I just missed a vital message that is currently 3 hours late and still not delivered.
Is this the server problems or is it because I changed phones recently?
The catch here, is that I had my iPhone 5 replaced at an Apple Store. Went through the process of registering the new phone with iMessage, and iMessage still isn't working correctly!
Anyway, I sent that other iPhone user an iMessage, and they received it instantly, but their original VITAL message, is still out there somewhere. And I suspect because it's trying to deliver it to my old phone.
And to cap it off
the VITAL message didn't show up on my iPad or Mac Book, both of which had no break in internet connection for the last 3 hours!
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As to the other discussions here
Part of the problem is trying to integrate with SMS. It makes a good user experience when it works, and it has worked pretty well for a short time (say the 6 months leading up to 7.1), but it's prone to too many cases of failure.
I suspect it's part of the general 'too many services' malaise that just seems to be getting worse, not better, at Apple.
(See my recent rants about software quality being down the toilet at Apple.)
Here's a problem I have to deal with regularlyone relative has cheap phone service, but hideously expensive data charges, so they keep data turned off on their phone & only have internet at home on wifi.
Say that person has another iMessage device, computer or iPad - and their phone has phone service, but not internet (they're away from home) - even if you choose their phone number to Message, that Message will never arrive on the phone, even if you have Send as SMS enabled. The message will report Delivered, because one iMessage device received it, even if that phone number is not listed for iMessage on that device.
I'd love to be able to turn off the phone number as an iMessage contact on their phone, but that's not possible. If I don't know if they're at home or not, I have to send each message twice, once with iMessage, turn off iMessage on my phone and send an SMS. Then I have the joy of turning iMessage back on and acknowledging on 4 devices that I flipped a switch
gods forbid they don't reply instantly and I have to go through the whole rigmarole again!
Point here is
it's not a difficult use case - if iMessage phone doesn't have internet, send SMS to that device, whatever you do with any other devices. And I should not have to do ANYTHING special with set-ups, settings or my device when I wish to send them a message.
Apple has lost control of its software/quality. Something's changed about their small teams approach. Some penny pinching (no doubt our boy Cook, who hired the toe-cutter to run Retail and fell flat on his face) -- well he's done something to software and dropped the ball completely. Jobs had major stuff ups with software (MobileMe), but not this constant instability - one release it works, then it doesn't. [see other rants]
