Q:

How to send and receive iMessages from my phone number on my MacBook Air with Mountain Lion

I recently downloaded Mountain Lion because I wanted to be able to send and receive iMessages from my phone number on my MacBook Air. But, for some reason I'm not able to add my number to my Mac. When I send a text from my Mac, the receiver gets a message from my apple ID not my phone number. I've tried to go the Messages and the Message Preferences but my Message Bar doesn't even have a Preferences tab. I've also tried going to Settings and accessing my Messages Account but I can't find it. I just really want to be able to send a message to my friends from my phone number on my laptop.. Can anyone help?

A:

This is simple to accomplish if you have an iPhone to associate your phone number with your Apple ID account. I'm not aware of any way to hack, trick or cajole Apple to add a cell phone number to an Apple ID other than it going through the normal activation process on iPhone only.

Activate your Apple ID - http://support.apple.com/kb/TS4268
Open iMessage on the Mac and in preferences, set the caller ID to initiate messages from your phone number instead of your AppleID email.

As you can see, it is allowed to add more emails to an Apple ID, but the adding of phone numbers happens when you activate things from a live phone account and SMS messaging verifies that the phone number matches the iPhone.
Once that's done, Apple is happy to let your Mac or iPad or phone "iMessage" from that telephone number.

