13 ms·

Laptop of the magi: an annoyed iMessage antitrust anecdote

122 points by panic 3y ago

theamk 3y ago
The author seems to want a different result from iMessage antitrust: they want to be able to disable iMessage on the specific phone/email account (or even better, have this disablement happen automatically); while most other articles want to enable iMessage on new platforms. The former is a great idea and I believe Apple should be forced it to do it ASAP. There is no reason to for Apple to "contaminate" phone numbers and force their iMessage on anyone. The latter is a bad idea. Let's not make iMessage better, there are plenty of good messengers already. Let's make it easy to turn off and stop using.
- olliej 3y ago
  You can already remove a number from iMessage (because this exact problem came up back when iMessage first came out)
  - kixiQu 3y ago
    You cannot, however, deassociate the Apple ID email address when there is no associated iPhone and thus no registered phone number reachable via iMessage. (This is mentioned in the link.)
    - ckcheng 3y ago
      Isn’t it possible to click that checkbox next to one’s email to deregister it from iMessage from the Message app on a Mac? I was under the impression it’s [1] possible but I’m away from my Mac to check. Worse case one could change one’s Apple ID’s email. Apple should make this stuff more obvious though [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38780442 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38780442
      - jxdxbx 3y ago
        You can’t remove your last option. It’s probably happening because her Apple ID is her real email so she’d have to first change that which is way unintuitive. I think it’s best with Apple to log in with an iCloud email address even if you don’t use it.
        ckcheng 3y ago
        Oh you're right, you can't remove the last option (just confirmed by trying). It's the worse case then, and she'd have to change/remove her email from her Apple ID [1]. Apple should do better and make it easier in this kind of case. They already allow one to deregister a phone number from iMessage via a web page, how hard could it be for them to do the same for an email... [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38780442 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38780442
- lucasban 3y ago
  What is the argument for not making iMessage better? Especially given that the context of this is antitrust.
m463 3y ago
It seems that his mother is on android, and even though she has signed out of imessage, apple's servers will not deliver messages to her phone number for people on iphones. I can see how this is a little self-serving on apple's part. Maybe she can delete her apple account?
- olliej 3y ago
  That’s something you can do from iOS or macOS, or you can change your account password (which can be done on the web)
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- ckcheng 3y ago
  She needs to deregister iMessage I think. She can do that on her Mac laptop or online: Deregister iMessage on your iPhone or online: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203042 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203042 Direct link for convenience (scroll down to “No longer have your iPhone?”): https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage/ https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage/ Edit: oh I see, the problem is with having the email registered with iMessage. See “Change iMessage settings in Messages on Mac” [1] and scroll down to “You can be reached for messages at”: Open the Message app on the laptop and click the checkbox to deregister the email. Or she can change her Apple ID email address online [2] to some other one, which would deregister the email from iMessage. [1]: https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/messages/icht39422/mac https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/messages/icht39422/mac [2]: https://appleid.apple.com/ https://appleid.apple.com/
  - justsomehnguy 3y ago
    > She needs to But thing is she shouldn't in the first place.
    - ckcheng 3y ago
      Oh I don’t disagree. Given that she is in such a situation though, I’m just trying to be helpful by offering some hopefully useful info.
kmeisthax 3y ago
I hope the Apple defenders understand that the main problem with iMessage is specifically that it just looks like regular text messaging, to the point where everyone not tech literate just thinks it is SMS. Not just that we want a blue bubble, damn it. Hopefully the RCS support also fixes the "oops, I bought an Android without turning off the magic parasite SMS replacement and now I'm banned from texting iPhones" problem.
- cweagans 3y ago
  You can deregister your phone number from iMessage on the web now, fwiw. https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage/ https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage/
  - cozzyd 3y ago
    yes, this is super obvious for everyone I'm sure... (I remember my wife having this problem like, 6-7 years ago when she switched away from an iphone...it took a while for her to figure out she wasn't getting "texts" from her sister)
    - cweagans 3y ago
      I’m not disputing that it’s a problem. Only pointing out that there is now a workable solution that can be used after you get rid of an iPhone.
      - TiredOfLife 3y ago
        “But the plans were on display…” “On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.” “That’s the display department.” “With a flashlight.” “Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.” “So had the stairs.” “But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?” “Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.” ― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
  - 3y ago
NewJazz 3y ago
Tim Cook was pretty clear on his position here. "Buy your mom an iPhone". Going half in on apple products was the second mistake. Buying apple at all was the first. These devices aren't for you, the networks aren't for you. Stop acting surprised when you get burned by the trillion dollar corporation that holds exclusive access to the keys of the most ubiquitous mobile devices in the US.
- raverbashing 3y ago
  The rest of the world messages this just fine by using WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal or whatnot The blue bubble is the essencial first world problem
  - dan-robertson 3y ago
    It’s more of a (north) American thing. iPhone adoption isn’t really high enough for iMessage to catch on outside, though I guess some countries use sms instead of WhatsApp.
    - shiroiuma 3y ago
      It's not iPhone adoption: lots of countries have very high iPhone adoption, but don't use iMessage. The key is SMS: no one outside North America uses it any more; it's just like fax machines. It might still be used by businesses to send you package delivery notices, for instance, but that's about it. No one uses it to talk to their friends and family. Here in Japan, iPhone adoption is at least as high as in the US, but absolutely no one uses SMS for chatting; they use LINE messenger instead. From what I've read elsewhere, the main reason was SMS charges: many years ago, it cost money to send SMS texts in most countries, while in North America the telecom companies were faster at offering free texting (or at least flat-rate). So elsewhere, various chat apps arose and caught on: LINE in Japan, WeChat in China, KakaoTalk in Korea, WhatsApp elsewhere. Now that everyone is used to these services and they've become so popular to the point where they're basically mandatory to participate in society, why would anyone want to go back to SMS? The only problem with the messaging apps is that they're all separate from each other so they're silos, but unless you have a lot of friends spread across different countries, that's not an issue. And these apps don't disciminate based on which phone you own.
gnicholas 3y ago
> By buying my mother a gift, I have now made it so that her contacts with iPhones, who all have her email saved, will – by default – send her messages that she cannot access on her phone, and they won’t know that they’re doing this when trying to text her. I guess other people are likely different, but I hardly ever populate a contact with email addresses. Almost all of my contact cards have a phone number, and possibly a mailing address, but no email. I am more likely to put down family relationships or notes about how I know the person (my kid's friend's parent, for example) than I am to put in an email address. This doesn't mean that the behavior that he describes, where messages are routed via iMessage to an email address instead of SMS to a phone, is appropriate. But it seems a bit extreme to claim that "her contacts with iPhones, who all have her email saved". I would imagine that a 60 year old woman (I'm guessing at her age) is not super likely to exclusively be friends with people who enter emails for all their contacts.
- thomastjeffery 3y ago
  That's because you are sharing contacts the hard way. I usually do the same, but ideally the process is automated enough that you don't need to type any of the contact details. In that case, the email should be automatically included with the name and phone number.
  - cesarb 3y ago
    I'd like to learn about these ideal ways. The most usual way to share a contact I know of, other than typing its details by hand, is by forwarding the contact through WhatsApp, and then it still wouldn't have the email because it whoever originally created the contact typed the details by hand (and included only the name and phone number).
    - gnicholas 3y ago
      For me (GP), I create a contact card after getting someone's phone number, and I just enter their name. I don't really need to create a contact card with email addresses because I can just search my email application for their name, which is almost always in their email address. Phone numbers, on the other hand, are obviously not searchable in this way. I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one who's 'doing it wrong'!
rahimnathwani 3y ago
I have more than one email address associated with my Apple account. Within the iMessage app settings, I can select which email address(es) can be used to reach me over iMessage. I guess (but have not verified) that OP's grandmother could solve her immediate problem by adding a second (secret) email address to her Apple account, and having that as the only address which receives iMessages. (Not saying this is easy.)
- kixiQu 3y ago
  Yup, this was my best next thing to try, so... it seems like this is what we're going to have to do. Thanks for the practical angle!
Almondsetat 3y ago
You can set up and use a Macbook withour an iCloud account. Since their mother didn't have an Apple device I seriously don't understand why the Macbook would be set up using iCloud. The author conveniently leaves out the process of configuring the Macbook which makes me doubt the integrity of this narration
- SOLAR_FIELDS 3y ago
  1. The happy path doesn’t encourage you to do that 2. You give up a significant amount of other unrelated features when skipping iCloud setup
  - Almondsetat 3y ago
    1. I assume the author set up the computer, meaning they should know 2. you give up almost nothing if you don't have other Apple devices and treat your Macbook like a normal computer Again, the modt important piece of missing information is not provided which makes me skeptical of the article
    - SOLAR_FIELDS 3y ago
      Backup, Drive and Keychain are 3 things that are valuable without cross device sync that you lose if you don’t attach your iCloud account. I wouldn’t call those “almost nothing”
      - Jcowell 3y ago
        Keychain should still work without icloud. Both Safari’s & the systems
    - devsda 3y ago
      Linking between notes in the default note app is not possible without an icloud login. Creating subtasks in the reminders app is not possible without an icloud account. There are no _real_ technical or functional reasons (that can't be fixed) why icloud is a requirement for these features but it is needed. A mac with icloud and a mac without icloud are different in many non trivial ways.
jxdxbx 3y ago
Beeper wouldn’t have helped here unless he had already set it up on his mom’s phone. And then it likely would have confused her.
- smlavine 3y ago
  The author is a woman, by the way.
quitit 3y ago
This article is nothing more than bait for people who don't use an iPhone to think it's a dark-patterned nightmare. The "Professional Computers person" probably chose not to include screenshots because it would debunk his feigned complexity. Since he's already claimed that his mother won't receive the messages•, - then the whole faux-drama would have been solved by simply turning off iMessage on his or his mother's device. (• Which is false: the messages would be sent to her mac, and they'd be visible as unread to him, so he'd already see that there was an issue.) It's also not some obscure hidden setting to choose a different delivery pathway in the Messages app: it's one button and the -only- option on the screen when choosing a recipient. It's how a normal, not-tech savvy, person chooses a different phone number for a contact that has multiple phone numbers, and iMessage will remember that choice for the future. And if all of that is too hard, his mother could simply send him a message and the messages app will reply to her phone number, it won't auto switch to her email address. When he composes messages in the future, the Messages app will also put up that SMS pathway as the 1st choice. This article was written to manipulate people into believing a false narrative, and judging from the comments, it worked great.
- stuaxo 3y ago
  This is nonsense - most people don't know the difference between imessages and SMS, it absolutely is surprising behaviour for the user that the messages now go to an app on her laptop that she may not even use.
  - jtc331 3y ago
    Maybe they don’t know all the intracies, but they certainly know the difference, that’s why there’s such a cultural big deal about blue versus green bubbles. Everybody knows when one person in a text group isn’t using iMessage, and they usually hate it.
    - Brian_K_White 3y ago
      Even I assumed imessage was just an SMS client until just now. You're saying it's not? And you're saying everyone knows this? I say incorrect. This is indeed totally surprising and inexplicable behavior.
cmcconomy 3y ago
This happened to me as well - an ex-coworker (and friend) was unable to get their texts routed to my phone. I have never owned an iphone but apple hijacked their ability to send me a text message on my android phone and I could not figure out how they could fix it. its sucks
EricHolden12 3y ago
This whole debacle has somehow made Apple. responsible for fixing SMS, which is not their job to do so. I really hope Apple holds their ground and doesn’t cave to this pressure to make iMessage more interoperable. For the longest time nobody batted an eye to iMessage, claiming it’s garbage and suddenly when it’s grown to the size, feature set that it’s at now there’s a mark on it.
- pgeorgi 3y ago
  "suddenly", except that there was a lawsuit about iMessage[1] in 2014 which AT&T and Google joined[2] in 2015, and ad campaigns about the Blue Bubble/Green Bubble thing specifically in 2019, e.g. by Samsung[3] This has been brewing for a long time, and it seems GSMA folks are now certain enough that RCS is a replacement to SMS to make some larger waves. [1] https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/imessage-judge-orders-apple-to-face-lawsuit-over-disappearing-text-messages/ https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/imessage-judge-orders-a... [2] https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/apple-imessage-android-lawsuit-news/ https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/apple-imessage-android-... [3] https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/samsungs-response-to-apples-green-bubbles-is-either-brilliant-or-a-severe-inferiority-complex.html https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/samsungs-response-to-apples-g...
jvandonsel 3y ago
What’s with the funky ‘g’ character in this blog’s font? Very distracting.
goosedragons 3y ago
I think you can just turn off iMessage on the mother's account... Pretty sure that's what I did when I had just an iPad a few years ago and was facing a similar problem. It's really dumb and stupid and annoying to explain to people why I didn't get their message.
cesarb 3y ago
> Maybe the general pattern of letting people send messages to someone who’s installed then uninstalled the app? Sorry to anyone who’s tried to contact me on Signal or Snapchat over the past decade. At least for Signal and WhatsApp, the sender can see when the receiver's phone received the message (the single tick mark which means "received by the server" becomes a double tick mark), so the situation when the receiver's phone doesn't have the app anymore (or is turned off) is a bit better. But yeah, it would be best if these apps warned when trying to message someone whose phone hasn't contacted the messaging server in a while.
crossroadsguy 3y ago
I think this is yet another thread where I must, like the dozens times before, just repeat that Apple is disgustingly pathetic at software and services. and it hides its inaptitude behind the famously hostile opaqueness - in implementation, documentation, and communication. That is not to say there’s no malice. Oh, there is. Hanlon’s razor cuts both ways in this particular case.
devaiops9001 3y ago
Trying to fight with iMessage is a fool's errand. If you really are concerned about your mother or other family being able receive messages from you then maintain a private cicd server to continuously build GrapheneOS and hand your family members a device pre-configured where plain phone/SMS* are completely disabled with the one messaging app be it Element or SimpleX to be used. What you do is hand them the device and say "use this if you want to reach me". Give them a Yubikey to add to their keychain for disk encryption/decryption on the device. Give them a piece of paper with a six-digit PIN on it and ask them every hour throughout the two days you see them for the holidays what the PIN is. >> "but I shouldn't have to do all this" "Everything that we know and love is reducible to the absurd acts of chemicals, and there is therefore no intrinsic value in this material universe". Hypocrite that you are, for you trust the chemicals in your brain to tell you they are chemicals. All knowledge is ultimately based on that which we cannot prove. Will you fight? or will you perish like a dog? [*] 911 calls still enabled, also note that 911 works without a SIM card.

122 points by panic 3y ago

The author seems to want a different result from iMessage antitrust: they want to be able to disable iMessage on the specific phone/email account (or even better, have this disablement happen automatically); while most other articles want to enable iMessage on new platforms. The former is a great idea and I believe Apple should be forced it to do it ASAP. There is no reason to for Apple to "contaminate" phone numbers and force their iMessage on anyone. The latter is a bad idea. Let's not make iMessage better, there are plenty of good messengers already. Let's make it easy to turn off and stop using.

olliej 3y ago
You can already remove a number from iMessage (because this exact problem came up back when iMessage first came out)
- kixiQu 3y ago
  You cannot, however, deassociate the Apple ID email address when there is no associated iPhone and thus no registered phone number reachable via iMessage. (This is mentioned in the link.)
  - ckcheng 3y ago
    Isn’t it possible to click that checkbox next to one’s email to deregister it from iMessage from the Message app on a Mac? I was under the impression it’s [1] possible but I’m away from my Mac to check. Worse case one could change one’s Apple ID’s email. Apple should make this stuff more obvious though [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38780442 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38780442
    - jxdxbx 3y ago
      You can’t remove your last option. It’s probably happening because her Apple ID is her real email so she’d have to first change that which is way unintuitive. I think it’s best with Apple to log in with an iCloud email address even if you don’t use it.
      - ckcheng 3y ago
        Oh you're right, you can't remove the last option (just confirmed by trying). It's the worse case then, and she'd have to change/remove her email from her Apple ID [1]. Apple should do better and make it easier in this kind of case. They already allow one to deregister a phone number from iMessage via a web page, how hard could it be for them to do the same for an email... [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38780442 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38780442
lucasban 3y ago
What is the argument for not making iMessage better? Especially given that the context of this is antitrust.

m463 3y ago

It seems that his mother is on android, and even though she has signed out of imessage, apple's servers will not deliver messages to her phone number for people on iphones. I can see how this is a little self-serving on apple's part. Maybe she can delete her apple account?

olliej 3y ago
That’s something you can do from iOS or macOS, or you can change your account password (which can be done on the web)
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ckcheng 3y ago
She needs to deregister iMessage I think. She can do that on her Mac laptop or online: Deregister iMessage on your iPhone or online: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203042 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203042 Direct link for convenience (scroll down to “No longer have your iPhone?”): https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage/ https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage/ Edit: oh I see, the problem is with having the email registered with iMessage. See “Change iMessage settings in Messages on Mac” [1] and scroll down to “You can be reached for messages at”: Open the Message app on the laptop and click the checkbox to deregister the email. Or she can change her Apple ID email address online [2] to some other one, which would deregister the email from iMessage. [1]: https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/messages/icht39422/mac https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/messages/icht39422/mac [2]: https://appleid.apple.com/ https://appleid.apple.com/
- justsomehnguy 3y ago
  > She needs to But thing is she shouldn't in the first place.
  - ckcheng 3y ago
    Oh I don’t disagree. Given that she is in such a situation though, I’m just trying to be helpful by offering some hopefully useful info.

kmeisthax 3y ago

I hope the Apple defenders understand that the main problem with iMessage is specifically that it just looks like regular text messaging, to the point where everyone not tech literate just thinks it is SMS. Not just that we want a blue bubble, damn it. Hopefully the RCS support also fixes the "oops, I bought an Android without turning off the magic parasite SMS replacement and now I'm banned from texting iPhones" problem.

cweagans 3y ago
You can deregister your phone number from iMessage on the web now, fwiw. https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage/ https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage/
- cozzyd 3y ago
  yes, this is super obvious for everyone I'm sure... (I remember my wife having this problem like, 6-7 years ago when she switched away from an iphone...it took a while for her to figure out she wasn't getting "texts" from her sister)
  - cweagans 3y ago
    I’m not disputing that it’s a problem. Only pointing out that there is now a workable solution that can be used after you get rid of an iPhone.
    - TiredOfLife 3y ago
      “But the plans were on display…” “On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.” “That’s the display department.” “With a flashlight.” “Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.” “So had the stairs.” “But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?” “Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.” ― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
- 3y ago

NewJazz 3y ago

Tim Cook was pretty clear on his position here. "Buy your mom an iPhone". Going half in on apple products was the second mistake. Buying apple at all was the first. These devices aren't for you, the networks aren't for you. Stop acting surprised when you get burned by the trillion dollar corporation that holds exclusive access to the keys of the most ubiquitous mobile devices in the US.

raverbashing 3y ago
The rest of the world messages this just fine by using WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal or whatnot The blue bubble is the essencial first world problem
- dan-robertson 3y ago
  It’s more of a (north) American thing. iPhone adoption isn’t really high enough for iMessage to catch on outside, though I guess some countries use sms instead of WhatsApp.
  - shiroiuma 3y ago
    It's not iPhone adoption: lots of countries have very high iPhone adoption, but don't use iMessage. The key is SMS: no one outside North America uses it any more; it's just like fax machines. It might still be used by businesses to send you package delivery notices, for instance, but that's about it. No one uses it to talk to their friends and family. Here in Japan, iPhone adoption is at least as high as in the US, but absolutely no one uses SMS for chatting; they use LINE messenger instead. From what I've read elsewhere, the main reason was SMS charges: many years ago, it cost money to send SMS texts in most countries, while in North America the telecom companies were faster at offering free texting (or at least flat-rate). So elsewhere, various chat apps arose and caught on: LINE in Japan, WeChat in China, KakaoTalk in Korea, WhatsApp elsewhere. Now that everyone is used to these services and they've become so popular to the point where they're basically mandatory to participate in society, why would anyone want to go back to SMS? The only problem with the messaging apps is that they're all separate from each other so they're silos, but unless you have a lot of friends spread across different countries, that's not an issue. And these apps don't disciminate based on which phone you own.

gnicholas 3y ago

> By buying my mother a gift, I have now made it so that her contacts with iPhones, who all have her email saved, will – by default – send her messages that she cannot access on her phone, and they won’t know that they’re doing this when trying to text her. I guess other people are likely different, but I hardly ever populate a contact with email addresses. Almost all of my contact cards have a phone number, and possibly a mailing address, but no email. I am more likely to put down family relationships or notes about how I know the person (my kid's friend's parent, for example) than I am to put in an email address. This doesn't mean that the behavior that he describes, where messages are routed via iMessage to an email address instead of SMS to a phone, is appropriate. But it seems a bit extreme to claim that "her contacts with iPhones, who all have her email saved". I would imagine that a 60 year old woman (I'm guessing at her age) is not super likely to exclusively be friends with people who enter emails for all their contacts.

thomastjeffery 3y ago
That's because you are sharing contacts the hard way. I usually do the same, but ideally the process is automated enough that you don't need to type any of the contact details. In that case, the email should be automatically included with the name and phone number.
- cesarb 3y ago
  I'd like to learn about these ideal ways. The most usual way to share a contact I know of, other than typing its details by hand, is by forwarding the contact through WhatsApp, and then it still wouldn't have the email because it whoever originally created the contact typed the details by hand (and included only the name and phone number).
  - gnicholas 3y ago
    For me (GP), I create a contact card after getting someone's phone number, and I just enter their name. I don't really need to create a contact card with email addresses because I can just search my email application for their name, which is almost always in their email address. Phone numbers, on the other hand, are obviously not searchable in this way. I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one who's 'doing it wrong'!

rahimnathwani 3y ago

I have more than one email address associated with my Apple account. Within the iMessage app settings, I can select which email address(es) can be used to reach me over iMessage. I guess (but have not verified) that OP's grandmother could solve her immediate problem by adding a second (secret) email address to her Apple account, and having that as the only address which receives iMessages. (Not saying this is easy.)

kixiQu 3y ago
Yup, this was my best next thing to try, so... it seems like this is what we're going to have to do. Thanks for the practical angle!

Almondsetat 3y ago

You can set up and use a Macbook withour an iCloud account. Since their mother didn't have an Apple device I seriously don't understand why the Macbook would be set up using iCloud. The author conveniently leaves out the process of configuring the Macbook which makes me doubt the integrity of this narration

SOLAR_FIELDS 3y ago
1. The happy path doesn’t encourage you to do that 2. You give up a significant amount of other unrelated features when skipping iCloud setup
- Almondsetat 3y ago
  1. I assume the author set up the computer, meaning they should know 2. you give up almost nothing if you don't have other Apple devices and treat your Macbook like a normal computer Again, the modt important piece of missing information is not provided which makes me skeptical of the article
  - SOLAR_FIELDS 3y ago
    Backup, Drive and Keychain are 3 things that are valuable without cross device sync that you lose if you don’t attach your iCloud account. I wouldn’t call those “almost nothing”
    - Jcowell 3y ago
      Keychain should still work without icloud. Both Safari’s & the systems
  - devsda 3y ago
    Linking between notes in the default note app is not possible without an icloud login. Creating subtasks in the reminders app is not possible without an icloud account. There are no _real_ technical or functional reasons (that can't be fixed) why icloud is a requirement for these features but it is needed. A mac with icloud and a mac without icloud are different in many non trivial ways.

jxdxbx 3y ago

Beeper wouldn’t have helped here unless he had already set it up on his mom’s phone. And then it likely would have confused her.

smlavine 3y ago
The author is a woman, by the way.

quitit 3y ago

This article is nothing more than bait for people who don't use an iPhone to think it's a dark-patterned nightmare. The "Professional Computers person" probably chose not to include screenshots because it would debunk his feigned complexity. Since he's already claimed that his mother won't receive the messages•, - then the whole faux-drama would have been solved by simply turning off iMessage on his or his mother's device. (• Which is false: the messages would be sent to her mac, and they'd be visible as unread to him, so he'd already see that there was an issue.) It's also not some obscure hidden setting to choose a different delivery pathway in the Messages app: it's one button and the -only- option on the screen when choosing a recipient. It's how a normal, not-tech savvy, person chooses a different phone number for a contact that has multiple phone numbers, and iMessage will remember that choice for the future. And if all of that is too hard, his mother could simply send him a message and the messages app will reply to her phone number, it won't auto switch to her email address. When he composes messages in the future, the Messages app will also put up that SMS pathway as the 1st choice. This article was written to manipulate people into believing a false narrative, and judging from the comments, it worked great.

stuaxo 3y ago
This is nonsense - most people don't know the difference between imessages and SMS, it absolutely is surprising behaviour for the user that the messages now go to an app on her laptop that she may not even use.
- jtc331 3y ago
  Maybe they don’t know all the intracies, but they certainly know the difference, that’s why there’s such a cultural big deal about blue versus green bubbles. Everybody knows when one person in a text group isn’t using iMessage, and they usually hate it.
  - Brian_K_White 3y ago
    Even I assumed imessage was just an SMS client until just now. You're saying it's not? And you're saying everyone knows this? I say incorrect. This is indeed totally surprising and inexplicable behavior.

cmcconomy 3y ago

This happened to me as well - an ex-coworker (and friend) was unable to get their texts routed to my phone. I have never owned an iphone but apple hijacked their ability to send me a text message on my android phone and I could not figure out how they could fix it. its sucks

EricHolden12 3y ago

This whole debacle has somehow made Apple. responsible for fixing SMS, which is not their job to do so. I really hope Apple holds their ground and doesn’t cave to this pressure to make iMessage more interoperable. For the longest time nobody batted an eye to iMessage, claiming it’s garbage and suddenly when it’s grown to the size, feature set that it’s at now there’s a mark on it.

pgeorgi 3y ago
"suddenly", except that there was a lawsuit about iMessage[1] in 2014 which AT&T and Google joined[2] in 2015, and ad campaigns about the Blue Bubble/Green Bubble thing specifically in 2019, e.g. by Samsung[3] This has been brewing for a long time, and it seems GSMA folks are now certain enough that RCS is a replacement to SMS to make some larger waves. [1] https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/imessage-judge-orders-apple-to-face-lawsuit-over-disappearing-text-messages/ https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/imessage-judge-orders-a... [2] https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/apple-imessage-android-lawsuit-news/ https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/apple-imessage-android-... [3] https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/samsungs-response-to-apples-green-bubbles-is-either-brilliant-or-a-severe-inferiority-complex.html https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/samsungs-response-to-apples-g...

jvandonsel 3y ago

What’s with the funky ‘g’ character in this blog’s font? Very distracting.

goosedragons 3y ago

I think you can just turn off iMessage on the mother's account... Pretty sure that's what I did when I had just an iPad a few years ago and was facing a similar problem. It's really dumb and stupid and annoying to explain to people why I didn't get their message.

cesarb 3y ago

> Maybe the general pattern of letting people send messages to someone who’s installed then uninstalled the app? Sorry to anyone who’s tried to contact me on Signal or Snapchat over the past decade. At least for Signal and WhatsApp, the sender can see when the receiver's phone received the message (the single tick mark which means "received by the server" becomes a double tick mark), so the situation when the receiver's phone doesn't have the app anymore (or is turned off) is a bit better. But yeah, it would be best if these apps warned when trying to message someone whose phone hasn't contacted the messaging server in a while.

crossroadsguy 3y ago

I think this is yet another thread where I must, like the dozens times before, just repeat that Apple is disgustingly pathetic at software and services. and it hides its inaptitude behind the famously hostile opaqueness - in implementation, documentation, and communication. That is not to say there’s no malice. Oh, there is. Hanlon’s razor cuts both ways in this particular case.

devaiops9001 3y ago

Trying to fight with iMessage is a fool's errand. If you really are concerned about your mother or other family being able receive messages from you then maintain a private cicd server to continuously build GrapheneOS and hand your family members a device pre-configured where plain phone/SMS* are completely disabled with the one messaging app be it Element or SimpleX to be used. What you do is hand them the device and say "use this if you want to reach me". Give them a Yubikey to add to their keychain for disk encryption/decryption on the device. Give them a piece of paper with a six-digit PIN on it and ask them every hour throughout the two days you see them for the holidays what the PIN is. >> "but I shouldn't have to do all this" "Everything that we know and love is reducible to the absurd acts of chemicals, and there is therefore no intrinsic value in this material universe". Hypocrite that you are, for you trust the chemicals in your brain to tell you they are chemicals. All knowledge is ultimately based on that which we cannot prove. Will you fight? or will you perish like a dog? [*] 911 calls still enabled, also note that 911 works without a SIM card.