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iMessage purgatory

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Re: iMessage purgatory

#161

Post by JimmaDaRustla »

mikestew wrote: post #91
JimmaDaRustla wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then I fail to see why this is really an issue - blog explains no proper solution, need to pay $20, engineers can't figure it out, etc... Sounds like hogwash.

It is really an issue because the above workaround doesn't always work. You can apply that to every single suggested fix in this entire thread: it might work for one, but it doesn't work for all. The Apple discussion forums are littered with evidence of this, and my own personal experience of swapping back and forth a few times convinces me that people aren't just making it up.

Then isn't the real issue that the proper solution doesn't work? Doesn't the blog unjustly criticize Apple, as if they don't even have a single solution?

Sorry, just realized I am arguing over the formality of someone's self opinionated BLOG...I'll show myself to the door.

Re: iMessage purgatory

#162

Post by dragonwriter »

JimmaDaRustla wrote: post #160
axanoeychron wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unnecessarily dismissive. The OP has said [1] that he dissociated his number from iMessage and people who text him from iPhones are not getting through to him. That is problematic if you want to receive text messages on a non Apple phone. It would seem he wrote in his blog in order to get help or bring it to a wider attention. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7740438

No reference made to this in the article. The solution is there however, Apple just needs to fix their iMessage software to properly disassociate the number with iMessage. Again, like my unnecessarily down voted comment suggested, unlike this blog suggests, the solution is there, it just doesn't work.

If it doesn't work, it's not a solution.

Re: iMessage purgatory

#163

Post by e79 »

Their support page makes it sound like they can just de-register iMessage with your account.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ts5185

A few comments here seem to suggest that this is a carrier or cellular infrastructure issue. It isn't! iMessage doesn't route over SMS-- that's the whole point. It routes to Apple's servers, which should be capable of doing a lookup to see if the number still has an associated iCloud or iMessage account.

Re: iMessage purgatory

#164

Post by JimmaDaRustla »

dragonwriter wrote: post #162
JimmaDaRustla wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No reference made to this in the article. The solution is there however, Apple just needs to fix their iMessage software to properly disassociate the number with iMessage. Again, like my unnecessarily down voted comment suggested, unlike this blog suggests, the solution is there, it just doesn't work.

If it doesn't work, it's not a solution.

When you held your iPhone 4 wrong and the connection dropped, people didn't claim that there was no antenna.

Re: iMessage purgatory

#165

Post by Flenser »

fanf2 wrote: post #156
eee777 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do not have the ability to fix this. My wife's data plan is capped at 500MB and when it runs out iMessage does not work. She turned off iMessageing and days later when she still reported that she wasn't getting texts. The Apple tech said that she should tell people not to reply to a thread and to start a new one. She uses her phone for her business and she can't preemptively blast text over 150 contacts not to r…

I have trouble sending texts from my iPhone to my wife after she switched from an iPhone to an Android. In my experience deleting old conversations and starting new ones didn't work. What does work is double-tapping a message after it has been sent, which gives you the option to send via SMS.

Useful to know! Double-tapping would be completely non-intuitive on a phone, how did you discover that?

Re: iMessage purgatory

#166

Post by pmorici »

jbl wrote: post #139
pmorici wrote: post #48

The easiest way to avoid this problem is to make sure you turn off iMessage on your iPhone before you switch devices then you don't have this problem in the first place. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3392014?start=15&tstart...

When I switched from an iPhone to an Android handset, I found that I not only had to switch off iMessage, I had to switch it off while my SIM card was still in the iPhone. Switching iMessage off after the fact didn't seem to work.

Yes, you need to do it before porting your number.

Re: iMessage purgatory

#167

Post by dragonwriter »

JimmaDaRustla wrote: post #164
dragonwriter wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it doesn't work, it's not a solution.

When you held your iPhone 4 wrong and the connection dropped, people didn't claim that there was no antenna.

An antenna is defined by physical characteristics, not whether or not it functions suitably for a given application. A solution is something that solves a problem -- it is only a solution with respect to that problem, and only to the extent that it actually solves it. If it doesn't work, it doesn't solve the problem, and isn't a solution.

Re: iMessage purgatory

#168

Post by kennywinker »

Flenser wrote: post #165
fanf2 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have trouble sending texts from my iPhone to my wife after she switched from an iPhone to an Android. In my experience deleting old conversations and starting new ones didn't work. What does work is double-tapping a message after it has been sent, which gives you the option to send via SMS.

Useful to know! Double-tapping would be completely non-intuitive on a phone, how did you discover that?

double-tapping has the same effect as a long-press in this case. It brings up the contextual menu.

Re: iMessage purgatory

#169

Post by prutschman »

dublinben wrote: post #135
prutschman wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The part that concerns me with Hangouts is that it wants to know my mobile number for some reason. They say it's for discovery purposes. For now at least.

If you're using Google apps on your phone, they already know your mobile number. I'm not sure what you're concerned about.

Google as an organization has my mobile number from a variety of sources, but that doesn't mean I want to associate my mobile number with my Hangouts usage in such a way that other people with my phone number can automatically contact me via Hangouts.

Re: iMessage purgatory

#170

Post by dragonwriter »

deong wrote: post #121
prutschman wrote: post #58

Google Hangouts on my Android phone keeps bugging me to intergrate SMS into Hangouts, as well as to "confirm" my mobile number. My fear is that something analogous to the iMessage "purgatory" might happen, though I haven't heard of anyone experiencing it.

As of now, there's nothing to worry about. The problem with iPhones occurs because (1) Apple's implementation is apparently crappy, and (2) Apple tries to treat SMS and iMessage as just two identical channels through which a message can be received. You send a message to a person, not a phone number or iMessage account, and Apple figures out how to route it. The problem occurs when they guess wrong. Google isn't doin…

> When you send a message, you send it through one channel or the other explicitly. Google doesn't ever guess how you wanted to send it, so they can't guess wrong.

Well, that's potentially misleading. Hangouts (at least, the Android app) does show an icon showing how the message will be sent, but it sets the default based, I'm fairly certain, on the last message sent either direction in the conversation with the recipient (I do know it gives you a message explicitly telling you when it changes the default and why.)

You can tell it to send by a message other than the default (there's a button right on the main UI), but it does guess.

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