Apple's iMessage Delivery Problems Worsened by Server Glitch

[mtneer]

Why is this even being discussed as a "problem"? Apple should just have one recommendation to people facing this issue - "Buy an iPhone". I don't understand why Apple would have to go the extra mile to help users with competitor devices. If anything this proves staying within Apples ecosystem "Just Works". Why bother about those who choose to leave it? They ought to suffer the consequences. I don't see Apple bending backwards to make life easy for Windows users.

 

[MrXiro]

Why would they when something so small and simple can force you to buy a Mac.

Well I have 2 macs. My work uses all windows.

 

[stewy]

So let me get this straight!

You're going to give the middle finger to the most valuable company in the world so you can sleep with the enemy, and Apple is suppose to help you with this process and let you make a seamless transition?

This is not a bug or an issue IMO. I honestly don't think they will even fix it, nor should they.

Another fanboy... This is a problem for iPhone users too... Oh and Google is now the most valuable company so there's that.

 

[OllyW]

So let me get this straight!

You're going to give the middle finger to the most valuable company in the world so you can sleep with the enemy, and Apple is suppose to help you with this process and let you make a seamless transition?

This is not a bug or an issue IMO. I honestly don't think they will even fix it, nor should they.

Why is this even being discussed as a "problem"? Apple should just have one recommendation to people facing this issue - "Buy an iPhone". I don't understand why Apple would have to go the extra mile to help users with competitor devices. If anything this proves staying within Apples ecosystem "Just Works". Why bother about those who choose to leave it? They ought to suffer the consequences. I don't see Apple bending backwards to make life easy for Windows users.

It also affects the Apple customers who can no longer send messages to their friends because they have changed phones.

 

[Oletros]

The problem is that Apple is not your telephone service provider, so there is no way for them to know, automatically, that you no longer are using that phone with that number.

How they don't know? They perfectly know what phone number is being accessed by an iOS device

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So let me get this straight!

You're going to give the middle finger to the most valuable company in the world so you can sleep with the enemy, and Apple is suppose to help you with this process and let you make a seamless transition?

This is not a bug or an issue IMO. I honestly don't think they will even fix it, nor should they.

Why is this even being discussed as a "problem"? Apple should just have one recommendation to people facing this issue - "Buy an iPhone". I don't understand why Apple would have to go the extra mile to help users with competitor devices. If anything this proves staying within Apples ecosystem "Just Works". Why bother about those who choose to leave it? They ought to suffer the consequences. I don't see Apple bending backwards to make life easy for Windows users.

Those are jokes, aren't?

 

[stewy]

I'm just going to put this out there because whenever Apple is involved in something like this all logic seems to go out the window.

If any of you were locked into using the same cellular provider or the same cable tv provider because a glitch on their end kept you from being able to change services you'd probably be upset right?

 

[cymerc]

Another fanboy... This is a problem for iPhone users too... Oh and Google is now the most valuable company so there's that.

Wrong, most valuable brand, not company. Google is still very far off from that. And even the most valuable brand label is only one study's opinion.

 

[stewy]

Wrong, most valuable brand, not company. Google is still very far off from that. And even the most valuable brand label is only one study's opinion.

Okay my bad... brand/company... not sure what the difference is in this case... aren't both brands and companies?

 

[itpromike]

Why is this even being discussed as a "problem"? Apple should just have one recommendation to people facing this issue - "Buy an iPhone". I don't understand why Apple would have to go the extra mile to help users with competitor devices. If anything this proves staying within Apples ecosystem "Just Works". Why bother about those who choose to leave it? They ought to suffer the consequences. I don't see Apple bending backwards to make life easy for Windows users.

The issue isn't 'helping the enemy' or any other sort of brain washed rhetoric. The issue is they are holding something valuable that you own for ransom essentially. This bug hijacks your phone number and renders you unreachable to millions of people including friends, family, and work. Fixing a bug in your system isn't going the extra mile by ANY means, it's going the distance you should have gone in the first place before releasing software without documentation and advertising it's potential side affects or pitfalls.

Imagine Comcast holding internet access for you against your will if you tried to go to a competitor or if you moved to a part of the country where Comcast doesn't service... Since you were once a Comcast customer they wouldn't allow you to get internet through anyone else even if Comcast wasn't an option. Would this be allowed? Condoned? Defended by anyone but the most ridiculous Comcast advocate?

Common sense mate... common sense. It's a bug; it needs to be fixed regardless of who it affects.

 

[krravi]

So let me get this straight!

You're going to give the middle finger to the most valuable company in the world so you can sleep with the enemy, and Apple is suppose to help you with this process and let you make a seamless transition?

This is not a bug or an issue IMO. I honestly don't think they will even fix it, nor should they.

Who anyone sleeps with is none of Apple's business. Just give them their damn phone number back!

 

[powers74]

Sorry

Sorry for all you folks having these iMessage issues, I have had none of them. Here's to the update?

 

[ppc_michael]

Though seriously I would love either a web based and other OS based solutions to iMessage. I love using it but at work I'm stuck on a Windows PC. Rather than having to pull out my phone when ever my Pebble goes off I'd love to be able to just reply on the computer, which is what I do most of the time at home.... same goes if I were to switch to and Android phone/device.

Oh well one can keep wishing.

Google Hangouts! It's what I use. Cross platform for both mobile and desktop. If you use Chrome on your desktop, you can install Hangouts as a desktop extension so it behaves like a standalone messaging app.

 

[spinedoc77]

So let me get this straight!

You're going to give the middle finger to the most valuable company in the world so you can sleep with the enemy, and Apple is suppose to help you with this process and let you make a seamless transition?

This is not a bug or an issue IMO. I honestly don't think they will even fix it, nor should they.

Are you kidding me? Of course it's a bug, even Apple said it was. You're number is locked to their texting, this is the same number which the number portability act made illegal for carriers to hold onto if you requested you wanted to keep. How the heck does changing brands have anything to do with a company keeping your number?

This has to be the most inane comment I've read on here in quite a while, and believe me there are lots of them every minute.

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Google Hangouts! It's what I use. Cross platform for both mobile and desktop. If you use Chrome on your desktop, you can install Hangouts as a desktop extension so it behaves like a standalone messaging app.

Yep, it's very nice. My main gripe switching to android was the lack of group messaging, but Hangouts takes care of this nicely.

 

[bushido]

dont even get me started on how lomg it takes to send a picture via iMessage even on LTE while it sends almost instantly using WhatsApp and theres still no easy way to delete attachements. even when i delete the messages i still have 3GB of others on my phone.

 

[Gasu E.]

How they don't know? They perfectly know what phone number is being accessed by an iOS device

Hmmm... so you're saying when a iPhone gets newly activated, Apple should check to see if that iPhone was previously activated against a different number, and clean up all the old associations? I suppose that could be done in theory, allowing for all other scenarios, such as the same user just changing his number. Hard to say whether that would work without some deadly side effect without a thorough use case analysis.

 

[Hurda]

So let me get this straight!

You're going to give the middle finger to the most valuable company in the world so you can sleep with the enemy, and Apple is suppose to help you with this process and let you make a seamless transition?

This is not a bug or an issue IMO. I honestly don't think they will even fix it, nor should they.

And what about the CURRENT iPhone users, who are sending messages which are never being delivered? Middle finger to them too, huh?

 

[vpndev]

NOT just iMessage

This is NOT a problem that affects iMessage. It impacts FaceTime too.

Long story - short version: I have an iPhone 5s (uses nano-SIM) and my cousin has the micro-SIM from my older iPhone 4 (in his iPhone 4S). He's signed in to FaceTime and iMessage with his iCloud ID, I'm signed in with mine.

But he still gets my FaceTime calls - BECAUSE HE HAS MY OLD PHONE NUMBER. It's been this way for months now.

 

[Konrad9]

So let me get this straight!

You're going to give the middle finger to the most valuable company in the world so you can sleep with the enemy, and Apple is suppose to help you with this process and let you make a seamless transition?

This is not a bug or an issue IMO. I honestly don't think they will even fix it, nor should they.

Yes, how dare people switch away from Apple. We should start a list of those heathens so everyone knows who the nonbelievers are.

 

[TheHateMachine]

Why is this even being discussed as a "problem"? Apple should just have one recommendation to people facing this issue - "Buy an iPhone". I don't understand why Apple would have to go the extra mile to help users with competitor devices. If anything this proves staying within Apples ecosystem "Just Works". Why bother about those who choose to leave it? They ought to suffer the consequences. I don't see Apple bending backwards to make life easy for Windows users.

You gotta be kidding me, maybe these people still have Apple devices and are continuing to have issues just because they changed their phone. Are you telling me they should just get crapped on because they aren't 100% Apple. What about the people having this problem who still have iPhones.

You are the best type of consumer Apple could ever hope for. "It just works."

 

[Exhale]

So let me get this straight!

You're going to give the middle finger to the most valuable company in the world so you can sleep with the enemy, and Apple is suppose to help you with this process and let you make a seamless transition?

This is not a bug or an issue IMO. I honestly don't think they will even fix it, nor should they.

Android users aren't affected. They can send messages to the switcher just fine.
Windows Phone users aren't affected. They can send messages to the switcher just fine.
Blackberry users aren't affected. They can send messages to the switcher just fine.
Dumbphone/Featurephone users aren't affected. They can send messages to the switcher just fine.

Its the remaining iPhone users that are negatively affected. They can't send messages to the switcher.

 

[NATO]

Interesting timing of this article - literally seconds after I discovered PQ-Chat which seems like iMessage but infinitely better and more secure.

 

[alexkywalker]

Issue can be seen simply by swapping your SIM card into non-iOS device

I am an App developer across platforms, and I noticed this issue the other day while having my SIM card on two different Windows Phones I was using for texting.

I had my iPhone 5 on WiFi, so I was able to see the messages, but nothing would show up on the Windows devices.

Hopefully the rumored 7.1.2 update will fix this...

 

[NATO]

I am an App developer across platforms, and I noticed this issue the other day while having my SIM card on two different Windows Phones I was using for texting.

I had my iPhone 5 on WiFi, so I was able to see the messages, but nothing would show up on the Windows devices.

Hopefully the rumored 7.1.2 update will fix this...

I've had a similar experience actually (SIM Card in Windows Phone to test apps), however that raises the question of what the intended behaviour should be.

How would Apple know about any non-Apple devices you might be using, so if you have iMessage enabled AT ALL, then surely that means messages will only go to your iOS devices. It sounds to me that if you use ANY non-Apple device for receiving messages, you'd need to disable iMessage completely.

 

[abshole765]

It's funny it took a class action lawsuit to go from "we don't know this is happening" to "we're working on a solution"

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Why is this even being discussed as a "problem"? Apple should just have one recommendation to people facing this issue - "Buy an iPhone". I don't understand why Apple would have to go the extra mile to help users with competitor devices. If anything this proves staying within Apples ecosystem "Just Works". Why bother about those who choose to leave it? They ought to suffer the consequences. I don't see Apple bending backwards to make life easy for Windows users.

So because I bought 1 iPhone and have my number tied to iMessage I should have to suffer the wrath of Apple if I decide to switch to Android or another platform and keep my existing number?

Keep sucking the Apple tit

 

[aolbites]

Just me?

I don't see how this is Apple's issue. iMessage is meant to be used between Apple devices. If a contact is saved as iMessage only and the user sending a text hasn't checked off "send as sms" if iMessage is unavailable. Then how is it Apple's wrongdoing? If a user forgets to turn of iMessage on their old device and messages are sent to it...how is that Apple's problem.

These are all user issues, where the user forgot to do something. If I forget to have my phone turned off and people call it and the new owner answers...is that my phone manufacturer's fault? No, it's mine, cuz I'm an idiot.

If I have the wrong contact info for someone and send an email and it gets bounced back is that my email software's fault? No, it's mine because I didn't stay on top of the contact information.

This is just idiots trying to place blame on anyone but themselves.

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It also affects the Apple customers who can no longer send messages to their friends because they have changed phones.

I dunno about your friends. But when I had an iPhone I usually had their iMessage information as well as a phone number. It's not that difficult just to use the phone number instead...

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I've had a similar experience actually (SIM Card in Windows Phone to test apps), however that raises the question of what the intended behaviour should be.

How would Apple know about any non-Apple devices you might be using, so if you have iMessage enabled AT ALL, then surely that means messages will only go to your iOS devices. It sounds to me that if you use ANY non-Apple device for receiving messages, you'd need to disable iMessage completely.

Nope, pretty sure there's an option to "send as SMS" when the iMessage gets bounced back as undeliverable. But you have to have the phone number of the person in order to send it as a SMS, and not just the apple id that iMessage uses to send messages.