Apple's Messages Offers Free Texting With a Side of iPhone Lock-In

itwbennett writes "Who doesn't love free text messages? People who try to transition from an iPhone to any other phone, that's who. Apple's Messages app actively moves conversations away from paid text messages to free Messages. Very convenient until you want to leave your iPhone and switch back to plain old text messages because suddenly you'll be unable to receive text messages from your iPhone-toting friends. There's an obscure workaround, and Samsung, which has a vested interest in the matter, has a lengthy guide to removing your iPhone as a registered receiver of Messages . But the experience is just annoying enough that it might be the kind of thing that would keep someone from making a switch — and that's when it starts to feel like deliberate lock-in, and not so much like something Apple overlooked."

Comments

WTF

[Anonymous Coward]

What kind of bullshit story is this? If you move away from your iPhone, guess what, you won't get iMessages. You'll still get text messages because yes, the iPhone falls back to that when an iMessage doesn't send.

Re:WTF

[93 Escort Wagon]

And any other iOS user wont be able to send you txts as they will be attempting via iMessage by default.

As long as the "fall back to SMS if iMessage fails" setting is on, then there's no problem even in this case. The iMessage will fail, and then Messages will resend it as a text message without any intervention needed.

I guess having to look at the settings of a phone is pretty "obscure" though.

Re:WTF

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong - you can go back and forth between SMS and iMessage in the same thread. No deleting anything.

Messages.app now figures out when outgoing messages aren't delivered to an iMessage recipient, then resend automatically as an SMS.

Re:WTF

[noh8rz10]

no. this whole thing makes no sense. when I text a number 213-555-2232 the text message goes to that number. if it's an iphone then it goes through apple's imessage server and appears as a blue bubble. if it's a samsung it goes through the cell provider network and shows up as a green bubble. it's completely transparent. if you have an iphone but then port your number to a samsung, then my bubbles become green instead of blue. completely illogical.

Re:WTF

[noh8rz10]

there's a setting "send as SMS" which is lableed "Send as SMS when iMessage is unavailable. Carrier messaging rates may apply." it's not that hard to find - in the settings menu go to Messages and there it is. also it's on by default, I never even noticed it or thought about it.

Re:WTF

[akgooseman]

No, you won't get those messages. As an former iPhone user who recently switched to Android I will attest to the fact messages from your friends who use iOS go into a black iMessage hole. The messages are not forwarded out of iMessage to a traditional text message. The iPhone must be reconfigured to opt out of iMessage before text messages will be delivered to a non-iOS phone.

iMessage fails over to text ONLY if you're using an iOS device. It doesn't fail over, as you might expect, if your mobile number moves to a non-iOS platform. It's a total pain in the ass. I can only believe it's designed this way to promote vendor lock-in.

Re:WTF

[Desler]

Then tell your friends to turn on the SMS fallback. The setting is been there forever.

iMessage fails over to text ONLY if you're using an iOS device.

That's total bullshit. I have iMessage turned on with SMS fallback and I text message people on android phones all the time.

Re:WTF

[ceoyoyo]

No. This story is stupid. If you leave your number associated with your iPhone, and your iPhone signed into iMessage, other iPhones will try to send you iMessages (they'll give up and send regular texts after a little bit). There are multiple, simple ways to sign your number out of iMessage, leaving it a regular text receiving number.

Re:WTF

[the_B0fh]

Are you really that much of an idiot? Using two colors to differentiate between a SMS and a non SMS message is simple and logical.

And you go all crazy on us. How do you function in the real world?

Re:WTF

[DeSigna]

Well lets see. If they try and message you after you've gotten your new droid/winphone/etc, they'll eventually get an error, if the previous conversation hasn't expired (expiry seems to take somewhere between an hour and a day, probably depending on network conditions). If it's expired and you're no longer on iMessage, or if they've had an error and try to send another message, it will go via SMS. Nothing default about it. Except in the case of an unexpired conversation, it's transparent.

If I want to remove a phone permanently from my iMessage account, I go into my iMessage settings, select the number and remove it. It's even easier if you own the device and it's part of your support profile, you can just do it through the Apple website. I own an iPad but my iPhone is employer-issue.

This iMessage stuff has been part of the iOS environment for literally years. This article is hyperventilating over nothing and is worthy only of a weary eye-roll.

Re: WTF

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey frothing lunatic! Guess what! It's not default behavior. When you set up any new iDevice it asks whether you want it to be the recipient of iMessages, and prompts you to choose which accounts. So deselect the phone number from the list.

If you selected the phone number from the list, and now you want it to magically behave differently without you telling it to, well, what can I say. You're used to the way Apple things Just Work. Throw a non-Apple device into the pool and things stop Just Working. So yes, you have to start using your frothing lunatic brain again, and go in and CHANGE THE SETTING in your other devices.

If you can't handle that, well ... Cry me a river.

Turn off iMessages ?

[ClaraBow]

You can just turn of iMessages and the conversation reverts to plain text messages. It has always worked for me.

Re:Pure FUD

[Holi]

But on any other phone I can still continue to receive texts from everyone. With apple if the the other person doesn't delete the message thread they can't reach you. This has nothing to do with what I can do to fix the issue. Apple's version of free always comes with a hefty price.

Why is imessage opt put instead of opt in if not to create a vendor lock in situation.

Apple and Microsoft are so much alike

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

They both believe in vendor lock. When I got my iMac it converted my photos from my camera to some iPhoto library from which it was quite difficult to take it out in simple jog files. For the two years I used iMac my videos and photos were all so locked up I actually lost interest and reduced my shutter bug instincts a lot.

Isn't there, though?

[QuasiSteve]

That's not how it works.

Good. Please explain how it does work.

Per this old article:
http://asia.cnet.com/faq-whats...

It seems to work like this.
You go to the messaging app. This is the default messaging app. It does text messages (SMS), and it does iMessages. So far so good.

You enter a number or directly a contact. It checks if that contact is believed to use iMessage by way of the phone number. If it believes the contact uses iMessage, it will send it as an iMessage, otherwise it will send it as a text message.

Still so far so good.

Now that contact stops using iMessage - the example given being that they switch devices, keeping the same number. They didn't "turn iMessage off", because why on Earth does that seem like a logical thing to have to do? Especially if, say, they switched devices because their iPhone died; in which case, they can't turn it off (or can they? Oh yes, they can contact Apple Support; http://support.apple.com/kb/TS... ).

Now you send them a message. The iMessage app is clueless and sends an iMessage because hey, nobody ever told it that the contact is no longer using iMessage. iMessage will eventually come back and say that it failed, and you as the sender either send again or shrug it off, but it might not occur to you to send as a text message instead. If you even can. Yes, if it already failed, you can hold the text and force that to send as text message. But the very next one you send is going to be an iMessage again. Of course, you can disable iMessage on your end, but that disables sending iMessage to all of your contacts. Short of deleting pre-existing iMessages for a given contact, it doesn't seem there's a way to just flip the "this contact uses iMessage" bit.

But here's the rub.. they shouldn't have to explicitly set anything at all.
A. Receive iMessage from contact -> set iMessage bit on contact.
B. Receive text message from contact -> clear iMessage bit on contact if present.
C. Failed iMessage -> re-send. Failed again? -> re-send as text. Delivered? (if supported by the networks) -> clear iMessage bit. Otherwise, see A/B.
D. User enables / disables iMessage explicitly -> set state in central registry (Apple ID is involved, right?).
E. Every once in a while, send as an iMessage anyway if the central registry suggests that the user really should have iMessage because they never turned it off. Worst case: the send ends up with situation C said 'every once in a while', which would be transparent to them. Best case: after a few of those, even the central registry could get a clue and disable the iMessage bit on their end, allowing it to propagate.
Having the onus of 'iMessage bit' state at the sender's side be solely on the end of the recipient is stupid.

I wouldn't say that it is a case of lock-in, though. Just a suboptimal approach. (And yes, I realize there's potential issues with A-E above as well). The bit that makes it peculiar, to say the least, is that this problem has been complained about since at least the end of 2011. Just not by enough people for it to be "an actual story", I guess.

Correct me if any of the above is wrong - I'm certainly not an iPhone user so I've only got the most basic of google search results as my sources.

Re:Isn't there, though?

[Above]

You are correct about the behavior, but I think I can explain why Apple made the choices at work here.

It turns out iMessages are cryptographically secured with public key cryptography using a per device key. There is a recent Techcrunch Article that details what they have released, but it appears to be a highly secure implementation. Each device has a private key that never leaves the device. An iMessage is actually encrypted to multiple public keys so each device can read it. No one outside the device holder, not even Apple, has the ability to decrypt messages.

I think the argument Apple would make, and I would agree with is to fall back to SMS would be insecure. It's possible to conceive of ways an attacker could prevent an iMessage from being delivered (a Denial of Service attack, for instance). That could force a fallback to SMS, which is often not well secured and/or permanently archived by the carrier or governments. Worse, with your algorithm simply sending someone a text message from a spoofed source would clear the bit, and might result in an insecure communication.

As a result, I would argue if you value strong encryption and privacy, Apple's choices make perfect sense. Turn on strong crypto when you can, and don't automatically fall back to something without strong crypto.