One of the things I like the most about using Apple devices is iMessages (orĀ Messages as they’re called now, I believe).

Being able to keep threads of texts going regardless of the device that I’m on has become somewhat of a luxury that I really didn’t notice until I began keeping up texts with family members who are on Androids.

To be honest, I don’t know how long the application was out prior to when I started using, but I’ve ended up using Hangouts For iPhone and it’s solved the problem of keeping up with texts with family and friends on Android while also being able to continue conversations from my computer.

The Luxury of Apple Messages

Here’s the gist of it: For those who don’t use Apple products, each one – Mac, iPhone, and iPad – ships with an application called Messages that allows you to text from any device and uses the Internet to keep all threads in sync.

This means that I can start texting while I’m out and about and then resume the conversation from my computer when I get home.

Androids don’t really offer this luxury. I’m not the kind of person to tell people what technology they should choose – in fact, I love the fact that people have choices when it comes to stuff like this.

But the main problem that I have is personal: I’ve gotten spoiled being able to text from my phone and then continue the conversation on my computer with those who use Androids.

Hangouts For iPhone

A couple of family and friends of mine use Androids, but up until I started using Hangouts for Androids, I’ve have a text thread with my on my phone and then I’d have another conversation using Messages and the Google Chat protocol.

With Hangouts, we can text from within that app and because it uses the same protocol as Google Chat, the messages show up in my Messages app.

The Catch

Perhaps the biggest catch in doing this is one that you have to open a separate application on your phone in order to send a message.

From a UX perspective, I don’t see this as being any different than opening the Messages app, but some people have said that they wish it could still be done from within Messages.

Other than that, the Hangouts application notifies when you have new messages, shows a badge count of unread messages, and generally functions much like Messages but over the Google network.

This Won’t Work For You

As with all of the rest of my articles in this series, I’ve no idea if this will work for you or not, but I the whole point is simply to share how I’m getting stuff done.

This is how I end up managing texts between two completely different platforms, so there you go.