Hi Ralph (or anyone reading this message, to be honest),
I've tried absolutely everything in this thread (and more) but nothing works.
I'm on a Macbook Pro (Mid 2010), version 10.10 (so updated to Yosemite - works perfectly) and the serial number show up.
After doing everything you've suggested it still gives me the error message "Your Apple ID can't be used to set up iMessage at this time."
I thought my apple ID worked for iMessage on my iPhone (5S, iOS 8.1) but it turns out that iMessage only works on my phone because I'm using my phone number for it as well. So.. the problem seems to be the apple ID somehow?
It's extremely frustrating and I'm writing this in the hope that maybe you have one last suggestion that will magically fix it.
I used to be able to use iMessage on my Macbook and it worked just fine. When I got an iPhone about 4 months ago I started using it less and less -
up until a few weeks ago when I wanted to talk to someone about something while we were in a library, so silently - on iMessage.
That's when I noticed it wasn't working - and it wasn't working for my friend either (she hadn't upgraded to Yosemite yet at this point, haven't asked if hers works again).
Lots of people here have been talking about it not working since they upgraded to Mavericks,
but I'm 100% sure it worked for me before Yosemite came out.
Anyway, quite a long message with possibly some unnecessary details. Hope you can help me.
Thanks in advance,
Andra