Apple's Revenge: iMessage Might Eat Your Texts If You Switch To Android 415
redletterdave (2493036) writes "When my best friend upgraded from an iPhone 4S to a Galaxy S4, I texted her hello. Unfortunately, she didn't get that text, nor any of the five I sent in the following three days. My iPhone didn't realize she was now an Android user and sent all my texts via iMessage. It wasn't until she called me about going to brunch that I realized she wasn't getting my text messages. What I thought was just a minor bug is actually a much larger problem. One that, apparently, Apple has no idea how to fix. Apple said the company is aware of the situation, but it's not sure how to solve it. One Apple support person said: 'This is a problem a lot of people are facing. The engineering team is working on it but is apparently clueless as to how to fix it. There are no reliable solutions right now — for some people the standard fixes work immediately; many others are in my boat.'"
Re:Fix according to Apple is (Score:5, Informative)
Nope, Turn off iMessage on the iDevice before wiping or tossing. Been there, done that.
iOS: Deactivating iMessage (Score:3, Informative)
http://support.apple.com/kb/ts5185
Seems one just needs to deactivate iMessage before getting rid of their device.
FUD. Pure FUD (Score:5, Informative)
Ok, this is stupid.
I recently switched from iPhone, and had text messages still going to my iPad. A simple google search revealed pages like:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5450235
And many other such solutions.
That requires having or borrowing an iphone or ipad (Basically, go to settings, iMessage, login with you apple id then tell it not to use iMessage for your phone number).
According to:
http://www.imore.com/text-issues-switching-iphone-android-heres-fix
You can call 1-800-MY-APPLE and have them do it.
Apple Registered Devices (Score:5, Informative)
It was a while ago, so it's possible this might not be the exact right location; but, I do know that it was "removing registered devices" that I did. This seems right.
IIRC (Score:5, Informative)
IIRC this is actually an issue with the sending devices not being aware that the target contact no longer has iMessage enabled.
It's trickier than it seems because iMessage will route to your Mac, iPad, and iPhone. It doesn't know if you just haven't signed in recently or if you're gone forever. If I read a message on my Mac, it is a successful delivery, even if I tossed my iPhone in a lake and swore off cell phones forever.
Apple should add a portal to manage this on icloud.com so you can see all your devices and enable/disable them from iMessage. Then the iMessage servers should reply when a device certificate is used that is disabled or deleted, causing the sending device to update its records.
Remember - Apple acts as a key exchange system but the actual private keys only exist on individual devices; the sending device re-encrypts the message for each recipient.
Dupe (Score:5, Informative)
Time to copy all high moderated posts from the older article. Actually, there is no need: given that the purpose of posting this article is to bring the echo chamber rambling that this is why apple suck, simply posting "that's why I don't have an iPhone" is enough for +5 insightful.
Re:"No reliable solution" (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Fix according to Apple is (Score:5, Informative)
Go to the website and do it there?
Samsung has a nice right up on how to resolve the problem using any number of methods:
http://www.samsung.com/us/supp... [samsung.com]
Have you people not heard of Google?
Re: Auto switches (Score:3, Informative)
I can't show you any evidence either but my experience after being given a loan iPhone by my carrier in exchange for my galaxy s3 was that my iPhone owning friends could not message me and it did not fallback sms, this did not correct itself even after many days, by then I had no confidence that the issue would correct itself. Most of the suggested solutions around the net did nothing. The only way I could fix it was to borrow another IPhone, link iMessage to my phone number and then turn it off. It was not as trivial as you would like to think and less technical users would be stuffed.
Re:Fix according to Apple is (Score:1, Informative)
They have a "right up"? Really?
Re:Auto switches (Score:5, Informative)
For 99% of cases, that's exactly what happens. Unfortunately, there seems to be a bug where in some cases that doesn't happen, and iMessage continues to try routing the SMS to the old iDevice, even though it's no longer valid. The bug was actually reported here back in February [slashdot.org] (making this story a dupe).
Re:Auto switches (Score:4, Informative)
Interesting that the "story" - such that it is - contains no links to substantiate such a huge issue
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=sms+wont+... [lmgtfy.com]
Single person has annoying but minor problem texting random social contact, assumes huge conspiracy and general incompetenceæ
Yeah, its a well known and widespread problem. Sending and receiving after switching away from an iphone.
Everyone I know who has an iphone and switched to an android has encountered it, along with related issues resulting from travelling with an iphone and disabling data temporarily, and so on. Sometimes the incantations apple prescribes to fix it work, sometimes the carrier has to do something to get it working again, and some just refuse to work no matter what they do.
Re:Fix according to Apple is (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.verizonwireless.com/support/how_to_use/cpo_activation.html
Re:Auto switches (Score:5, Informative)
Just not true, or at least it wasn't a few months ago. My daughter switched to Android and I couldn't text her until she finally remembered her Apple ID and we could log into their servers and disable her account. We used the Samsung page for guidance, and it worked just fine. But by itself, my phone kept silently failing to send her messages.
"Archives for Nerds", not "News"? (Score:5, Informative)
This is not "new" and should not be a top story. Here [apple.com] is a forum post started June 13, 2013 regarding this same issue. That same article discusses pretty much everything I have seen here, and gives the same fixes. Vodafone has a video posted from August 8th 2013 for how to fix the most common causes of this problem which can be found here [youtube.com].
Slashdot has had discussion on this same topic, and nope I am not going to google that for people too.
Re:FUD. Pure FUD (Score:5, Informative)
it's similar to the far more annoying issue in the google play store where you can't control you region and sometimes gets region locked to a region you are no longer in. So when I bought my phone and went abroad for a trip, the play store bound itself to that country and when I came back refused to unbind, even going as far to wipe the phone, wipe all address and credit card info in google wallet, and reconnect.
Instead it took a week of back and forth with google help for them to just change a setting in the background that force bound my phone to the country I wanted. Of course, now that I have moved to a different country, I have another host of issues I'll have to go through this again.
Both systems have idiotic limitations, for no good reason (and no, limiting which store I bind myself to based on copyright restrictions on a limited portion of the store is foolish, that should be at the app level with a quick IP address location check).
Oddly, this is one of the best parts of the apple store. I can freely rebind myself to any store I want, regardless of my current IP. I just need a method of payment valid for that country and have no balance in my account.
Re:Fix according to Apple is (Score:4, Informative)
Yes here it is, http://support.apple.com/kb/TS... [apple.com], basically deactivate iMessage (as long as you have a iphone) and of course a list of things that don't work. As well as of course contacting Apple Support which is free 'er' as long as "Most Apple products come with 90 days of complimentary phone support and a one-year limited warranty. We recommend that you check your coverage before contacting us." otherwise you have to pay for it sucka, mwah ha ha. So yeah, basically a big ole bag of dicks move by Apple. What should happen, the crap arse iMessage service should be able to recognised when the recipient has not has not received the message and notify the sender accordingly with the option of sending an SMS, not target the ex user with bill from Apple 'EX'-Customer Support.
Re:Fix according to Apple is (Score:5, Informative)
That's actually what does happen by default. If iMessage fails to send for any reason and there is an associated phone number an iPhone will use SMS.