Regular Text Messages In Apple Messages Desktop App

[steiney]

Hello all,

For some reason, I was under the impression that I could receive regular text messages through the messages app on a Mac like I can through the Messages app on the iPhone. I just upgraded from Snow Leopard to Mavericks and apparently I am sorely mistaken.

Does anyone know of a way to make the regular (non-iMessage) texts that come in to my iPhone come in to the desktop Messages app as well?

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance,

steiney

 

[squeakr]

Not possible. Those use your phone number are restricted to the cellular network bands. They are actually transmitted within the tower handshakes between your device and the cellular tower that tells your device it has a signal and can talk to the transmitting tower. There is no way to be able to receive those messages in the Messages app. It is not a possibility at all. Sorry for the bad news, but that is the way it is.

 

[melman101]

What really sucks is there used to be a way before the iPhone. I had a Sony Ericcson W600 and I would hook it up over Bluetooth to my Mac and use the Contacts app to send and receive text messages via Bluetooth. Once the iPhone came out, they took away that ability in the contacts app :-(. And it never worked with iPhone before they took it away. :-(

 

[steiney]

Thanks guys. It's really a shame the Messages app (or some other Apple app) on the computer can't hook up with the iPhone through some protocol and communicate regular text messages through to the Messages desktop app.

I was honestly expecting that when these new rMBPs came out they would have the option to have cellular and GPS radios built in. It would totally make sense considering the prevalence of LTE these days and the fact that Apple laptops can be tracked in Find My Device in iCloud.

Just had another idea: it would be neat if a jailbreak tweak/app on the iPhone could convert incoming texts to iMessages, let them sync through to the laptop, respond back as an iMessage and have the jailbreak tweak reconvert it back to a regular text. That's probably more work/hassle/coding than the first option!