Apple is Integrating iMessage Into iChat?

Apple may have already started the integration of iMessage into iChat for OS X Lion, reports MacRumors.

A developer has found two new properties (timeDelivered and timeRead) that are not supported by iChat's native protocols.

The "timeDelivered" and "timeRead' fields indicate the tracking of delivery and read receipts for instant messages. These features, however, are not supported in any of iChat's native messaging protocols, while the same features are offered in Apple's iMessage protocol. These properties were also not present in previous versions of iChat prior to OS X Lion. We believe the only reason Apple would have added these properties was to build in cross compatibility with their new iMessage protocol.

@interface IMMessage : NSObject
{
IMHandle *_sender;
IMHandle *_subject;
NSAttributedString *_text;
NSString *_plainBody;
NSDate *_time;
NSDate *_timeDelivered;
NSDate *_timeRead;

iMessage is part of iOS 5 which is expected to launch next month alongside the iPhone 5.

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