8

Author: Brook Perry

During the recently concluded WWDC held in San Francisco during June 02-06, 2014, Apple announced the entry of iOS 8 and Mac OS Yosemite updates. This was very much expected, in fact confirmed, that Apple will announce the updates for its operating systems (OS) of iPhone and Mac devices. But more exciting would be to learn, what new features will come along with these updates.

In the WWDC keynote, Apple announced the newly introduced features that will be soon available for usage with the iOS 8 and Mac OS Yosemite updates. This time Apple has brought about many new messaging features, which are sure to make the messaging experience over Apple devices smoother.

Let us have a look on the new announced features offered with Mac OS X Yosemite and iOS 8.

  1. Group conversations

With the ‘Group conversation’ Mac OS X Yosemite and iOS 8 will support the group messaging, where one will be able to invite multiple users in a common message conversation. One can add more participants in the group chat and can enjoy the chatting without any lag. Both iOS 8 and Yosemite are deftly designed to handle the group chat conversation environment.

  1. Easy exit from group conversations

The new OS for both Mac and iPhone enables graceful exit from a group conversation. It often happens that as a part of a group chat conversation, you tend to get pinging alerts throughout the day, which is quite irritating especially if you are no more interested in participating in the conversation within that particular chat group. Over Mac OS X 10.10 and iOS 8, you will easily be able to make a silent exit from such chat groups that no more interests you. You won’t have to send any kind of unsubscribe request to the administrator of the group to exist as it usually happens in many chat groups.

However, if you don’t want to make a full & final exit and just want to mute the pinging alerts for the time being, the two new OS has the facility for this also. You will be able to mute group conversations on a per-thread basis. Hence, you will continue getting notifications of other incoming messages (which are important to you) but not from that particular thread, which you have chosen to keep mute.

The thread you have muted will continue receiving the messages but your phone won’t buzz to distract you. You can later on check the messages in your free time.

  1. Handoff to support messaging between Mac and iPhone

With these two newly launched operating systems, Apple has empowered it’s users with the handoff feature that enables one to start a message in Mac and finish it on iPhone or vice-versa. Means if you have written half of your messages in your iPhone and you suddenly require to start working with your Mac, then you can switch the half written message to your Mac and finish it over there.

  1. Continuity facilitates sending texts from Mac

The Handoff feature makes sense only if you can send messages from your Mac OS X device, otherwise what’s the advantage of facilitating the switching of half-written message from iPhone to Mac, if you can’t send the message from the Mac. Continuity is the new feature that enables sending of test messages from a Mac device to non-Apple device provided your iPhone is placed near your Mac.

  1. Syncing of SMS on Mac

Continuity facilitates one more feature that is the automatic syncing of your iPhone SMSs and iMessages on your Mac, provided both the devices are on the same network. As a result of this synching you will be able to see all your iPhone messages on your Mac device also.

  1. Send Voice messages

With iOS 8, you will be able to use your iPhones to send voice messages. If you are tired of typing the messages then chose to send short audio messages. For doing this, just go to your message thread, touch and hold the screen, speak out your message and swipe it to send it. This is sounding quite interesting and easy.

  1. Reply a votive message with a voice message

To hear a voice message, you simply have to hold your iPhone up just as you do while in call. The voice message can be heard quite clear. To send a voice message as a reply to the one you have received, just speak out your message once the original message ends and when you will lower your phone, the message will be sent automatically.

  1. Share location in a conversation

Just the way in Facebook, you share your location, now you can do the same with your iOS 8. You can choose to send your location as a tail to every message you send. With some settings done your messages will automatically share your location. You can choose to turn off this feature after every hour or at the end of the day, depending upon how long you are going to stay at one place.

  1. Properly organized attachments

Now with iOS 8 and Mac OS 10.10 Yosemite, no more you have to scroll up to find a particular message to view the media content like message or video attached to it. The new OS gives an organized placing to all your attachments of a message conversation. All the attachments automatically get placed at the end of the thread. The organized placing of all the attachments at the end of the thread makes media viewing easy even in the midst of a busy conversation. This is indeed a very useful and much required messaging feature.

  1. Send multiple photos and videos at once

A messaging platform always demands an improved sharing of media content. With iOS8 and Mac OS Yosemite, sharing of videos and photos over messages (both SMS and iMessages) gets more advanced. Now you can easily select multiple photos or videos and send them at once.

All the aforementioned ten features seem to be very useful and appropriate. The operational benefit of these features will be better understood only when these will get executed and will be available for usage. But as of now, each of these new iOS 8 and Mac OS Yosemite messaging features seem to a good upgrade over the current messaging features of Apple devices.

About the Author: Brooke M. Perry is an ardent technician associated with Qresolve online computer support with wide experience of fixing issues with PCs, laptops, tablets and smartphone. With a strong track record of devising effective ways of online tech support and system security, she has so far helped thousands of users across the globe.