Apple's Messages Offers Free Texting With a Side of iPhone Lock-In 179
itwbennett writes "Who doesn't love free text messages? People who try to transition from an iPhone to any other phone, that's who. Apple's Messages app actively moves conversations away from paid text messages to free Messages. Very convenient until you want to leave your iPhone and switch back to plain old text messages because suddenly you'll be unable to receive text messages from your iPhone-toting friends. There's an obscure workaround, and Samsung, which has a vested interest in the matter, has a lengthy guide to removing your iPhone as a registered receiver of Messages . But the experience is just annoying enough that it might be the kind of thing that would keep someone from making a switch — and that's when it starts to feel like deliberate lock-in, and not so much like something Apple overlooked."
WTF (Score:5, Informative)
What kind of bullshit story is this? If you move away from your iPhone, guess what, you won't get iMessages. You'll still get text messages because yes, the iPhone falls back to that when an iMessage doesn't send.
Re:WTF (Score:4, Informative)
No, you won't get those messages. As an former iPhone user who recently switched to Android I will attest to the fact messages from your friends who use iOS go into a black iMessage hole. The messages are not forwarded out of iMessage to a traditional text message. The iPhone must be reconfigured to opt out of iMessage before text messages will be delivered to a non-iOS phone.
iMessage fails over to text ONLY if you're using an iOS device. It doesn't fail over, as you might expect, if your mobile number moves to a non-iOS platform. It's a total pain in the ass. I can only believe it's designed this way to promote vendor lock-in.
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Just disassociate your number from iMessages. It's not hard. The article in the summary mentions half a dozen ways to do it, only one of which requires your iPhone. What do you want Apple to do, hire some psychics so they know when you switch phones?
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Funny.
The page title is "Verizon Tabs: How do I turn off iMessage on my old iPhone before I switch to my new Samsung device?"
So, when someone switches away from an iPhone, they should just know that before they switch, they should check around and make sure they do it right, like check that people with an iPhone can still send them SMS messages once they get their new phone. I can picture it now, your mom is switching away from her iPhone and say asks"Do I have to do anything to make sure people with an iP
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Erm, honestly? ... and the senders iPhone should send the message automatically (or configureable on request) again as SMS, as it does with other iPhone users, who are not reachable via internet, ANYWAY!
My device sends an iMessage to +49 0111 987654321
The above number never handchakes with the Apple Server telling it it has received the message. After a reasonable timeout, like with eMails, the sender should get an "MESSAGE UNDELIEVERABLE RECEIPT"
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In the common case that the user still has an iPhone, but it's switched off, or otherwise off the network, you have caused an unnecessary SMS to be sent. Which may cost money.
And the receiver may well end up with duplicated messages.
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Those 'unnecessary' SMS are sent if you have an iPhone, they are not sent if you switch away from it (as the article and some posters here claim).
My GF lives in france, when I'm in france I'm not in the internet. All her iMessages reach me as SMS and my SMS I sent in france reach her 'normaly'.
Vice versa if she is in germany.
If she is on the internet and so am I, we both receive each others messages as iMessage (also in other countries if we have WLAN).
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As other posters have pointed out, there's an option in iOS to default to SMS if iMessage fails. Which seems about right. You have it switched on. But anyone who doesn't want to incur SMS charges can have it switched off.
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If you stop using WhatsApp or those other services you'll also lose messages.
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The problem with that is it's not "failing silently". The message is sending and the phone is just seen as off because it hasn't been disassociated with your Apple account.
Though, I'm sure there must be way to test for this...
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So have I, however trying to understand the other posts. It seems if you once had an iPhone and remove the SIM and then put that SIM into another phone (non iOS) all your friends iMessages/iPhones believe you are still reachable via iMessage and their iPhones don't realize that they need to send the message as text message.
Re:WTF (Score:5, Insightful)
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So for every one of your friends that you text and who uses iOS, it will be by default. When I think about how often I text someone new, compared to how often I exchange texts with someone I have previously interacted, this would be an awful lot like 'default' to me.
Re:WTF (Score:5, Informative)
Well lets see. If they try and message you after you've gotten your new droid/winphone/etc, they'll eventually get an error, if the previous conversation hasn't expired (expiry seems to take somewhere between an hour and a day, probably depending on network conditions). If it's expired and you're no longer on iMessage, or if they've had an error and try to send another message, it will go via SMS. Nothing default about it. Except in the case of an unexpired conversation, it's transparent.
If I want to remove a phone permanently from my iMessage account, I go into my iMessage settings, select the number and remove it. It's even easier if you own the device and it's part of your support profile, you can just do it through the Apple website. I own an iPad but my iPhone is employer-issue.
This iMessage stuff has been part of the iOS environment for literally years. This article is hyperventilating over nothing and is worthy only of a weary eye-roll.
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That's fine if you know about it, but most people don't since there is no warning on the app or provided in the box with the phone. Most people's experience will be that their SMS messages stop working and are with lost in a black hole or delivered to some random device.
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That's fine if you know about it, but most people don't since there is no warning on the app or provided in the box with the phone. Most people's experience will be that their SMS messages stop working and are with lost in a black hole or delivered to some random device.
My heart bleeds that in your imagination, you as an Apple hater will be inconvenienced when you exchange your nonexistant iPhone for an Android phone. Real users aren't having a problem.
Re:WTF (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong - you can go back and forth between SMS and iMessage in the same thread. No deleting anything.
Messages.app now figures out when outgoing messages aren't delivered to an iMessage recipient, then resend automatically as an SMS.
Re:WTF (Score:5, Informative)
no. this whole thing makes no sense. when I text a number 213-555-2232 the text message goes to that number. if it's an iphone then it goes through apple's imessage server and appears as a blue bubble. if it's a samsung it goes through the cell provider network and shows up as a green bubble. it's completely transparent. if you have an iphone but then port your number to a samsung, then my bubbles become green instead of blue. completely illogical.
Re:WTF (Score:4, Funny)
wow so iphone users secretly recognize their peers with the use of blue bubbles, wtf is that. It's a really really huge conspiracy. Get turned down for a job, ot your date ran away after you text that you're waiting for her.. that's because you didn't have the blue buble.
If you leave your iphone and get green bubbled then you will lose your rank and secretive social status. Welcome to the underclass!
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Are you really that much of an idiot? Using two colors to differentiate between a SMS and a non SMS message is simple and logical.
And you go all crazy on us. How do you function in the real world?
Re:WTF (Score:5, Funny)
You must be a blast at parties....
Re: WTF (Score:2, Funny)
Never go full retard.
Re: WTF (Score:5, Insightful)
That is what confuses people. An iphone user sends a text to a phone number so they expect it to go to a phone number but that is not what happens by default.
The default behaviour once your phone number is hijacked by imessage is for the iphone to look up your phone number to find the apple account it is attached to then route the message to ANY device associated with that account.
As a result, if the recipient has any device associated with their apple account and they do not remove their phone number from their apple account imessage will NOT fall back to sms...it will consider the message sent!
Some examples of the confusion of crapple iMESSage default behaviour for the poor ex iphone users I know:
* wife replaced iphone with a Note 3. 3 days later she turned on her ipad and several hijacked texts sent to her phone number showed up there...on her wifi only device
* my niece upgraded from ipgone 3gs to a galaxy and gave the old deactivated/no-sim iphone to her son as a toy after wiping it. For the next few days her son was getting many of the texts that were supposed to go to her phone number
* A coworker received a blackberry z10 to replace an iphone and he started getting texts on his macbook air.
This is maddening insane default behaviour. Apple is supposed to be intuitive and this is the opposite. No sane person would expect to have a text sent to a phone number to get sent to some other random device that has no phone connection when they switch phones but that is what happens. Imessage is not as smart, simple or as sensible as you suggest it is.
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Hey frothing lunatic! Guess what! It's not default behavior. When you set up any new iDevice it asks whether you want it to be the recipient of iMessages, and prompts you to choose which accounts. So deselect the phone number from the list.
If you selected the phone number from the list, and now you want it to magically behave differently without you telling it to, well, what can I say. You're used to the way Apple things Just Work. Throw a non-Apple device into the pool and things stop Just Working.
Re: WTF (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, because Apple hides these feature descriptions in out of sight places called public websites. I'm sorry if you didn't rtfm. Why is that a problem for anyone but those stupid enough to buy and use a device without reading or knowing how it works?
http://www.apple.com/osx/apps/... [apple.com]
http://www.apple.com/ios/messa... [apple.com]
I love how stupid people get mad at others when they do something stupid.
Re: WTF (Score:4, Insightful)
Everything you described is NOT default behavior. The default behavior is for iMessage not to be on. If you have an iPhone and don't turn on iMessage then texting works just as normal.
To be clear, you have to actively assign your phone number to iMessage, and then assign email addresses and devices to that account.
The whole point of iMessage is to disassociate your phone service as the controller of your SMS and have the control be given to iMessage. This is in part so that you CAN send and receive texts on things like your MacBook over WiFi with no cell connectivity and all transparently.
Sure, I can see how it may be confusing for people who stick their heads in the sand and wave their hands in the air when it comes to reading instructions, but changing the way the system works to accommodate the ignorant isn't the answer.
That's like blaming Google hosted email for hijacking a domain's email.
Why did your wife's iPad get the text message? Because she configured it to do just that. Same goes for your coworker's MacBook Air. As far as your niece goes, the phrase "after she wiped it" is false.
This comes from someone traveling in another country right now who just had to send several iMessages from my MacBook Air that would've cost $$$ in international texting had Apple not set things up the way they did.
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if you have an iphone but then port your number to a samsung, then my bubbles become green instead of blue. completely illogical.
That's what you would -expect- to happen. But when you port your number to samsung, your friends will actually continue to send blue bubbles to your number. Therein lies the problem: there's no way to unregister a number from iMessage.
Some of your friends may enable the SMS-fallback option, which will forward some of their messages as green bubbles. But group messages will never be forwarded. Your iPhone-using friends will just think you're ignoring them.
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there's no way to unregister a number from iMessage.
Other than the ways set out in TFS and TFA.
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there's no way to unregister a number from iMessage.
Other than the ways set out in TFS and TFA.
Those methods don't quite accomplish it. You can unregister your number from Apple's central directory, not from the persistent iMessage cache of individual phones.
After unregistering, new contacts won't send iMessages to your number, but existing contacts will continue to send iMessages for weeks or months, as your number lingers in their phone's iMessage cache.
I unregistered a number back in November. Most of my iPhone contacts see that number as green by now, but a few persistent devices -still- show i
Re:WTF (Score:5, Informative)
And any other iOS user wont be able to send you txts as they will be attempting via iMessage by default.
As long as the "fall back to SMS if iMessage fails" setting is on, then there's no problem even in this case. The iMessage will fail, and then Messages will resend it as a text message without any intervention needed.
I guess having to look at the settings of a phone is pretty "obscure" though.
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Specifically: Settings -> Messages -> Send as SMS
Note if iMessage is not enabled, this setting will not be available (duh).
Re:WTF (Score:4, Informative)
there's a setting "send as SMS" which is lableed "Send as SMS when iMessage is unavailable. Carrier messaging rates may apply." it's not that hard to find - in the settings menu go to Messages and there it is. also it's on by default, I never even noticed it or thought about it.
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I agree it should be on by default - however, people being what they are, I'm sure in that case we'd have read at least one Slashdot story where Joe Blow screams about his unexpected $100 SMS bill because he didn't notice there wasn't a data connection and he sent 100 text messages while on vacation in Mexico.
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My phone number was attached to my iMessage account.
Once I no longer had an iPhone, anyone who previously sent me texts via iMessage (my phone number was still attached) went to my iPad. It's partially my fault for never using it, but it weighs approximately 35kg and feels like trying to hold my 46 inch TV in my hands. Though it is bloody beautiful.
Anyway, the message didn't fail, because it was successfully delivered
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As long as the "fall back to SMS if iMessage fails" setting is on, then there's no problem even in this case. The iMessage will fail, and then Messages will resend it as a text message without any intervention needed.
Alas, the SMS fallback doesn't work properly. Group messages always fail silently, regardless of the setting.
This is easily repeatable, if you have three iPhones. Try it yourself!
1. Disable iMessage on phone C, but leave it enabled on phones A and B.
2. Send a group message from phone A to phones B and C. It will fail silently. The message will never be received by phone C.
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As long as the "fall back to SMS if iMessage fails" setting is on, then there's no problem even in this case. The iMessage will fail, and then Messages will resend it as a text message without any intervention needed.
Alas, the SMS fallback doesn't work properly. Group messages always fail silently, regardless of the setting.
This is easily repeatable, if you have three iPhones. Try it yourself!
1. Disable iMessage on phone C, but leave it enabled on phones A and B. 2. Send a group message from phone A to phones B and C. It will fail silently. The message will never be received by phone C.
How did you "disable" iMessage on phone C? Was wifi disabled on the device you sent from? If wifi was on it will try to keep sending to phone C via wifi until it times out. Someone in the thread earlier pointed out that it may take up to a day for the error to get thrown. Now, that may be your cell provider and not iMessage. I do have multiple iDevices so I will test your theory this weekend. I have gotten delayed messages and delayed outbound failures but those happened with my cell carrier before I had an
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You can just switch iMessages off in phone C's settings. Or transfer the SIM from phone C into non-Apple phone.
Basically, the problem is that SMS-fallback doesn't work for group messages. So iPhone users can't send group messages to former iPhone-users.
It's not an SMS-delivery problem. Phone A never sends an SMS. Phone A sends only a "blue" message to the entire group, and never notices that phone C didn't receive it.
I switched away from IOS months ago, but my iPhone-using friends still see my number as
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If you tell Apple that you want to receive iMessage messages on your phone but them disable it on the phone, then iMessage still works for groups, but you won't get them. It's like redirecting you email to /dev/null and then bitching when nobody emails you anymore.
That's exactly what its like. But if you ever want to switch to a non-Apple phone, you have no other option. There is no way to "sign out" from iMessage.
I switched to a Samsung months ago, and some of my iPhone-using friends STILL see my number
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It did not in my case, but i did admit that i had this problem a while ago. Perhaps its not as brain-dead as it was back then.
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Not if you enable SMS fallback. It's simply just resent as an SMS.
Re:WTF (Score:5, Informative)
No. This story is stupid. If you leave your number associated with your iPhone, and your iPhone signed into iMessage, other iPhones will try to send you iMessages (they'll give up and send regular texts after a little bit). There are multiple, simple ways to sign your number out of iMessage, leaving it a regular text receiving number.
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There are multiple, simple ways to sign your number out of iMessage, leaving it a regular text receiving number.
No. There is no effective way to "sign your number out," because individual phones cache iMessage numbers for months. If you sign out today, your friends will continue to send "blue bubbles" to your number for months, because your number is in their iMessage cache. It doesn't matter that you've signed out.
Signing out prevents new contacts from iMessaging you, but it has no effect on your existing contacts. They will keep sending "blue bubbles" to your number for months to come. The only effective way t
Re: WTF (Score:2)
No, their iMessage app will resort to traditional SMS to send the message. No lock-in. This is a non-story, and only serves Samsung for the plug.
Turn off iMessages ? (Score:5, Informative)
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Off the top of my head: someone upgraded their iPhone and got a new one and had a spare, they bought a used phone, or went into the Apple store and bought the phone at retail price.
If you've got a phone which just uses a SIM card, you can swap phones pretty easily.
Hell, my SIM card has been through about 6-7 phones in the last 14 years (which is how long I've had the number).
You can't buy from a carrier w/o the data plan because the subsidy factors in the cost of your data
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I don't have a contract, and will never have another one again. When I was on a contract, I hated being locked in when I discovered that AT&T sucks in interior Alaska and couldn't switch without incurring a penalty. (While in Cantwell, I had a signal, but couldn't make a call: They couldn't tell me why. There were at least two more reasons I wanted to switch away.)
I have a vague memory, though, of reading that carriers can get the model of your phone, and will happily add data if they find you're
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unlimited calling ad unlimited texting
That should be "and," rather than "ad." GCI doesn't serve up ads as you use their service.
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In which case you call them up, inform them you didn't want or ask for a data plan, and that they can't legally add something to your bill without your consent and to credit your bill because you didn't sign up for it.
They certainly can't say you're not allowed to have a data-capable phone which doesn't h
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They certainly can't say you're not allowed to have a data-capable phone which doesn't have a data plan.
Is that right? [techdirt.com] I thought that their networks are sufficiently under their control to allow them to exclude whomever (and whatever) they want. Am I wrong?
Perhaps a carrier like T-Mobile ignores out-of-defined-use of smartphones, but do other carriers?
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Wow, perhaps I have misunderstood the douchebaggery of phone companies.
I fail to see how it is legal to decree that since your phone is capable of having data, that they can force you to pay for it.
That's completely irrational, and sounds pretty sketchy from a legal perspective -- you've signed me up for something because you figure I should be paying for it? And that's legal??
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Re: Turn off iMessages ? (Score:3, Interesting)
We purged our household of iphones last year and went through this little "eff you" crapple experince. Nobody tells you that apple hijacks your sms permanently by default and it must be manually taken back if you switch platforms.
After 3 days of missing texts the wife turned on her ipad to watch some netflix and saw all these texts. After going on a treasure hunt we figured out how to free iphone-source texts from the imessage prison via the apple website as the old iphone was gone.
Apple makes this harder
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You can just turn of iMessages and the conversation reverts to plain text messages. It has always worked for me.
Try a group conversation between 2 or more iMessage users, and one former-iMessage user.
Apple and Microsoft are so much alike (Score:2, Informative)
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When I got my iMac it converted my photos from my camera to some iPhoto library from which it was quite difficult to take it out in simple jpg files.
File -> Export works for me. If you want to access a bunch at a time, they're in [your user directory]/Pictures/iPhoto Library.
And for those who haven't followed link about the "obscure workaround":
To do this, simply tap and hold on the undelivered message and a “Send as Text Message” option should appear in the context menu. This works even when “Send as SMS” is disabled in your settings, allowing you to decide when you’d rather send a text message for expediency or simply leave it to wait until the recipient’s device is back online.
I'm not saying that Apple never does lock-in, but both those seem like pretty weak examples.
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"quite difficult to take it out in simple jog files." /Masters///
// contains the original file organized by timestamp. That's too hard for you?
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It is inside the iPhoto Library, which is really just a directory. Here is a listing showing the iPhoto Library as a directory and its contents:
synnax:~ radar$ ls -1F ~/Pictures/iPhoto\ Library/
AlbumData.xml
Apple TV Photo Cache/
Attachments/
Auto Import/
Backup/
Contents/
Data@
Data.noindex@
Database/
Info.plist
Library.data
Library.iPhoto
Library6.iPhoto
Masters/
Modified@
Originals@
Previews/
ProjectDBVersion.plist
Projects.db
SlideshowAssets/
ThemeCache
Thumbnails/
iLifeShared/
iPhoto.ipspot
iPhotoAux.db
iPhotoLock.data
iPhotoM
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Irrelevant (Score:2)
Many telco plans (possibly even most) no longer charge for texts. They already been squeezed out of the market by social media. These days data is all that matters and that's what telco's primarily charge for.
-Matt
Idiotic point (Score:2)
This is the same with Google Hangouts, WhatsApp, BBM, and all the rest. At least I can copy my iPhone's messages to a PC and archive them.
Apple's security documents show just how secure it actually is, with iMessage using public key cryptography [techcrunch.com]. Are we going to also complain that PGP locks you in too now?
WTF? It's 2014 (Score:2)
Try pulling your data out of most services and importing it. Good luck with that.
Did not have this problem. (Score:2)
I switched from iPhone to Android after using iMessage extensively and did not have this problem. So clearly it depends on some particular status/configuration of all the involved parties.
Does this depend on:
1) Moving the SIM from your old phone to your new phone
2) Leaving your old phone on and connected to WiFi so that iMessages still sees you as being on network
Or something like that?
I know that when I switched, it was a really quick thing—new Android phone arrived via USPS, pulled my old SIM, put i
This is not really an issue when you switch (Score:2)
This is not really an issue when you switch phones, the problem is the other users has set to always to use iMessage. Normally, if a "message" don't reach an iPhone user in a set amount of time, the system defaults to sending it as a text. That's the default behavior of iOS out of the box. Some users have turn it off in Messages settings therefore the iMessage never delivers the message and continues to wait it out.
Why would someone turn off "Send as SMS"?
Few reasons:
1) they're on Verizon or ATT and it's
Not Always (Score:5, Interesting)
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There's a support page [apple.com] for that.
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But on any other phone I can still continue to receive texts from everyone. With apple if the the other person doesn't delete the message thread they can't reach you. This has nothing to do with what I can do to fix the issue. Apple's version of free always comes with a hefty price.
Why is imessage opt put instead of opt in if not to create a vendor lock in situation.
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Isn't there, though? (Score:5, Informative)
Good. Please explain how it does work.
Per this old article:
http://asia.cnet.com/faq-whats... [cnet.com]
It seems to work like this.
You go to the messaging app. This is the default messaging app. It does text messages (SMS), and it does iMessages. So far so good.
You enter a number or directly a contact. It checks if that contact is believed to use iMessage by way of the phone number. If it believes the contact uses iMessage, it will send it as an iMessage, otherwise it will send it as a text message.
Still so far so good.
Now that contact stops using iMessage - the example given being that they switch devices, keeping the same number. They didn't "turn iMessage off", because why on Earth does that seem like a logical thing to have to do? Especially if, say, they switched devices because their iPhone died; in which case, they can't turn it off (or can they? Oh yes, they can contact Apple Support; http://support.apple.com/kb/TS... [apple.com] ).
Now you send them a message. The iMessage app is clueless and sends an iMessage because hey, nobody ever told it that the contact is no longer using iMessage. iMessage will eventually come back and say that it failed, and you as the sender either send again or shrug it off, but it might not occur to you to send as a text message instead. If you even can. Yes, if it already failed, you can hold the text and force that to send as text message. But the very next one you send is going to be an iMessage again. Of course, you can disable iMessage on your end, but that disables sending iMessage to all of your contacts. Short of deleting pre-existing iMessages for a given contact, it doesn't seem there's a way to just flip the "this contact uses iMessage" bit.
But here's the rub.. they shouldn't have to explicitly set anything at all.
A. Receive iMessage from contact -> set iMessage bit on contact.
B. Receive text message from contact -> clear iMessage bit on contact if present.
C. Failed iMessage -> re-send. Failed again? -> re-send as text. Delivered? (if supported by the networks) -> clear iMessage bit. Otherwise, see A/B.
D. User enables / disables iMessage explicitly -> set state in central registry (Apple ID is involved, right?).
E. Every once in a while, send as an iMessage anyway if the central registry suggests that the user really should have iMessage because they never turned it off. Worst case: the send ends up with situation C said 'every once in a while', which would be transparent to them. Best case: after a few of those, even the central registry could get a clue and disable the iMessage bit on their end, allowing it to propagate.
Having the onus of 'iMessage bit' state at the sender's side be solely on the end of the recipient is stupid.
I wouldn't say that it is a case of lock-in, though. Just a suboptimal approach. (And yes, I realize there's potential issues with A-E above as well). The bit that makes it peculiar, to say the least, is that this problem has been complained about since at least the end of 2011. Just not by enough people for it to be "an actual story", I guess.
Correct me if any of the above is wrong - I'm certainly not an iPhone user so I've only got the most basic of google search results as my sources.
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They didn't "turn iMessage off", because why on Earth does that seem like a logical thing to have to do?
Because they originally turned iMessage on.
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And then they turned their phone off. Do you expect Firefox to still be refreshing your tabs while your computer is powered off and dismantled?
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They may have turned their phone off, but that doesn't mean that they turned off their iPod Touch, iPad, or Mac that are all capable of receiving iMessages.
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I'll admit I haven't ever used an Apple product and so don't know the details of how iMessage works, plus it's 3 am and I can't sleep. However, I don't recall other Apple devices being mentioned, rather a PHONE NUMBER being moved from one kind of phone to another - and suddenly what people may have THOUGHT were SMS messages suddenly not appearing. If they were receiving the messages on their iPad, iPod or Mac instead there wouldn't be as much of a problem with going days without getting any messages and not
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Did they? I thought iMessage defaulted to on with the introduction of its feature as part of the standard messaging app in iOS 5? Or is the act of upgrading / buying it new equivalent to 'turning it on'?
That as an aside (albeit an important one), you didn't really answer the (rhetorical, I might add) question. Why would it seem like a logical thing to have tod
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>Because they originally turned iMessage on.
Completely erase your iphone and set it back up.
Setting up iMessage is one of the first 'default' screens that you come to in the processes. As in put your user and pass here with a little skip option on the bottom of the screen. They didn't explicitly find the setting and turn it on. It presents itself in a manner that leads the user to believe that it must be turned on.
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Yah, you're pretty much right. Honestly, I dunno why this is such a big deal. Apple's intent here is to bypass the carriers - anyone remember the at&t mms debacle?
If you're using Apple devices, iMessage is great since it's encrypted end to end and 'just works'. If you're using something else, you can still get messages from iOS devices - I do this all the time. I have friends that have left iMessage and sms still works fine.
Not sure what the big conspiracy is here, except more Samsung fud..?
Everyone is
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You pretty much got it right. What I'm unclear about, however, is why this is an issue at all. If an iMessage fails to deliver, the Messages app on iOS falls back to sending it as an SMS instead, which should still get through to someone on their new, non-iPhone device. The only reason I can imagine it not doing so is if it thinks it actually succeeded in sending the message, but that would only happen if the recipient had configured an iPod Touch, iPad, or Mac computer to also receive iMessages on their be
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As I can't mod you up - have a "Thank You" comment. I have to admit that a lot of the google search results are very unclear on whether there's any fallback on delivery failure (recipient not using iMessage) and whether or not that is the same as a fallback on send failure (sender has no data connectivity, say).
If it falls back on delivery automatically, then I don't know why this is an issue either; again, that would be transparent. Except in the case you mention.. which I can certainly imagine being a b
Re:Isn't there, though? (Score:4, Informative)
You are correct about the behavior, but I think I can explain why Apple made the choices at work here.
It turns out iMessages are cryptographically secured with public key cryptography using a per device key. There is a recent Techcrunch Article [techcrunch.com] that details what they have released, but it appears to be a highly secure implementation. Each device has a private key that never leaves the device. An iMessage is actually encrypted to multiple public keys so each device can read it. No one outside the device holder, not even Apple, has the ability to decrypt messages.
I think the argument Apple would make, and I would agree with is to fall back to SMS would be insecure. It's possible to conceive of ways an attacker could prevent an iMessage from being delivered (a Denial of Service attack, for instance). That could force a fallback to SMS, which is often not well secured and/or permanently archived by the carrier or governments. Worse, with your algorithm simply sending someone a text message from a spoofed source would clear the bit, and might result in an insecure communication.
As a result, I would argue if you value strong encryption and privacy, Apple's choices make perfect sense. Turn on strong crypto when you can, and don't automatically fall back to something without strong crypto.
Re:Learned the hard way (Score:5, Insightful)
on the iphone, you just sign out of imessage. go to settings, messages, send and recieve. tap on your apple id and tap sign out. Then apple will know to send any texts to your number as SMS not imessage. although it shouldn't be a big dealio because when your friends send texts the imessage should fall back to a SMS when the imessage fails.
I guess it's a step when switching, but it's hardly a lock-in.
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Its not a big deal now, but it was when it first started happening to people and no one knew what the hell was going on.
In my case, iOS friends messages never did fall back, and they all went into the bit bucket.
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This is what I keep coming back to. You have to initially turn on (log into) iMessage to start using it. And there are complaints because you have to log out for the service to stop working? And this is a lock-in strategy? Wow.
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on the iphone, you just sign out of imessage. go to settings, messages, send and recieve. tap on your apple id and tap sign out. Then apple will know to send any texts to your number as SMS not imessage.
Signing out doesn't solve the problem, because individual phones cache iMessage numbers for months.
Signing out will prevent new contacts from iMessaging you. But it won't remove your number from the persistent cache in your existing contacts' phones. They will continue to iMessage you, no matter that you've signed out.
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Lets correct a few misunderstandings there newbie
Apple was one of the movers and shakers for USB adoption. They were the first top tier manufacturer ( HP/Dell/Sony/etc ) to include USB only systems ( by that I mean no backward compatibility ) and were criticized for it at the time.
Apple didn't support HDMI on their computers ( but do on mac mini and apple TV even today) , but there was little purpose before then to even consider it. It is electronically identical to DVI, which in the late 90's early 2000's
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Unfortunately I had commented already, but you deserve modpoints.
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Stupid people and people in loser countries do, evidently. The rest of us are on no-contract Virgin Mobile.
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The point, I think, is that this feature was turned on by default... which meant iphone users were communicating via iMessage unless the explicitly disabled it.
But if you were ever using iMessage with somebody in the past, then if you switch phones, then the person you were formerly using iMessage with will no longer even be able to send you any text messages without shutting off iMgessage on their end as well.
If you don't see how that's a problem for users today who may be considering moving away from
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The point, I think, is that this feature was turned on by default... which meant iphone users were communicating via iMessage unless the explicitly disabled it.
But if you were ever using iMessage with somebody in the past, then if you switch phones, then the person you were formerly using iMessage with will no longer even be able to send you any text messages without shutting off iMgessage on their end as well.
If you don't see how that's a problem for users today who may be considering moving away from Apple products, I'm not sure what is.
Yeah, it is a problem for switchers, and those who communicate with them, and probably should be addressed in a better way. However, it isn't really a "lock-in" type of situation, in that I doubt that enough people know about it before thinking about switching to have any impact on the number of switchers. If anything, it makes it more likely that a switcher will not come back since it creates a bad "last impression".
It is challenging to figure out a way to design the system to allow for good inter-operatio
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This is false... I know this is anecdotal, but I currently own an iPhone, am strongly considering switching when my contract is up (two more months), and had never once even thought about this feature of the iPhone before reading this story, and it's not something I ever would have particularly cared about, so I never once explicitly turned on iMessage on my iPhone. In spite of this, I discovered that it was indeed enabled on my device. I bought the phone brand ne
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The consequences of switching are that apparently you can't accept even perfectly ordinary text messages from iphone users who you once used iMessage with. Any iphone users that were former contacts who may not have turned iMessage off on their phones will have to now switch iMessage off to continue to send any text messages to you at all unless you had the foresight to turn iMessage off when it first came out.
So the consequences of switching are felt by people who may not have ever bothered to switch.
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And that's not vendor-lock in how?
Seriously... if an iphone user switches to a non-iphone, it would make much more sense if other iphones trying to send messages to a former iphone user would fall back to ordinary text message protocols. But they don't do that... and a person who swithes from an iphone to another phone will now have to jump through hoops like what you describe.