iOS holding my phone number hostage = the worst bug I’ve ever experienced • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by rdoherty » Sun, Feb 02, 2014, 9:52 PM UTC

Nicholas_C wrote: post #100

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.

Same here. Incredibly frustrating. Did you unregister your device(s)? After doing this I think people's iPhones know your number isn't an iPhone anymore and after it fails to send the iMessage it sends it as a regular message. The below link helped me: http://support.vodafone.com.au/articles/FAQ/How-to-deactivat... I'm still having occasional problems with not getting texts but for the most part it's fixed.

Yup, I unregistered my devices too. Will double check and follow that link's instructions.

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

#122

Post by rosser » Sun, Feb 02, 2014, 9:53 PM UTC

RyanZAG wrote: post #91

sneak wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe stuff like this happening is a good thing as it drills home the point Ugh, thinking like this just may well be the biggest problem in our industry. Stop being user-hostile.

Um. I'm not the one who made iMessage - you need to look at the guys making locked down messaging systems for the user-hostile actions causing problems like these and no doubt much more in the future. If I could help these people out and give them a script to run to fix their problem I would - but of course I can't, because everything is locked down by others who are putting their own vendor lock-in above user satisf…

You're focusing on lock-in at the client level. And while I agree that's a problem, it's not the biggest problem. Not by a long-shot.

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

#123

Post by ipodize » Sun, Feb 02, 2014, 9:53 PM UTC

psychometry wrote: post #119

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…

Disabling an Apple ID would also disable its use in the online Apple Store and the OS X App Store, though. Seems that you might as well just disable iMessage. It's not like it provides that much added value over text messages.

Text messages cost money. iMessages don't.

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

#124

Post by jamesclarke » Sun, Feb 02, 2014, 9:53 PM UTC

0x0 wrote: post #21

This article claims resetting your apple ID password will disassociate the imessage phone number: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5538

I had a similar issue this weekend. Once I changed my Apple ID password I started to receive SMS messages from people with iOS devices. I had to re-authorize all Apple services on my other devices and machines.

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

#125

Post by sunsu » Sun, Feb 02, 2014, 9:58 PM UTC

I had this same problem and recently solved it by - putting my sim back into my old iOS phone. - reactivating iMessage on the old phone WITH the sim inside of the old phone - wait to make sure the phone fully registers with iMessage servers - deactivate iMessage WITH the sim inside the phone

After following these steps, I'm not problem free. I had tried many times before to reactivate/deactivate iMessage, but never with the sim back in the device.

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

#126

Post by chmars » Sun, Feb 02, 2014, 10:01 PM UTC

rakoo wrote: post #98

owenwil wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, what's an open-source alternative to iMessage that lots of people use?

> So, what's an open-source alternative to iMessage XMPP is _the_ standard, with just so many[0] implementations. On mobile, a good choice is ChatSecure, or Yaxim if you're on Android. > that lots of people use XMPP certainly doesn't meet this criteria, it would have to be IRC... but that's yet another way of modelling your social interactions. [0] http://xmpp.org/xmpp-software/clients/

XMPP is only a kind of alternative for nerdy users:

http://op-co.de/blog/posts/mobile_xmpp_in_2014/

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

#127

Post by mdmarra » Sun, Feb 02, 2014, 10:03 PM UTC

vacri wrote: post #109

Rather than telling your friends to delete their entire history, what's the problem with asking them to just make a new contact listing? I'm not familiar with the gubbins of iMessage.

I think the problem is that asking everyone that's ever messaged you from an iOS device to modify something on their handset every time someone in their contacts switches platforms isn't a reasonable request.

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

#128

Post by swombat » Sun, Feb 02, 2014, 10:05 PM UTC

RyanZAG wrote: post #30

Just think, if you hadn't used a proprietary messaging solution as your default contact method, you'd be able to easily control how you receive the messages. Maybe stuff like this happening is a good thing as it drills home the point the 'crazy free software lunatics' have been going on about for some time. Having this kind of thing happen to someone makes the stuff FSF+co says a bit more relevant and ultimately help…

SMS is also a proprietary solution, as far as I know. If you don't think so, check the costs of integrating with SMS...

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

#129

Post by DanBC » Sun, Feb 02, 2014, 10:06 PM UTC

RyanZAG wrote: post #91

sneak wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe stuff like this happening is a good thing as it drills home the point Ugh, thinking like this just may well be the biggest problem in our industry. Stop being user-hostile.

Um. I'm not the one who made iMessage - you need to look at the guys making locked down messaging systems for the user-hostile actions causing problems like these and no doubt much more in the future. If I could help these people out and give them a script to run to fix their problem I would - but of course I can't, because everything is locked down by others who are putting their own vendor lock-in above user satisf…

You don't do a good job of envangelising for open source and open standards by making posts like the 2 in this thread.

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

#130

Post by RyanZAG » Sun, Feb 02, 2014, 10:07 PM UTC

rosser wrote: post #122

RyanZAG wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um. I'm not the one who made iMessage - you need to look at the guys making locked down messaging systems for the user-hostile actions causing problems like these and no doubt much more in the future. If I could help these people out and give them a script to run to fix their problem I would - but of course I can't, because everything is locked down by others who are putting their own vendor lock-in above user satisf…

You're focusing on lock-in at the client level. And while I agree that's a problem, it's not the biggest problem . Not by a long-shot.

It is the biggest problem, it's just hard to see. Let's assume iMessage was OSS and freely uninstallable/re-installable on iOS devices. This would mean that an iMessage fork could be created that was able to talk to additional services and not only Apple ones. This would be done quickly as iOS users would want to use iMessage to talk to Android users also. The iMessage client itself would be duplicated for Android quickly as well if it was OSS.

As most users would prefer the Android compatible version, the forked version would likely be installed by most users as most users would want to talk to Android. This problem would then be easily fixed: someone could just submit a pull request for a fix for this issue and create a way to easily stop receiving messages through iMessage. Even better, the author would not need to stop using iMessage - he could keep using it and receiving messages on Android.

Ultimately removing the lock-in at the client level forces the problem to auto correct itself across the board by allowing users the option of migration and developers the option of improvement.