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It's virtually impossible to read old iMessages and they take up tons of storage

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Re: It's virtually impossible to read old iMessages and they take up tons of storage

#111

Post by ArchOversight »

codetrotter wrote: post #100
KishanBagaria wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, with a catch: it requires an always on Mac (which can be in the cloud) or a jailbroken iOS device. We plan to make it work without the catch. I've worked with 10+ messaging platforms so far and Apple's protocol is the most obfuscated and complicated to reverse engineer. Apple has invested millions of dollars to make the iMessage protocol super hard to reverse engineer. It's how they sell tons of iPhones after al…

> it requires an always on Mac (which can be in the cloud) That’s surprising. How come?

Likely because each iMessage receiving device has a private key to decrypt the messages, and senders encrypt the iMessage against all the keys in your key bag.

To access iCloud and or services you also need to have a device security key that is tied to genuine hardware.

Re: It's virtually impossible to read old iMessages and they take up tons of storage

#112

Post by cjohansson »

throwawaysea wrote: post #82

Many comments here are suggesting you can look at the DB on a Mac. What about people who have Windows computers? Is there a way to extract that information? I also have a similar gripe with the browser. How can I sync my Safari tabs that are open on my iPhone with my PC?

You need to buy a Mac for that, it's all part of their plan.

I would recommend switching iOS browser to be able to sync your browsing across vendors

Re: It's virtually impossible to read old iMessages and they take up tons of storage

#113

Post by KishanBagaria »

leipert wrote: post #85
KishanBagaria wrote: post #65

Apple's chat.db has an esoteric schema owing to the fact they never designed it from the ground up and instead kept adding new columns and tables with each macOS release. This makes their queries super complicated with multiple joins. Once you have the schema figured out, it's dead easy to build a third-party client that works better than the official one. Even search works great with a simple LIKE query but Apple re…

Looks cool, will give it a try. A little feedback on the landing page: Almost turned away because I thought „Sign up with Google“ was the only choice and I missed the little „Prefer entering email instead?“ below. I just prefer not having a Google account ;) Maybe the styling of that link could be adjusted so that it isn’t glanced over that easily.

Good call. We'll de-emphasize Google, it's just for convenience atm.

Re: It's virtually impossible to read old iMessages and they take up tons of storage

#114

Post by 4f77616973 »

dave_aiello wrote: post #87
cryptoz wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Related, I emailed Tim Cook about iPhone sensor future plans, and a high-level exec of like 25+ years wrote back to me within a week. Apple is remarkably good at getting back to cold emails to top execs.

I concur with that. I had a problem that appeared to be a corner case with Apple Pay. I wrote a paper letter to Tim Cook about it, and within a week got contacted by a staff person in his office. He worked exclusively with me to identify issues I had not considered, and followed up on all of the direct effects and side effects until they were resolved.

I emailed Craig about several controversies and he was very quick to reply to me. We last talked about the rumor that Apple was giving iPhones trust scores.

Re: It's virtually impossible to read old iMessages and they take up tons of storage

#115

Post by codeulike »

alsetmusic wrote: post #60
codeulike wrote: post #35

On a similar note, deleting old photos to save space on iCloud is very hard. I could mass-delete photos older than a certain date in the Mac Photos app (or whatever its called these days) using a smart album, but then that mass deletion would not sync to iCloud. Or, I could log into iCloud via a web page and select a load of photos (but not more than 1000 at a time) and delete them - but then it takes ages - like abo…

> I could mass-delete photos older than a certain date in the Mac Photos app (or whatever its called these days) using a smart album, but then that mass deletion would not sync to iCloud. Why wouldn’t it sync? If I did this right now, my expectation is that it would sync. Is there a limitation in how this works?

I expected it to, but it didn't. The photos got deleted locally but not on iCloud. Maybe it was a glitch? Thats what happened to me.

Re: It's virtually impossible to read old iMessages and they take up tons of storage

#116

Post by getcrunk »

KishanBagaria wrote: post #65

Apple's chat.db has an esoteric schema owing to the fact they never designed it from the ground up and instead kept adding new columns and tables with each macOS release. This makes their queries super complicated with multiple joins. Once you have the schema figured out, it's dead easy to build a third-party client that works better than the official one. Even search works great with a simple LIKE query but Apple re…

Does what's app have and open api? Otherwise how did you integrate it?

Re: It's virtually impossible to read old iMessages and they take up tons of storage

#117

Post by xoa »

KishanBagaria wrote: post #88
slowraise wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is texts.com a work around for sending live imessages on a PC?

Yes, with a catch: it requires an always on Mac (which can be in the cloud) or a jailbroken iOS device. We plan to make it work without the catch. I've worked with 10+ messaging platforms so far and Apple's protocol is the most obfuscated and complicated to reverse engineer. Apple has invested millions of dollars to make the iMessage protocol super hard to reverse engineer. It's how they sell tons of iPhones after al…

Looks like a super cool project. I'm always happy to see new client-side software for communication protocols written that aims to improve upon built-in! And iMessages in particular could certainly use it. With the demise of iTunes, it now feels like iMessages is probably one of the most crufty-but-heavily-utilized user facing pieces of software Apple puts out. Maybe they have some long term plans to refactor it ala iTunes but yeesh.

This bit did make me wonder though:

>We plan to make it work without the catch.

Out of curiosity, do really think that's realistic, or even desirable long term? iMessage is ultimately an Apple service that runs heavily on Apple's infrastructure, and is directly subsidized by sales of their highly vertically integrated hardware platforms. If it turns into a cat-and-mouse fight it seems like they're always going to have the eternal upper hand, which in turn seems like it'd make for a subpar user experience (ie., breaks randomly which for an instant messaging service would be pretty bad). Also seems like they might actually be motivated to respond rather than ignore it since it'd actually be directly leeching their infra if it will work on PCs/Android without a Mac/iDevice purchase in the equation (unlike hackintoshes for example, where whatever debate there is to be had about probably very low "lost sales" it doesn't actually cost them anything).

Obviously you've probably thought this all through, but seems like just requiring an old cheap Mac or old jb'd idevice and thus avoiding Apple might be an easier path. Or alternately just stick to offering a flat out better client with the iMessage bit being Mac-only. Will be interested to see how it goes though!

Re: It's virtually impossible to read old iMessages and they take up tons of storage

#118

Post by swiley »

exolymph wrote: post #81
smoldesu wrote: post #14

We need a better communication standard. Apple made a killing selling their proprietary iMessage layer on top of SMS, but we could be actually making changes in this sector if we all used a standardized protocol. At least then we have a documented interface that we can choose to store however we want, or (perhaps wishful thinking) in a modular style. RCS is a great start, but I've already started to put my money on M…

The problem with decentralized protocols is that centralized ones outcompete them in terms of consumer usage.

XMPP did really well for a while until Google and Facebook decided they didn't want to participate anymore.

Re: It's virtually impossible to read old iMessages and they take up tons of storage

#119

Post by social_quotient »

NoblePublius wrote: post #70

my biggest problem with iOS storage is that if you pay to store a photo in iCloud and then use Messages to send it to 5 friends, you are now paying to store it in iCloud 6x. And of course it’s totally unfair that there is no priced option between 200GB and 1TB. Same with Google Photos.

Kinda dying to know if they dedup on the server? Cause technically speaking if everyone was on Apple then that 1 photo becomes 12 not to mention it getting send to another layer of people.

Re: It's virtually impossible to read old iMessages and they take up tons of storage

#120

Post by koolba »

chmaynard wrote: post #66
closeparen wrote: post #58

On your Mac, iMessages are stored in a SQLite database which you can inspect. https://spin.atomicobject.com/2020/05/22/search-imessage-sql...

That's an undocumented implementation detail. It might change without warning at any time. Are you seriously recommending this as a solution for users who want to be able to read past messages?

I’d imagine it’d be difficult for Apple to migrate to anything substantially different as it’d require rewriting a potentially multi GB file, the space for which many users would not have. It’s effectively a massive, distributed, database migration.
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