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

Posted by timothy on from the golden-handcuffs dept.

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."

7 of 179 comments (clear)

  1. WTF by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:WTF by paxprobellum · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's not "by default" - it's just because they already have a iMessage window open with you. This whole "article" sounds kinda "contrived".

    2. Re:WTF by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    3. Re:WTF by DeSigna · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

  2. Not Always by rainwater · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I switched to Android and disabled iMessage before switching. Even though I did that, iMessage wasn't disabled and I wasn't able to receive messages for days from iPhone users. It is not always a user error.

  3. Isn't there, though? by QuasiSteve · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  4. Re:Learned the hard way by noh8rz10 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    on the iphone, you just sign out of imessage. go to settings, messages, send and recieve. tap on your apple id and tap sign out. Then apple will know to send any texts to your number as SMS not imessage. although it shouldn't be a big dealio because when your friends send texts the imessage should fall back to a SMS when the imessage fails.

    I guess it's a step when switching, but it's hardly a lock-in.