Apple could not have dreamed of a better time to introduce iMessage, its proprietary messaging service native to iOS 5. While RIM is facing serious issues with its Blackberry data service, Apple is getting some rather good press, and believe it or not this time it’s justified.

The Blackberry outage has been plaguing users for more than three days. However, it started in Europe, so it did not gain a lot of media coverage, but now that it’s spreading to the US, the media are making a big deal out of it, perhaps even too big. Of course, there is a sense of poetic justice in all this. Crackberry addicted US bankers were largely to blame for the economic crisis which spread to Europe and the rest of the world, so the crippling outage emerging out of Europe is a bit like giving AIDS back to monkeys.

One thing that both services have in common though is that they tend to make wireless carriers pretty cross. Provided they work of course. Both services allow users to bypass carriers and shoot off longer messages with some additional content as well. Apple’s iMessage lets iPhone users send text, photos and video to all other iOS devices, so the user base is there.

Telecoms make a lot of money on texting as it takes up very little bandwidth and allows rather high margins. Of course, the wireless industry has no-one to blame but itself, as it kept clinging to mid-90s technology in an effort to squeeze as much money out of it as possible, without cheap and technologically superior alternatives. In addition, iMessage lets users take advantage of WiFi, so they can send messages free of charge abroad, from cafes and hotels.

On a positive note, RIM is getting its services back in order, but it is dealing with a large backlog of emails stuck in the system. Anyway, here is a Thursday morning joke.

What does a Blackberry user say to another Blackberry user?

Nothing.