Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Apple's Revenge: iMessage Might Eat Your Texts If You Switch To Android

Posted by timothy on from the computer-says-no dept.

redletterdave (2493036) writes "When my best friend upgraded from an iPhone 4S to a Galaxy S4, I texted her hello. Unfortunately, she didn't get that text, nor any of the five I sent in the following three days. My iPhone didn't realize she was now an Android user and sent all my texts via iMessage. It wasn't until she called me about going to brunch that I realized she wasn't getting my text messages. What I thought was just a minor bug is actually a much larger problem. One that, apparently, Apple has no idea how to fix. Apple said the company is aware of the situation, but it's not sure how to solve it. One Apple support person said: 'This is a problem a lot of people are facing. The engineering team is working on it but is apparently clueless as to how to fix it. There are no reliable solutions right now — for some people the standard fixes work immediately; many others are in my boat.'"

15 of 415 comments (clear)

  1. Fix according to Apple is by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    to return back to the flock to receive your iMessages again.

    1. Re:Fix according to Apple is by jrmcferren · · Score: 5, Informative

      Nope, Turn off iMessage on the iDevice before wiping or tossing. Been there, done that.

      --
      sudo mod me up
    2. Re:Fix according to Apple is by pslytely+psycho · · Score: 5, Funny

      "Nice little Samsung phone you have there, kid. Shame if your messages to iPhones all get lost."

      Why do I hear this in the voice of Joe Pesci?

      --
      Donald Trump, on a crusade to make Nixon look respectable
    3. Re:Fix according to Apple is by BitZtream · · Score: 5, Informative

      Go to the website and do it there?

      Samsung has a nice right up on how to resolve the problem using any number of methods:

      http://www.samsung.com/us/supp...

      Have you people not heard of Google?

      --
      Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
    4. Re:Fix according to Apple is by Culture20 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Sure, its write up on there websight.

    5. Re:Fix according to Apple is by xystren · · Score: 5, Funny

      Welcome to the Hotel Apple iPhone... You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

  2. Sender should go to android. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Clearly the fix is for the sending party to also switch to android.

  3. Auto switches by MidSpeck · · Score: 5, Insightful

    My experience is that if an iPhone is unable to send an iMessage (shows as blue), it automatically falls back to text message after 5 minutes (shows as green). After a few of these in a row, it defaults to text message until the iMessage connection can be re-established with the other endpoint. (Of course, this option can be turned off if you prefer to use only iMessages, at which point it's not going to be allowed it to fall back.)

    1. Re:Auto switches by Anubis+IV · · Score: 5, Informative

      For 99% of cases, that's exactly what happens. Unfortunately, there seems to be a bug where in some cases that doesn't happen, and iMessage continues to try routing the SMS to the old iDevice, even though it's no longer valid. The bug was actually reported here back in February (making this story a dupe).

    2. Re:Auto switches by abhi_beckert · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Apparently Apple knows less about their own products than I do as an Apple developer. You can't trust a random support employee to know how iMessage works, it's a complicated system.

      It's very simple. If you send an SMS to a number registered as being an iPhone, it will be encrypted for that phone and sent over the internet. If the phone does not decrypt the message and send an acknowledgment within a few minutes, it will be sent as an SMS instead. Repeated delivery failures (2 or 3?) will automatically disable iMessage.

      According to the article, the iMessage is sent and status immediately changes to "delivered". That means he has at least one device registered to receive iMessages at that phone number and it is turned on and received the message. His claim to have logged out of iMessage on all his devices is bullshit. He forgot one.

    3. Re:Auto switches by Thagg · · Score: 5, Informative

      Just not true, or at least it wasn't a few months ago. My daughter switched to Android and I couldn't text her until she finally remembered her Apple ID and we could log into their servers and disable her account. We used the Samsung page for guidance, and it worked just fine. But by itself, my phone kept silently failing to send her messages.

      --
      I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
  4. FUD. Pure FUD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Ok, this is stupid.

    I recently switched from iPhone, and had text messages still going to my iPad. A simple google search revealed pages like:
    https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5450235
    And many other such solutions.

    That requires having or borrowing an iphone or ipad (Basically, go to settings, iMessage, login with you apple id then tell it not to use iMessage for your phone number).

    According to:
    http://www.imore.com/text-issues-switching-iphone-android-heres-fix

    You can call 1-800-MY-APPLE and have them do it.

  5. Apple Registered Devices by nazrhyn · · Score: 5, Informative

    Going to https://supportprofile.apple.c... and making sure my old phone was removed was what eventually fixed this for me. Just putting the SIM back in and turning off iMessage did not fix it.

    It was a while ago, so it's possible this might not be the exact right location; but, I do know that it was "removing registered devices" that I did. This seems right.

  6. Dupe by vivaoporto · · Score: 5, Informative

    Dupe from a couple of months ago: Apple's Messages Offers Free Texting With a Side of iPhone Lock-In Posted by timothy on Saturday March 01, 2014

    Time to copy all high moderated posts from the older article. Actually, there is no need: given that the purpose of posting this article is to bring the echo chamber rambling that this is why apple suck, simply posting "that's why I don't have an iPhone" is enough for +5 insightful.

  7. Re:"No reliable solution" by Charliemopps · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Text Messages USED to cost money. Now, nobody actually uses TXT, as we no longer have dumb phones. We use Hangouts, Skype, Twitter, Facebook, GoogleVoice, email ....

    Txt was good when all you had was a feature phone.

    Congrats on living in a major metropolitan area. The other 99% of the world still has to pay for texts.

    I'll never get over peoples myopic view of the world.