Apple To Face Lawsuit For iMessage Glitch

An anonymous reader writes "We've all heard about iPhone users switching over to Android-powered phones and no longer being able to receive text messages from friends and family still using iPhones. Well, a woman with exactly this issue has filed a lawsuit against Apple, complaining that '[p]eople who replace their Apple devices with non-Apple wireless phones and tablets are "penalized and unable to obtain the full benefits of their wireless-service contracts."' To be specific, '[t]he suit is based on contractual interference and unfair competition laws.' She is seeking class action status and undetermined damages."

Comments

Anti-competitive

[Animats]

This is the kind of anti-competitive behavior that gets companies in trouble and causes regulatory crackdowns. Phone companies that make it hard to switch carriers. domain registrars that make it hard to switch registrars, and banks which make it hard to switch banks have all gotten in trouble for this.

Re: Anti-competitive

[Your.Master]

Netscape Navigator cost $49. Look at this article from 1996: http://www.fastcompany.com/277.... Back when Netscape had as dominant a marketshare as IE later had. Note how the author seemed to just assume that a browser than didn't cost any money couldn't be any good.

Nowadays, Netscape Navigator has been forked a couple times and the surviving branch is called Firefox, and at $0 its price went down significantly.

The original IE did not come bundled with the OS, it was a free add-on. There was a version for Windows and a version for Mac at this point.

Fast forward to 1998: http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001.... January 1998, you will note. Windows 98, which was the first Windows that bundled IE in it, wouldn't be released until May 1998. So it would be difficult to argue that bundling had anything to do with it.

Later, Opera would follow suit, going from a price of $39 to also offering an ad-supported version in 2000: http://archive.today/201205291.... It only went ad-free 5 years later. At this time, people were getting sick of IE6, since it once was a decent browser (seriously!) but it had been stagnant far too long. However Firefox was starting to rise and it was taking all the people Opera could have gotten.

Re:Anti-competitive

[p.g.king]

This helped to drive prices of texting down...

Any evidence to show any causal link? Or just plucked out the air?

Since if you had to use texts you'd still be paying and if you could use iMessage you'd always not be paying. So reducing price would still leave those using iMessage not paying you, and those still needing to use text just paying you less. I can see nothing to suggest iMessage would have had any impact on the price.

Re:Anti-competitive

[jbolden]

Microsoft got slammed not for making it free but for claiming it was so integrated into the operating system that it could not be removed.

Re: Anti-competitive

[jbolden]

No it wasn't. Netscape Communicator was a commercial package that cost. The charged for both the browser and the server.

Re:Anti-competitive

[Bob_Who]

This is the kind of anti-competitive behavior that gets companies in trouble and causes regulatory crackdowns. Phone companies that make it hard to switch carriers. domain registrars that make it hard to switch registrars, and banks which make it hard to switch banks have all gotten in trouble for this.

Welcome to American Hustle.. Like most sore winners we strut and take too much for granted - particularly our own citizens. Too bad we lost sight of our core values in the process of our financial dominance and success. American values flourish on a level playing field, in an inclusive meritocracy, but now we're back to royal assholes playing king of the hill. Perhaps dominance is more Sisyphus' crushing refrain. Human nature rears its ugly head in any golden age. Lets start with the obvious : Let's stop tolerating unfair, greedy, scum-baggy, slimy business behavior like its an acceptable cost of playing free market capitalism. Its bullshit, we don't tolerate it from people, why do we let big business off the hook? Corporations don't compete, they dominate and destroy innovation, once they reap its rewards. Screw 'em. Just because your pension can't keep up with inflation, that's no excuse to rationalize accepting their dividends. The Golden Rule is more important than the Gold when you have no prospects for success in a neo-facsist cluster fuck of failure and denial. A free market offers options, choices, and healthy competition. . .

Re:Anti-competitive

[Splab]

Arh 'murcian, cause what we do is what everyone else are doing.

Text prices outside the US was definitely not driven anywhere by Apple, they have been plummeting for ages - having multiple carriers did that, not some shiney toy.

Re:Anti-competitive

[craigminah]

At what point does something convenient and free like iMessages become a mandatory expectation across all devices known to man? Why not say Microsoft MUST make it's Office suite run on my PS4 or on my iPad...sue sue sue until they do it because it's their fault. [/sarcasm] Seriously, everyone needs to stop suing for everything.

Re:Anti-competitive

[Kaenneth]

And it WAS tightly integrated, Windows back then was a mess that made cooked spaghetti look tiny.

A Specific Example:

The Help system required Internet Explorer, to render documentation.
Internet Explorer required the TCP/IP stack, to go to non-local pages.
TCP/IP required the Help system, to explain what a DNS server, Default Gateway, etc. was.

Windows, pre-Vista was riddled with circular dependencies like that, where every piece depended on others in a loop.

Microsoft has been redesigning Windows since then in Layers, and no (new) module is allowed to have a dependency in a higher or equal layer.

So NOW, yes, they can flip IE on and off like a switch; but back then, it was an insane design change to make under the given time pressure.

And do you know how many Copies of XP 'n' (the one without IE) were sold?

Less than 2,000. Mostly by mistake, by people who didn't know what they were buying.

Noone actually wanted it, they just wanted to screw the big American corporation.

Re:Anti-competitive

[An dochasac]

This is the kind of anti-competitive behavior that gets companies in trouble and causes regulatory crackdowns. Phone companies that make it hard to switch carriers. domain registrars that make it hard to switch registrars, and banks which make it hard to switch banks have all gotten in trouble for this.

Not really. "Into trouble" usually means a write-off fine and a sullied name for the length of Joe sixpack's attention span (a few weeks or months depending on whether the news oligopolies relationship with their corporate Goliath sponsors.)

Also, you forgot some, Employers that make it difficult for employees to switch careers and health-care companies who leverage pre-existing conditions to prevent customers from seeking competing alternatives. Political parties who shoehorn 300 million people into two points of view. The fact that Americans have come to accept monopolies in most aspects of their lives means they can't even see them or the problems they cause anymore. Apple isn't seen as a monopoly or even as an anti-competive corporate Goliath. Apple is seen as a "personal choice" or religion.

Re: Anti-competitive

[Hamsterdan]

I started working for an ISP in mid '90s. At that time, we distributed Netscape (at a cost). When IE became available, we switched. to it. When it became bundled with Windows, our Intenet access kit went from 6 (3.x and 95 versions) floppies to 1, saving even more money. Bundling IE is what killed Netscape (in part).

good

[Anonymous Coward]

Not an Apple hater, but I went through all of the correct steps to disconnect iMessage when switching to Android and had the exact same issues. Text messages wouldn't come through from iPhone users, at all, period. This is completely within Apple's control even if they aren't claiming it- the SMS protocol should always be used as a backup when iMessage transmission doesn't successfully complete. Otherwise, it's purely noncompetitive and is a maneuver to keep you on Apple's platform.

Re:good

[ernest.cunningham]

What a ridiculous statement. In some markets, SMS messages cost for each and every one a non insignificant amount. An iPhone user is notified if the iMessage is not delivered. You can also choose in the message settings on your iPhone to automatically send via sms if iMessage delivery failed. Some people wouldn't want that to happen so it is a user choice. Apple shouldn't be held responsible because some people are incompetent to read that their iMessage was not delivered.

Re:good

[Dahamma]

You can also choose in the message settings on your iPhone to automatically send via sms if iMessage delivery failed.

Yeah, that's what I don't understand. So, she's suing because she can't figure out the iOS settings menu?

Re:good

[jbolden]

It was on the iPhone you got rid of. Now you have to go to support.apple.com and let Apple know you no longer want your old phone / number associated with your iCloud account. That takes about 30 seconds.

The people sending you texts though have the right to whatever behavior they want.

Re:good

[jbolden]

If they are on an iPhone:

SMS is green
iMessage is light Blue

iMessage users they can switch to a video call with facetime or use facetime audio all from within the messaging application. No, no, no... we aren't playing this game that users weren't told many many times what the difference is. My technically illiterate father understands that SMS (green) goes out a reliable voice radio available most anywhere while iMessage goes out a different radio that he only gets on major highways and population centers. Over and over and over again Apple made the difference explicit to these users. They requested Appel do something and are now complaining that Apple is doing what they requested. That's like saying people getting off a plane to Florida are suffering because the airline took them to Florida, and how were they supposed to know to look at their ticket.

And of course they are able to solve this. First off many of them have iPads or Macs so they are likely still getting the messages. So they know where they are going, they can literally see them going there. And if they don't have other devices, they have friends who do and went through this. But even if the iPhone was their only device, and they don't ask anyone all they have to do is think for 10 seconds. "Hmm... my friends are sending me messages and they are still going to my device. But when I look at my friend's screens it shows the messages they meant to send me are going out iMessage. Which means Apple still thinks my device is active. Wow better tell Apple it isn't...." Come on. We expect this level of competency in every other area of life. In 2014 we expect people to understand the concept of computer accounts and the distinction between the web and their local computer.

Many will find their friends sending them texts and them not receiving them, they won't immediately (if ever) realise the root cause and may will think it's a problem with their new handset, rather than related to their old.

Dude you are on /. This isn't a problem with either handset. I can associate n-numbers with a handset or m-handsets with a number. It has nothing to do with handsets. If handset X has number Y and I can associate number Z from another handset with it and not associate Y. Frankly were it not for Apple's security feature to prevent you from hijacking phone numbers I could associate numbers I don't even own with my iMessage account.

should Apple be being more proactive about a general fix which people don't have to think about, Yes

I'm still unclear how the system is broken. If I lose my Apple handset I still want my iMessages to get to my computer or iPad. The default is exactly the behavior I want. I want Apple to work to try and get messages to me as aggressively as possible. That's the setup we are talking about. If I didn't want that I'd choose a different configuration.

Certainly a page on Apple's website explaining this would be useful. But really the only people who know that number X switched from an iPhone to an Android are the carriers. If there is going to a fix the obvious fix is they let Apple know and Apple sends an email to the end user with instructions. But still everyone is going to say how people don't read emails from companies....

Re:good

[imunfair]

I've dealt with this issue for people at work, and it's enough of a pain that for business accounts you just pony up the extra cash for a new iPhone, rather than trying to explain to multiple clients why their text messages are failing.

I'm glad someone is suing Apple for it, because it's a terrible design to hijack SMS messages without explicit user permission - especially if you don't immediately switch back over to using normal SMS after a failed iMessage delivery. It should be automatic, or at very most one manual resend - but they require multiple failures to be manually resent before switching back.

I really don't understand why anyone would defend this behavior since transparently hijacking any type of data without permission is obviously a violation of user trust, and possibly a privacy issue as well.

Re:good

[BitZtream]

Certainly a page on Apple's website explaining this would be useful.

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

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

http://www.htc.com/www/support...

but still everyone is going to say how people don't read emails from companies....

In the last ignorant rant about this posted just a day or so before this story, it was pointed out that their provider DID in fact send them an email that told them what they had to do when they switched phones.

At some point, the user has to actually pay attention to what they are doing and put some personal effort into it.

Re:good

[imunfair]

You really sound like an Apple sales person. It's weasley to claim that a novice user enabling knows they've given permission to Apple to reroute their messages. For the handful of people that I've dealt with on the issue they had no idea.

You're also making a lot of things out to be obvious that really aren't. If you switch phones without disabling iMessaging (because you didn't know it was on in the first place), other Apple users will continue sending your texts via that route. The non-obvious fix is to log into the Apple site and delete the phone from your account, after which it will take up to 24 hours to stop delivering texts via iMessage.

At that point it starts failing them for the senders - and allowing them to resend via SMS. However, instead of just always using SMS from the first failure it requires repeated manual resends before it remembers. There's a reason that phone salesmen I've talked to think it's an intentional tactic to lock people into Apple. It could just be a shortsighted design from people who think they're the best, but either way it needs to be fixed in a clear and logical way.

In other words, it sounds like you have a lot of theoretical knowledge on how iMessaging should work fantastically - without a grasp of how the convoluted design can go very wrong.

The former iPhone user is an idiot.

[tlambert]

The people sending you messages are not sending you SMS, they are sending you iMessages. They are sending to your contact phone number, and they have iMessage turned on to save them $$$ when sending texts to other people registered with iMessage.

Because you used to have an iPhone, and had also turned iMessage on, your phone number is in their database, and so when it's deciding what data channel to use, it looks up the phone number it's about to send to, and if it's listed in the iMessage database, it sends an iMessage to the associated AppleID instead of sending an SMS via the cellular network. This way it doesn't cost them SMS $$$ to send the message.

When you pulled the SIM from your iPhone, you stupidly failed to turn off iMessage in your settings, and then sync those settings back to the iCloud. As this knowledge base article indicates, it can therefore take up to 45 days before it starts using SMS again: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS...

Alternately, you can go to http://appleid.apple.com/ and log in with your Apple ID, and manage your account, and disable iMessage that way (typically by removing your mobile phone number, and if you don't have an land line, putting the number in for your (non-mobile) contact number instead.

Note: Once the message has been sent, either via iMessage, or SMS, from the originating phone, it's sent; you don't get a second shit. It's not like those messages are "stored up" in a system that's capable of sending SMS messages, since the decision was made on the senders iPhone, not on the back end server.

Basically, it boils down to the former iPhone user being an idiot about disengaging from the additional iPhone associated services that they opt'ed into.

But never fear, up to 45 days afterward, the switch will happen automatically, as iMessage feeds back into the configuration database that the messages sent to the number have been undeliverable via iMessage. Or, you know, they could log onto http://appleid.apple.com/ now and fix it themselves, which can take up to 24 hours to take effect, because some idiot thought NoSQL was a good idea.

Re:The former iPhone user is an idiot.

[tlambert]

I have an iphone. I never turned on any setting related to imessages. I still received imessages from other iphone users and would be pretty annoyed if the communication failed because of switching to a new phone.

It's turned on by default if you set up iCloud services, which people generally do to sync their address book, apps, and other content via "the cloud". That in turn is tuned on by default if you have push notifications turned on at all (which requires an Apple ID, and is how iMessage notifications happen, generally quicker than SMS notifications over the cellular providers networks (and the carrier bridge, if the sender and recipient aren't subscribed with the same carrier in the same geographic region).

Not only that, they is no indication that messages aren't being delivered.

There's a visual indicator on the sender's phone of a green vs. a blue "talk bubble" background color to indicate something sent via iMessage vs. SMS. Yeah, this isn't terrifically called out.

The notification will occur after the 45 days have elapsed (actually, it depends on when they run the batch job; it's generally 28 days +/- 14 days). But yeah, the notification is internal to the system.

I'll note for the record that SMS message delivery is also not acknowledged, so SMS messages, like iMessage messages, are pretty much like UDP datagrams, no matter how you slice things.

Poor setup on Apples part and clearly designed to hook people in.

I think it was more a cultural blind spot; in order to anticipate this being a problem, they'd have to consider the idea that someone might want to use a phone other than an iPhone, which is kind of unthinkable if you are an engineer whose livelihood is tied to building iPhone services... "Why in heck would anyone want to use software other than the software I wrote, which is the niftiest software evar?".

They have a settings mechanism on the iPhone that would take care of this, but if you dropped your iPhone in a toilet and killed it, you wouldn't be able to use that if instead of buying a replacement iPhone, ho used something else.

There's the online mechanism via appleid.apple.com, as previously noted, but I think that's a workaround. For number portability to another phone, which generally comes with a carrier contract and a new SIM (or a CDMA ID), they'd get the notification through the phone number portability act due to the carrier contract (this is half the source of the 45 days for the automatic cutover), but slamming the SIM around between phones that are iPhones and non-iPhones, there's really no network notifications that take place back to Apple that the change has occurred.

One possible workaround, and I will bet it's the one that gets put in place, should this suit be considered to have merit, rather than being a user error (it's definitely a user error, and Apple isn't really responsible for third party equipment not having the notification back to the Apple ID to dissociate it) would be to note failure to contact on the iMessage sends more promptly, and, worst case secondary settlement, probably retransmit them via SMS gateway.

This last is unlikely to happen, since it'd need to forge the source address as the original senders phone #, rather than the gateway, which would require additional agreements with all the carriers. I'm going to guess that the carriers won't be very cooperative in this, since they made about $10B last year in SMS charges worldwide, which is why Facebook was willing to pay $19B for "WhatsApp". Why cooperate with someone who is trying to disrupt your business model and reduce your profits, after all?

Re:The former iPhone user is an idiot.

[tlambert]

Why don't you reply to this post because that person seems to have tried to unsubscribe from iMessage.

Not really my job to give them a personally clue, above and beyond the above posting, especially since they are posting AC, and I therefore can't contact them to help them directly work around whatever it is they are functionally failing to do. As an AC, there's really no way to have a conversation person to person about it.

Re:The former iPhone user is an idiot.

[jbolden]

That person is an AC and claims from ACs about stuff with no explanation at all aren't worth responding to.

The fact is iMessage isn't magic. The way it works is rather clear. There are obvious visual signals for the sender about what's happening. There are no magic settings in it. Associating and disassociating devices can at a minimum be done via:
a) The device
b) findmyphone
c) support.apple.com
d) or via. Apple's phone support

This whole controversy is BS.

The former iPhone user is an idiot.

[JasonWhitehurst]

As an IT Architect, who daily works with and for those with varying degrees of technical skills, I would disagree that the user is "an idiot". The steps you mention will certainly address the issue no doubt. What is in question is if the layperson should be aware of these steps and be capable of undertaking them "if" they forget to disable iMessage. What a class action lawsuit will do is force Apple to put in checks that look at the IMEI of the phone each time an iMessage is sent and the ack isn't received by the server from the phone in x amount of time. There is a different error message for an IMEI either offline or registered to a new user than one where the phone is simply unavailable. I can think of 5 different ways Apple can identify the device changed to a non Apple device. They haven't fixed this issue on purpose. Creating an issue like this undoubtedly ensures a percentage of users return their Android phones and get another Apple device to fix the texting issue thereby ensuring Apple revenue. You can bet Apple will weigh the cost of the suit versus the customer retention revenue and either pay out and leave it the way it is or fix the problem. There's no doubt it is a problem because it's not automated and the courts will rule in favor of the user because the process is not automated.

This is a real problem and not an Android problem.

[zoid.com]

This is a very real problem. My wife had her iphone 4s stolen and activated my daughter's old iphone 4s on her verizon line. About a week later she tells me that many of her friends are saying that she isn't responding to txt messages and she says she isn't getting them. This goes on for weeks. It turns out that she didn't turn on icloud on the new (old) iphone so all of the imessages were going to never never land. It's not obvious at all what is happening.

Re:She'll lose

[MichaelSmith]

But from the users POV the apple device and all its infrastructure is gone. They got a new phone. Why should they have to switch off stuff on the old phone?

PEBKAC

[SJ]

In other news, a friend of mine recently switched to Google Chat. Why hasn't he responded to all my Skype messages? Is he not getting them?

Re:PEBKAC

[thegarbz]

Maybe because she switch from one chat messaging system to another. Quite a bit different than going from SMS to SMS. Now you can argue that that SMS and iMessage are two different systems. Well... they are in the same app, and it's confusing the hell out of users.

Regardless of the actual mechanics involved when one user experiences a problem it's PEBKAC. When multiple users experience multiple problems in similar ways all not expecting the outcome in question and vendors need to host webpages with dedicated instructions to circumvent the issue it is most definitely not PEBKAC.

Re:This is a real problem and not an Android probl

[SeaFox]

It turns out that she didn't turn on icloud on the new (old) iphone so all of the imessages were going to never never land. It's not obvious at all what is happening.

The first thing I would do after activating an iPhone on a plan to replace another one is sign into my iCloud account to sync all my contacts back. Not to mention remove the old iPhone from my iCloud account so my iCloud email, Safari bookmarks (and possibly saved passwords) are no longer in the thief's hands.

Just Works

[tuppe666]

Apple doesn't make it hard. She just didn't follow instructions prior to selling her device and she hasn't followed instructions after selling her device to fix it. The hard part is pure fiction.

I find it constantly disappointing the repeated lie of "just works". The truth is this is only partially true even within Appleverse, there is no good reason why complicated workarounds are necessary. The fact that fruit lovers like yourself are prepared to defend, an anticompetitive move.

Personally I think this kind of bullshit is driving customers (like the one in the lawsuit) to android. You can only be abusive while your on top, and Apple peaked last year with market share; its devices are behind the competitors...they are the little overpriced phones, and they need to buy a headphone company to remain cool.

Re:Just Works

[DarwinSurvivor]

Apple offers a UC system that is easier to install and configure than other UC systems. That's what "just works" means. It doesn't mean that if you turn a UC system on, don't bother to turn it off that it will magically know you don't want it anymore which is what the Android people suppose it should do. This would be like an article being critical of gmail for not disabling email when you sell your computer.

How is that the same? Gmail isn't affecting the working status of your other email accounts. iMessage likes to "take over" your text messages. If Apple wants to fuck with the SMS system offered by another company (your service provider), they need to make DAMN sure they don't break it in the process.

Re:Just Works

[jbolden]

Read this and the previous thread. This has been answered already multiple times. iMessages doesn't take over your text messages. People who want to send you SMS can send you SMS just fine. SMS continues to work perfectly.

Re:FFS

[clifyt]

Right now, it is this but 45 days.

When I travel, I generally take a burner phone with me so I don't get overseas charges and otherwise. I still take my iPhone, but leave it on Wifi only. And a lot of times, Wifi is still hard to come by. I can get to internet cafes where I can log in to someone else's computer, but I can't get to my own computers. And when I do get wifi? I get all my messages, sometimes a week later.

The point? For a lot of us 1 day is way too short. Maybe 45 days is too long. What is the appropriate time?

Re:FFS

[kthreadd]

A user preference would be appropriate.