Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

blog.benjaminste.in

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 237 posts

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

#181

Post by TWAndrews »

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.

That's odd. I made the same switch, but when I turned off iMessage on my old phone, texts from contacts with iPhones are sent correctly to my new android device.

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

#183

Post by abrowne »

owenwil wrote: post #52

The saddest part about this story is perhaps the fact that iMessage was supposed to be open and allow other phone builders to use it. Having it truly cross-platform in the first place would have avoided a situation like this :(

Facetime was supposed to become an open standard†, but I don't think Apple ever said that about imessage.

† From the WWDC 2010 keynote: “And we're going to take it all the way. We're going to the standards bodies, starting tomorrow, and we're going to make Facetime an open industry standard.”

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

#184

Post by hrktb »

rosser wrote: post #140
RyanZAG wrote: post #130

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 .

Does it change much to focus on the original intention of the engineers?

If the bug ever surfaced or was ever thought of by anyone at Apple at any point in the development process of iMessage, Apple will have effectively accepted to lock the user in by not having it fixed or communicate about it in some way.

The OP must not be the first to report the problem either (he switched after iOS7, iMesssage was more almost two years old by then) ?

This might not be an issue Apple cares in any way, and that's fine for them. We should just recognize their shitty behavior, even if it's originally accidental.

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

#185

Post by pistle »

eridius wrote: post #161
nwienert wrote: post #36

This has been happening for over 2 years now. I've met multiple people in real life (including total non-techies) that have run into this. It's more common than you'd think. Basically anyone moving from an iPhone to Android (or any other phone I assume) will have this problem. At this point, it's obvious Apple is ok with this. It's a giant "fuck you" to anyone moving away from them and it leaves a bad taste in your m…

That's incredibly presumptuous of you to claim Apple is doing this purposely. It seems pretty obvious to me that it's a non-trivial fix for Apple, and that there's simply no good incentive for them to prioritize fixing this over the myriad other things their engineers could be spending their time on.

Based on the "2 years" anecdote above, maybe it's something they could have got around to while completely revamping iOS. There are about few primary moving parts and OP indicates it's a known issue that can be resolved on clients. Too bad Apple has no control over that client OS, right?

It's not a big problem to deal with. There is no motivation to fix it. It's not that Apple is doing anything purposefully. It's that they aren't, and won't, do anything to help since they know that OP (and that ilk) are not their customers. If OP didn't want to "lose" all his friends/network, he would have just got a 5s and shut up.

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

#187

Post by kruk »

guelo wrote: post #134
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...

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

not in Japan

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

#188

Post by PhasmaFelis »

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…

> 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.

Apparently blaming the victim is totally okay as long as the victim was using a brand you don't like.

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

#189

Post by sunsu »

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…

*Now problem free

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

#190

Post by fpgeek »

noselasd wrote: post #103
ac29 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I believe you're missing ac29's point. Android allows applications to distinguish between cached data and "regular/permanent" data. It also allows users to clear them separately.

Logically, the Apple ID / phone number mapping seems like it should fall under cached data (e.g. it can be regenerated and does need to be re-checked from time to time). If the iOS Messaging app properly implemented this distinction, users (or Apple) could clear this cached mapping without touching anyone's message history. Sadly, it sounds like it hasn't been implemented that way, so...

Post reply on HN