Ready for OS X Mountain Lion to roar into your life this summer? Well, Apple has been kind enough to share a taste of what’s to come with users today in the form of a free Messages beta which allows text messaging between iOS and Mac users.

Apple announced Mac OS X 10.8. Mountain Lion today, which developers are no doubt feverishly downloading and installing as we write this. So what about the rest of us? Aside from looking at the pretty pictures on the company’s new Mountain Lion section of the website, Apple has delivered one goodie that can be downloaded right now: A beta of the new Messages app.

“Messages does everything iChat does, and so much more,” Apple’s website explains. “For starters, it comes with iMessage. And just like iMessage in iOS, it lets you send unlimited messages to anyone on a Mac or an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch running iOS 5. Send photos, videos, documents, and contacts -- even send messages to a group. You can see when your message has been delivered and when someone’s typing a reply. Turn on read receipts, and they’ll see when you’ve read a message. With end-to-end encryption, your messages stay safe and private. And you can start a conversation on your Mac and pick it up on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. So nothing is left unsaid.”

As we reported earlier, iChat will be put out to pasture with OS X Mountain Lion, replaced by the Messages app available to users of Mac OS X 10.7.3 today. At least for now, the app separates traditional IM services (AIM, Yahoo, Google Talk and Jabber) from the actual iMessage service, so they appear in different windows.

The Messages beta is a 63.8MB download from Apple’s website and requires OS X Lion 10.7.3 to install -- so make sure your operating system is up to date before you try to install. The beta will also require a restart of your computer before you can start chatting with friends.

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