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

blog.benjaminste.in

141–150 of 237 posts

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

#141
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm not - it will default to using that as the outbound ID even on a data-only plan, because iOS doesn't know it's a data-only plan. The fact that you must go and manually change it to your email address for outbound iMessages is the part that's invisible.

My iOS knows because it runs on an data-only device (iPad mini with cellular).

Do you suppose that might be because your iOS knows it's not on a phone?

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

#142
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...

[deleted]

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

#144
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

Sufficiently advanced incompetence is distinguishable from malice.

Apple has certain well advertised priorities. Interoperability with non-Apple systems is not one of them.

(Not to blame Apple in particular -- non-intropability is coincidentally a common feature among the biggest player in every industry, while interopability is a key feature of challengers. But it's just a "bug"... )

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

#145
post #138
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

However even if someone picked the project up again it wouldn't run on any modern devices, since the last iPhone to have an untethered bootrom exploit was the 3GS.

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

#146
post #120
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…

Yeah, other peoples' misfortunes are totally "a good thing" if they help illustrate the motivations for one's own political agenda.

When's ones "political agenda" is to protect people from paying money to walk into the traps they are complaining about...

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

#148
post #126
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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/

Depends on what you want to do. I admit I didn't know what iMessage was capable of, but the basic features (text, images) are also possible with XMPP. The more complicated ones is a mixture of "the ISPs don't allow that" (I'm thinking accepting inbound connections), "the user needs 3rd party support" (I'm thinking about needing a proxy server for transfers, which most people don't have, but Apple can conveniently proxy transfer through its own servers) and "just do it".

The problem with XMPP (or any IM protocol for that matter) is that if nobody uses it, there will be little technical progress, which means few people will use it, etc...

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

#149

Wouldn't it work to lend an iPhone, turn it on with the SIM holding the number and then switch off iMessages there? Wouldn't this invalidate the cached account in other iPhones?

No this does not work. Group MMS from iohones are still dropped (as the article clearly describes).

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

#150

Steve Jobs dies and everything goes to hell. Tim Cooks biggest innovation was the Apple Dividend.

Nevermind the fact that iMessage existed long before SJ passed on and that this issue has been present since then. Just cut off those rough edges to cram it into your narrative.
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