The beta phase of Apple's Messages service is soon to be coming to its end. It is learned December 14 is the bidding adieu date.



The new Messages service is a part of OS X Mountain Lion and iOS.

Recently Apple added its iChat instant messaging program in the two operating systems that consolidated several other messaging services like Jabber, Yahoo and AIM into one interface.

However, this did not merge with Apple's personal iMessaging and FaceTime services, which added in the iPhone as options to SMS messaging.

To handle this gap, Apple came up with Messages Beta for OS X in February this year, as part of the Mountain Lion developer preview to aid test the service. While the service was added with the developer preview, it also made a beta program available for Lion and several users adopted it and used it since then.

Well, a recent email from Apple announces of ending the program on Friday, December 14.

This announcement is not the first sign of Apple's impending conclusion of the beta program for Lion. In June Apple withdrew the download of Messages for Lion from its Website, a month prior to the release of OS X Mountain Lion.

If you are using Lion operating system and want to continue with the Messages service of Apple, you need to upgrade it to Mountain Lion. It will cost you $20 and can be purchased from Mac App Store.

Were you using Apple's Messages service? Do share your experience with it.