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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

#131

Post by stingraycharles »

swombat wrote: post #128
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...

Still, the telco industry is regulated. It's a difference.

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

#132

Post by jljljl »

ipodize wrote: post #123
psychometry wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Depends on your particular plan (unlimited text vs. sufficient data), access to Wi-Fi, and how frequently your friends send images or media over iMessage. I have a friend who turned of iMessage to reduce data usage.

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

#133

Post by arkonaut »

sunsu wrote: post #125

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 w…

Not problem free or 'now' problem free? Would love to know if this solution works. Thanks!

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

#134

Post by guelo »

swombat wrote: post #128
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...

SMS is interoperable between every phone and phone company on the planet.

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

#135

Post by baddox »

stingraycharles wrote: post #131
swombat wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Still, the telco industry is regulated. It's a difference.

Apple is regulated.

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

#138

Post by derefr »

comex wrote: post #111
ac29 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious: has this even been tried? I would assume Apple SoC's require binary drivers, so even though they are similar to Android phones on a hardware level it might be difficult or impossible to even get an Android port to boot. Hell, it can be difficult to get an unsupported version of Android to work without major bugs on an Android phone.

It was tried a few years back: http://www.idroidproject.org They had to rewrite the drivers, of course.

Important to point out: the authors of iDroid stopped, but not due to any technical obstacle; it was mainly because iDroid was a hobbyist project and their lives intervened. Someone else could pick up the effort today, if they wanted.

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

#139

Post by leephillips »

owenwil wrote: post #50
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…

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

Email? Really, now that everyone has email on their phones, why bother with SMS or these SMS-like systems? Email is more reliable, more flexible, and seems to be just as fast in practice.

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

#140

Post by rosser »

RyanZAG wrote: post #130
rosser wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 qu…

Thinking about it further, I don't even think it's appropriate to call this "lock-in".

I very much doubt the Apple engineers who wrote iMessage were rubbing their hands together in maniacal glee, at the prospect of being able to prevent people from ever migrating away from iOS, if they but used the phone number in this specific way.

It sounds like it's exactly what TFA's author assumes: a bug.

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