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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

#181

Post by crossroadsguy »

4f77616973 wrote: post #109
spenvo wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually did try emailing Tim Cook a few months ago, but I got bounce backs. I tried tim@apple.com and timcook@apple.com but the mailer daemons said the addresses weren't registered. It sounds like a crazy thing to do, but I remembered how Steve Jobs would reply to users' emails and read an article where Tim said he set aside time to read users' emails.[0] [0] - https://www.inc.com/business-insider/tim-cook-wakes-u…

Craig's email is [redacted]. The guy is very chill. It's better you email a software guy about software. Also, be sure to file a bug report / enhancement at https://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

- I’m never filing a bug report ever again on a bug filing system where I don’t get to see the progress in a transparent manner or that I might have to pay for a developer account to see that progress (assuming that’s an option)

- I’m not wasting my time emailing a top level company executive to inform of decades old most basic of bugs because if they don’t know of it then that’s even a bigger problem.

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

#182

Post by crossroadsguy »

slowraise wrote: post #90
esolyt wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really "on top of SMS" though? The way I see, it's just a messaging app like WhatsApp, Telegram etc but they just combined it with the SMS app on their platform. I am failing to see the additional value of combining them. If Google bought WhatsApp and combined it with the stock SMS app of Android, I don't think I would prefer that.

Personally as a college student, all my friends use iPhones still. I have always wanted to switch to andriod, but one of the things that really holds me back is the fact iMessage still feels leagues above how SMS and texting works on andriod. Many subtle features of Imessage really make a difference with the overall texting experience on the iPhone over the long term. Most of my friends do not have whatsapp, and we a…

And I think the biggest of those subtle features is the blue coloured bubble, isn’t it?

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

#183

Post by mdoms »

just-ok wrote: post #47
spenvo wrote: post #2

Author here: the gist is that it's practically impossible to scroll to the beginning of an iMessage chat, and that's the only way to get to the beginning of a conversation. These old conversations take up several gigabytes of space, yet there's no good way to search them (because search for old messages is unreliable). This aspect of the iMessage user experience has remained untouched for a decade, despite everyone's…

If you can remember a term, any term, that was written in the message, you can search & jump to it directly. For my girlfriend and I, it was the bar we went to on our first date. This feature only gives you small subsets (a couple dozen, maybe) messages near the query result, but then you can just search for the last message again and get the next “page,” so to speak. Of course, remembering such a term is hard, which…

Please, please just read the article before posting. Please.

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

#185

Post by breakfastduck »

KishanBagaria wrote: post #129
600frogs wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just took a look at your product, I'm very impressed and have added myself to the waitlist. I'm almost even more impressed by the domain name itself though - how on earth did you manage to bag that domain?!

Bought it at the right time from the right person :)

That alone must be worth some serious money.

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

#186

Post by sneak »

jaredwatts wrote: post #177
sneak wrote: post #142

The complete iMessage history in your backups is also not e2e encrypted, so all of it is readable by Apple. They regularly turn this information over to US federal authorities without a warrant (so, no probable cause) too. Having such a huge trove of history of all of your communications saved that can be accessed by the police or a rogue Apple sysadmin at any time is something that I feel should even make the law-ab…

Messages are not included in backups if you use Messages in iCloud as the backup option. Messages in iCloud also offers end-to-end encryption.

The encryption key for “Messages in iCloud” (a cross-device sync service) gets backed up in the iCloud Backup (which is, as discussed, not e2e and thus readable by Apple), however, backdooring the e2e nature of Messages in iCloud by escrowing the key to Apple in the backup.

If MIC is enabled, iCloud Backup backs up the key, breaking the e2e. If MIC is disabled, iCloud Backup backs up the plaintext message history, breaking the e2e. This is well documented in the Apple KB article 202303 on the topic.

It’s no longer an accident at this point.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusiv...

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303

> Messages in iCloud also uses end-to-end encryption. If you have iCloud Backup turned on, your backup includes a copy of the key protecting your Messages. This ensures you can recover your Messages if you lose access to iCloud Keychain and your trusted devices. When you turn off iCloud Backup, a new key is generated on your device to protect future messages and isn't stored by Apple.

It’s written in a misleading style, but if you read it carefully it is apparent what is happening.

Turning off iCloud Backup is insufficient, as each conversation is backed up twice: once from each side. Your conversation partners’ devices default iCloud Backup to on.

Apple has the ability to read almost every single iMessage sent or received, on a 12-24 hour lag (iCloud Backups happen overnight), from data already on their servers, without ever touching a customer phone. All of the encryption is a handwavey distraction.

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

#187

Post by asterialite »

eli wrote: post #131
ksec wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am convinced iMessages right now is a tool to keep your storage full, push people to buy higher storage iPhone, and pay iCloud Storage backup to increase their Services Revenue. None of the problem listed in the blog post or what you point out are new. They have been there since day one. And it is not that they neglect it either like iTunes or Aperture. They added Memoji! Which is why I am surprised a the popularit…

Never attribute to malice…

Never attribute to malice what you could attribute to a desire for profit.

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

#188

Post by anarazel »

robbyking wrote: post #37
spoonjim wrote: post #8

I save them on the expectation that Apple will someday release a better tool for browsing them. Especially the texts between me and my wife, they are a story of our life from the very first one.

I was in a similar situation with email. In 2005 or so I was migrating to new computer when I found a directory of photos I forgot to back up. Rather than burn them to DVD or upload them to my domain, I decided to just email them to myself. I sent a handful of images, then replied to that same email with the next 10, and so on, until the five dozen or so images were uploaded in a single email thread. When I went to o…

I used gmail to subscribe to lkml at some point. Then switched back to my own email server. Forgot to unsubscribe on gmail. A few years later I deleted that folder. And couldn't open Gmail anymore for weeks, everything would just time out.

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

#189

Post by propogandist »

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…

why the need to sign up with Google? I don't want Google to be associated with text messages.

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

#190

Post by NoblePublius »

social_quotient wrote: post #119
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.

Yeah exactly. It’s nuts.
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