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iOS holding my phone number hostage = the worst bug I’ve ever experienced

blog.benjaminste.in

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Re: iOS holding my phone number hostage = the worst bug I’ve ever experienced

#101

Post by [deleted] »

WiseWeasel wrote: post #83
sneak wrote: post #43

Preventative step: set your outbound iMessage "caller id" to your email address instead of your phone number. Do this now, before you're bitten by the bug. (Apple's degraded QA as of late on iOS means you'll also have to change it back on ALL your devices on the account any time you add or remove any devices or numbers to iMessage or FaceTime on that Apple ID, too.) This way, all your contacts are iMessaging with you…

That would mean that others will see incoming iMessages from your email address rather than phone number from that point forward, and anyone who doesn't have your email address in their address book will not know who it's from. I often exchange iMessages with people whose contact entry for me likely consists of phone number & name, and if I'm lucky, a photo. [Edit] Just realized it also means that people who have bot…

[deleted]

Re: iOS holding my phone number hostage = the worst bug I’ve ever experienced

#102

Post by verelo »

I had a friend who went through this same issue, for about a week i wondered why he never replied to me, until we talked about it and i realized the situation he was in. It's a terrible bug, apple seriously need to address this.

I get why they wouldnt want to, but to me this is a shady as a broken "Unsubscribe from this email" link.

Re: iOS holding my phone number hostage = the worst bug I’ve ever experienced

#103

Post by noselasd »

ac29 wrote: post #96
benstein wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. Tried resetting everything possible. So did Apple support. And they escalated to engineers who also said they have no more records of my number server-side. But there's no way to clear the client side caches.

Do iOS apps not have a clear data/clear cache system level option like android does? If not, what do you do to wipe an app's data?

It does. Since it's cached on every device of the people that has sent messages to him, each one of them will either

1. Wipe out the iMessage data - which is all their message history.

or

2. Manually delete every message/thread the OP has been involved in.

That's not going to happen.

Re: iOS holding my phone number hostage = the worst bug I’ve ever experienced

#104

Post by city41 »

MehdiEG wrote: post #65

Same problem here and I know quite a few people who've had these issues as well. iMessage is a huge mess - even if you're still using your iPhone. Back in December, when I was still on iPhone, I went in a month-long trip abroad. Since data roaming still costs a fortune, I had data switched off most of the time. I'd just connect on wifi whenever possible and occasionally switched on the data connection when I really n…

My wife recently got an iPhone so we now both have one. We have tried everything we can possibly think of, but we cannot send each other iMessages, only SMS.

Re: iOS holding my phone number hostage = the worst bug I’ve ever experienced

#105

Post by 3pt14159 »

Some "bugs" are only fixed with class action lawsuits. This "bug" has been around for a while now and Apple can fix it they just don't prioritize bugs that allow people to switch away from them easily.

It is fraud to fail to deliver messages to my phone when I've switched phones. It shouldn't take me calling you, it should happen automatically and in under a day.

Re: iOS holding my phone number hostage = the worst bug I’ve ever experienced

#107

Post by blowski »

rdoherty wrote: post #23

I'm experiencing the same problem, I've tried: 1) Turning off iMessage on old iPhone 2) Removing phone number from my Apple account 3) Friends removing my cell # from their address books and a few other random things. Nothing has fixed it. The only way a friend with an iOS device can SMS me is if they turn of iMessage. This is a pretty huge bug on Apple's part.

From Apple's perspective, it sounds like quite a handy bug. Since I've been an iPhone user for 5 years, this bug makes me locked in to the iOS environment.

Given that they have established a market-distorting barrier to exit, they should be ordered by a court to fix this issue.

Re: iOS holding my phone number hostage = the worst bug I’ve ever experienced

#108

Post by hablahaha »

MehdiEG wrote: post #65

Same problem here and I know quite a few people who've had these issues as well. iMessage is a huge mess - even if you're still using your iPhone. Back in December, when I was still on iPhone, I went in a month-long trip abroad. Since data roaming still costs a fortune, I had data switched off most of the time. I'd just connect on wifi whenever possible and occasionally switched on the data connection when I really n…

I know of a relationship that ended because of iMessages. They had had a fight and he texted her to apologize and then he never received any responses (they went straight to his computer) and then she got more upset, he thought she wasn't talking to him, etc.

Re: iOS holding my phone number hostage = the worst bug I’ve ever experienced

#110

Post by Wintamute »

Turning off iMessage on her iPhone, making sure any references to iMessage in any device settings (including OSX) related only to an email address not a cell number before moving to Android meant my girlfriend didn't experience any issues. Not sure if that's a panacea and she was just lucky though ..
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