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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

#261

Post by petemir »

I have an awful problem with iMessage, that also speaks IMHO about the lack of care behind it. I upgraded an iPad Mini 1st. Gen (iOS 9.3.6) to an iPad Mini 5st. Gen (iOS at the time of exit I think), restoring from a backup.

iMessage never worked since the upgrade. I can only send messages, I see them once, but once I close the app and open it again, I don't see anything else. There's absolutely no way to reset the db of an Apple-included app unless I do a full format of the device, which after my full custom-configuration, I don't want to do. It sucks.

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

#262

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

m463 wrote: post #253
dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But over time I began to suspect, then later those internal emails exposed in the lawsuits made it clear - apple was holding everyone's messages hostage. Any source for that? I couldn't find any direct evidence for your claim.

There are probably better links: https://texasnewsexpress.com/index.php/04162021-1249/apple-r...

Thanks, that's interesting, I didn't know that. On the one hand, I shouldn't be surprised since vendor lock-in is the standard way tech companies try to gain corporate advantage. On the other hand, it's kind of depressing to learn once again that customers count very little and no matter what these companies say, they will always try to abuse us in every way the law allows.

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

#263

Post by anonymousiam »

rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #168
anonymousiam wrote: post #133

Google Voice has the same problem. The search function is useless. It does not return results that should match, and it does return results that shouldn't. Scrolling back through just a few months worth of messages can take 10-20 minutes. I wish I knew why it was so awful.

Are those messages queryable in Gmail?

No, I am referring to Google's SMS platform. It interfaces to nearly all other carriers, and is accessible through the "Voice" app or the web page at https://voice.google.com

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

#264

Post by fomine3 »

forgotmypw17 wrote: post #178

I've had this sort of experience with many systems, which is why I decided to use .txt files as the base data store for my current project. It is indexed in a relational database, and it is presented in a Web 1.1 frontend, but it all flows back through the text files, and they are always available for download, optionally in zip or tar.gz archives.

Ironically SQLite is excellent choice in this situation.

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

#265

Post by account42 »

saagarjha wrote: post #192
xoa wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

iMessage is backwards compatible with older devices. This means Apple can’t stop supporting old versions of the protocol, even as they are “cracked”.

They could release updates for those older devices to unbreak them after protocol changes.

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

#266

Post by Someone »

zepto wrote: post #50
Someone wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The additional value for Apple is that their platform had a billion+ users from the start.

Apple had nowhere near a billion customers when iMessage was launched.

There were a billion people you could send messages to, and receive messages from. That’s what got them of the ground.

A system where you can’t message half your friends because they bought their phone from a different manufacturer would have had more trouble getting traction.

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

#267

Post by dkarras »

lostlogin wrote: post #208
dkarras wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could imagine Steve Wozniak offering to use surnames only as a joke - because that wouldn't work either.

It would probably work better for the two Steves than it would for many others. According to the below random site, there 218 Jobs and 10,602 Wozniaks. It claims 410,801 Steves. http://howmanyofme.com/search/

Sorry my point was about jobs@apple.com being the possible target of random job inquiries making the address unusable for Steve Jobs.

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

#268

Post by forgotmypw17 »

fomine3 wrote: post #264
forgotmypw17 wrote: post #178

I've had this sort of experience with many systems, which is why I decided to use .txt files as the base data store for my current project. It is indexed in a relational database, and it is presented in a Web 1.1 frontend, but it all flows back through the text files, and they are always available for download, optionally in zip or tar.gz archives.

Ironically SQLite is excellent choice in this situation.

SQLite is great, and I use it for caching and for providing data summaries... but it is not near-universally compatible and accessible, human-readable, the way text-files are.

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

#269

Post by top_kekeroni_m8 »

aloer wrote: post #94

arguably the worst part about imessage and scrolling is that even if you do manage to scroll up and find a previous message, you are automatically scrolled down to the bottom if a new message is received in that chat (on iphone)

You can touch the middle of the top bar and it will automatically scroll to the top of the current conversation. Works in a lot of apps too

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

#270

Post by humantorso »

esolyt wrote: post #20
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…

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.

Google has this already - check out Messages by google. Behaves the same as iMessage
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