[tweetmeme]Sometimes I forget how hard it is for a lot of iPhone users out there. (Especially in the US) You guys have those awful text messages limits to deal with. And if you want unlimited messaging, you’ve gotta pay out the ass for it. It’s a ridiculous idea: you’re paying a premium to send MMSes (which are just emails that route to a phone number.) In Japan, where I live, there is no such thing as text messaging. You can only send messages to phone numbers on the same network. So because there’s no cross-network messaging, Japanese cell phones have had push email forever. So using the iPhone 3G when it came out here was a nightmare, because there was no easy way to send messages to people not on Softbank immediately. And the ever-present emoji didn’t work with email from people on other carriers. That alone stopped a lot of Japanese people from buying iPhones in 2008. When that got figured out last year, it became much easier for Japanese to accept the iPhone. There are still features that are standard to Japanese phones that the iPhone doesn’t have (digital wallet functions and digital TV tuners) but those aren’t deal-breakers. And since the carriers here treat anything that’s not voice traffic as plain data, if you have an unlimited data plan, you can send all the MMSes you want.

Oh yeah, I was writing a review.

So to deal with the rest of the world’s text message problem, a few iPhone-only push-enabled messaging apps have popped up. Two of them are Ping and pushme.to. One is beautiful and there other one is ugly. Ping’s the ugly one. Ping was the first push messaging app like this that I found. I picked it up when it was free, and then it was a dollar, and if you want to send images to other Ping users, you need to cough up another $0.99 to upgrade to Diamond Status, I mean, send images. I have nothing bad to say about the app’s capabilities. It works. Messages get pushed after just a couple seconds. It works pretty much like the Messages app that is built into the iPhone. It just feels clunky. It’s got account, contacts, settings, and a mail button at the bottom that could’ve all been tucked away somewhere else. If you can get your iPhone or more likely iPod touch owning friends to download the app, you’ll probably be pleased with the app.

The other push messaging app I look at was pushme.to. While it is essentially the same app, it’s a much cleaner and prettier version. The color palette is less garish, and the white/light blue menus and backgrounds make great eye candy. Like Ping, you sign up, get a username, and then can send messages to others using the same app. One thing that pushme.to does that Ping doesn’t, is let you get messages from a web app. Anyone can check out your pushme.to/*username page and send you messages. Seems like an invitation for spam to me, but it’s probably safe. The website, like the iPhone app, is clean and attractive. Everything about pushme.to is well-designed. It kind of makes me wish the people behind it had chose to do a different kind of app.

It’s nice to get messages from people using a web browser, but not being able to respond to them is annoying. They could send you messages all day, but you’d never be able to say anything back. At that point, you might as well be using IM or Twitter instead. Or maybe something called email. I even hear Apple included an app to use this black magic. But I guess the iPod touch-only toting teeny bopper bunch would get confused with IMAP, POP, and inboxes. Responding to other pushme.to users in the app is easy though. There’s a reply button in the top-right corner. But as of right now, (Jan. 21, 2010) you can’t see sent messages. And pushme.to doesn’t display your messages in an iChat-style window. It’s more like a Twitter feed. A stream of messages. Tap on a message, and it displays the message like a tweet in Tweetie. It’s serviceable, but it undermines its supposed goal: to be an SMS/MMS replacement. Also, pushme.to still lacks photo sharing, but I’ve been told that’s in the works.

The problem that both of them have is that they can’t communicate with anyone who doesn’t have an iPhone. The apps can only send messages to users of the respective services. So you can’t send messages to your mom on Verizon. But if you’re just wanting to send messages to other iPhone users, I guess unlimited messages for $0.99 ain’t so bad. But what just dawned on me is, this how iPod touch users can send messages to each other. (Assuming they have WiFi access somewhere.) And for those poor souls who don’t have 3G on their devices, iPod touch to iPod touch is better than nothing right? You can do push Gmail, but it’s kinda awkward, and it’s way nicer to view and compose your texts in an iChat like window.

Overall, both allow you to send messages to your friends. The messages get pushed out quickly, and reading and responding to messages is easy. While I’d like to say that if you’re going to go down this route of faux text messaging that you should choose pushme.to because it’s a pretty app (Lord knows I love pretty), I would actually have to say go with Ping at this point. It’s a close approximation of the normal iPhone message app. If you decide later that you want to send images, you can spend the $0.99 for the upgrade. You can download Ping for $0.99. If you would prefer to get the prettier, yet less-functional pushme.to, you can download it in the App Store for $0.99.

TextNow sports a familiar iChat like interface.

Another alternative, if you want to get really close to SMS/MMS, is to try something like TextNow. It will actually let you send messages just using a phone number, and provides you with an email address that your friends on other networks can send messages to. It looks pretty close to the iPhone messages app, and you can buy additional ringtones if you like. The Lite version won’t cost you anything, and you can send up to 50 texts a day. I use it to text people back in the US. Incoming texts to your provided email address are unlimited. Be forewarned, TextNow won’t benefit if you’re texting outside the US, but like Ping and pushme.to, you can send messages to  The full version did go for $4.99, but it’s on sale for $0.99 right now. The full version removes the ads from the app and lifts the 50 texts a day limit.