Question. I am testing this iCloud iMessage feature and I noticed a pretty glaring problem.
If I delete a message on my iPhone or iPad, it deletes it everywhere. If I delete a message from my Mac it does not delete everywhere.
Is there a way to fix this?
I’d like that situation reversed. Hopefully this is something that can be adjusted with settings.
Here’s what I want to do, much the way I handle Mail on all of my devices:
With iCloud Messages on the Mac, can I adjust these settings between devices such that, if I delete a message or thread on my iPhone or iPad, that it will stay untouched on the Mac?
The way I have Mail setup, if I delete e-mail on my iPhone, they remain on my Mac. Then the Mac is set never to delete the e-mails locally, even as it is set to delete them from the server, so it serves as my archive.
Messages on my Mac serves as my archive, some date back to 2010. There are no threads on my iPhone or iPad that date back that far. What I don’t want to happen is to turn on Messages in the cloud, and have all the messages on my Mac back to 2010 deleted because they aren’t on my iPhone and iPad. Going forward, I don’t want a message deleted on my iPhone or iPad, to delete that message from my Mac. I don’t really care what’s in iCloud, but I don’t want my Mac affected by it once a message has been downloaded to it. That also means, that since my Mac is not always on, until my Mac receives a new message, it can’t be deleted from the original source. This is more or less how it works now. Is this how messages will continue to work? Or will the Messages server now send the incoming messages to iCloud to be pushed down to the devices?
It would be great if deleting the message from the Mac that it’s deleted on all the other devices, and deleting on the iPhone and iPad would affect the other, but not the Mac. However, I have an iPad with limited storage that I routinely delete all the messages from due to reclaim space, I wouldn’t want that to affect other devices, but I do want it to get current messages.
I’ll probably wait a while before I start playing with this feature until I see the reports that all the bugs are worked out and assurances that it works the way I need it to. I mean it’s been a year since it was announced, so there’s no hurry.
Wait, wait, they didn’t add Messages to iCloud.com? If they don’t add that capability, this feature is as good as useless to me. Messages barely take any space, so I am not about to let them store messages in the cloud, with questionable security, to save an irrelevant amount of storage space. They could easily tie it to having at least 1 iPhone being actively used by your Apple ID, if they feared enabling to work on messages via web browser could lose them hardware sales.
I’ve had this question since day one. I was expecting there would be an app that allowed me to access messages on any device anywhere through a browser, if I lost or damaged my Apple devices, or otherwise didn’t have access to them. iCloud would likely be much easier to hack (though it doesn’t have to be), and therefore a security risk to customers privacy. While I appreciate Apple protecting us from government overreach, I’m not all that worried about it. Those who are, could disable iCloud access.
Right now, since I don’t know if Messages in the Cloud will work the way I need it to, and I can’t access it remotely, there’s no reason to use it. I’ll be watching from the sidelines to see how this all pans out. Right now it feels a lot like the launch of MobileMe.
