7 ms·

Apple finally makes it easy to disable iMessage

92 points by riaface 12y ago

scrumper 12y ago
We'll see if it fixes the big issue I'm having - a friend who ditched his iPhone can exchange SMS messages with me and others individually, but he can't participate in group threads anymore. No error, he just never receives the messages.
- octo_t 12y ago
  how do you think group threads work? they don't exist outside the iMessage world at all.
  - Ricapar 12y ago
    Group threads are done over MMS. They absolutely do exist out of iMessage.
    - mahouse 12y ago
      I had never heard about them. Are they standard'
      - TheCoelacanth 12y ago
        Not part of standard SMS, but it is a standard: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia_Messaging_Service http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia_Messaging_Service
        mahouse 12y ago
        I actually meant group threads.
        rwong48 12y ago
        Group threads have been implemented as MMS on all major smartphone operating systems. Unfortunately, Android didn't get it until Android 4.2 or something. The key is that the recipient list is sent with the message, so the other clients know who else is participating in the group, and can also thread and send outgoing messages accordingly.
- berberous 12y ago
  What Android SMS app does he use? Tell him to try another. Group texts over MMS appears to be somewhat of a kludge, and different text apps support or do not support it to differing degrees. For some of the ones that do, 80% of their changelogs appear to be "Improved support for group texts / MMS bug fixes".
- ogreface 12y ago
  I have this exact issue. When I used the de-register tool, it said that I wasn't registered with iMessage. I don't have high hopes here...
  - andale 12y ago
    Likewise here - switched from iPhone (on Verizon) to Android (on T-Mobile), and in several group threads I no longer see the replies of some of the participants. Truly frustrating, and makes you feel marginalized from the conversation.
  - jevinskie 12y ago
    Seconded. I still have the old iPhone. I wonder if reregistering and deregistering with the new tool will help or just make things worse. This is only an issue for me because Apple made the arbitrary decision to make your iPhone functionally useless after a restore unless you insert a SIM. I still use my iPhone for dev. Guess what happened after a restore once I inserted my SIM? My iPhone automatically enrolled my phone number in iMessages. I spent months getting SMS working after switching to Android and I'm back at square one. This is antitrust level BS.
- ben1040 12y ago
  I've found that the best way to fix this is to get everyone who participates in the group conversation to delete the conversation from their phones. Then once everyone's done that, one person can send a message to everyone else and it should use SMS. In my experience, it looks like iMessage stores metadata about the chat medium for a given conversation, and that's determined upon creating the conversation. When sending individual messages, iMessage doesn't seem to attempt to determine whether conversation partner has gone dark from iMessage and fall back to MMS going forward. So everyone else gets the message, but not the person without an iPhone.
sudhirj 12y ago
Why is the list of countries so small? (India seems to be left out). That simply doesn't make sense for a global company. iMessages and iTunes SMSes worked perfectly, so it's not like they don't have capabilities here.
- laacz 12y ago
  Yes, as it also makes it impossible to deregister number from iMessaging service from those countries (my included).
atonse 12y ago
I have a different problem - I did a T-Mobile tryout and had an iPhone with a different number for a week. And then I returned it. I can't remove that number. I hope the new person that got it doesn't get my messages. Hopefully you can only associate one number with iMessage.
- dignick 12y ago
  I had this issue, reset your network settings and turn off and on iMessage. Maybe try without resetting first.
  - JohnTHaller 12y ago
    The phone has already been returned. So, forget about getting texts from your iPhone friends.
leonk 12y ago
There's a much bigger issue, the default iPhone settings has "Send as SMS" off, this means that if a failed iMessage attempt occurs, it will just give up (rather than sending by SMS). I've tried disabling iMessage on my iphone several times. I then have nothing connected to my iMessage account, but I still miss out on loads of messages from people who have the "Send by SMS" option disabled. Their devices are not told that I am no longer using iMessage. I went to the apple store to ask about this, and I was told the only solution was to get all my contacts to ensure "Send by SMS" is turned on. Which is frankly absolutely ridiculous!
- riaface 12y ago
  Did they say that with a straight face? I can't believe that would be serious advice! "You literally need to contact everyone in your address book and make sure they have the right settings."
  - dijit 12y ago
    No, you remove your number from the imessage "My Addresses" list and everyone else will see nothing different except the send button is green now. the problem that really exists with iMessage is that it's easy to enroll but people forget to unenroll when they move their number away from iPhone.
    - pessimizer 12y ago
      You're wrong, and the comment you replied to is right. According to Apple, it can take up to 45 days to receive text messages from Apple products after you turn iMessage off. http://support.apple.com/en-us/TS2755 http://support.apple.com/en-us/TS2755 This was the experience of the person who initiated the class action suit: "21. Apple personnel informed Plaintiff that even though she had turned iMessage off in her old iPhone she may still not be receiving all her text messages because some texters using Apple devices may not be using the latest Apple iOS version. Rather than Apple coming up with a solution to a problem created by Apple, Apple's representative instead suggested to Plaintiff that Plaintiff get her text message senders to update their Apple iOS to the latest version, or have them delete and then re-add Plaintiff as their contact, or have Plaintiff and these unsuccessful Apple texters start a new text conversation with Plaintiff." http://www.slideshare.net/harrisonrweber/apple-imessage-lawsuit http://www.slideshare.net/harrisonrweber/apple-imessage-laws...
lukeholder 12y ago
I think the problem was that sometimes the iMessage did get delivered, but to an iPad, a Mac, or some other device with iMessage set up using the same Apple ID - so they couldn't just wait to see if the iMessage failed and then just send as a normal SMS.
dzhiurgis 12y ago
My problem is sending SMS when you are roaming abroad. iMessage will attempt to send it's thing even though you are offline, then fail few minutes later and it's only then you can tap and hold to send as SMS.
pessimizer 12y ago
I assume Apple couldn't get the lawsuits dropped, so they were forced into making concessions to their customers. Prediction: this tool will be ungoogleable, and discoverable only from a visit to an Apple store, or the last step of a support call. There is no technical reason for iMessage to behave as it does, only business reasons. I can come up with a more intuitive UI for this tool right now - make disabling iMessage send "curl -X POST [whatever] http://apple.com/technicallyyoucanturnitoff.now http://apple.com/technicallyyoucanturnitoff.now ". Done. ----- edit: Is 45 days still in effect? "If you want to transfer your SIM card or phone number to a device that doesn't support iMessage "Go to Settings > Messages and turn off iMessage if you plan to transfer your SIM card or phone number from an iPhone to a device that doesn't support iMessage. If you don't, other iOS devices might continue to try to send you messages using iMessage, instead of using SMS or MMS, for up to 45 days." http://support.apple.com/en-us/TS2755 http://support.apple.com/en-us/TS2755 ----- edit2: This change was directly a result of the lawsuit, which went into mediation 2 weeks ago in preparation for a settlement. Lawsuit: http://www.slideshare.net/harrisonrweber/apple-imessage-lawsuit http://www.slideshare.net/harrisonrweber/apple-imessage-laws... News of settlement: http://www.law360.com/articles/590726 http://www.law360.com/articles/590726 better: http://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/lawsuit-news/42957-apple-imessage-class-action-lawsuit/ http://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/lawsuit-news/... Apple could have done this at any time, but chose not to. ----- last edit: from the lawsuit filing - "49. Apple's business practice of distributing, marketing, and its iMessage and Messages service and application in the manner described herein is also an unfair business practice because it, inter alia, threatens to harm competition in its incipiency. Class members and others who become aware that switching their Apple iPhone or other wireless devices in favor of non-Apple products will result in these persons not being able to receive text messages sent to them by other Apple users are likely to be disincentivized from switching from Apple to an Apple competitor. [...]"
bsaul 12y ago
Is it just an optical illusion, or does Apple really has a problem with anything related to network programming ? Every single time i hear about any technology they're developing that is vaguely related to network, i have the feeling something is going to break up. I say "network" because i think it goes from - web sites : their developper and itunes connect website is a shame, app store discovery simply doesn't work, i've never even tried to open an icloud drive document on the web because of how poorly advertized it is, etc.. , - their web related technologies: icloud sync in general feels historically unreliable, even more so when you combine it with coredata, no server-side programming language (swift could be a fantastic opportunity but nothing was even advertized by apple), their network api on iOS was so raw that the most popular iOS lib is AFNetworking that was developped by a single guy (at least the first release) and made a world of difference. - Even wifi and 3G connectivity is often buggy on iOS and MacOS: see the infamous bluetooth+wifi bug plaguing yosemite today. And i could go on and on. It seems that network is just beyond Apple. Now of course it may be a bit harsh to them because they do have among the biggest user base for their service, but if you compare them to Google, Dropox, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon and all the other tech giants of today, you can't ignore that there is definitely something special in that area with Apple.
- acmecorps 12y ago
  On the other hand, their bonjour service is top notch (anecdotally, but still).
jstultz 12y ago
It will be interesting to see if it actually works this time around; just having a new interface for deregistering from iMessage does not convince me that it will solve the issues. The most frustrating, for me, is that in a one-on-one conversation, if your iPhone attempts and fails to send an iMessage to someone, it will tell you that it failed and allow you to send it as SMS instead. However, in a group, if it attempts to send an iMessage to a member of the group that does not actually have a device supporting iMessage, it will silently fail; you will not know that the message was not sent to that person, nor will you be able to force it to send as SMS even if you know they did not receive it.

92 points by riaface 12y ago

We'll see if it fixes the big issue I'm having - a friend who ditched his iPhone can exchange SMS messages with me and others individually, but he can't participate in group threads anymore. No error, he just never receives the messages.

octo_t 12y ago
how do you think group threads work? they don't exist outside the iMessage world at all.
- Ricapar 12y ago
  Group threads are done over MMS. They absolutely do exist out of iMessage.
  - mahouse 12y ago
    I had never heard about them. Are they standard'
    - TheCoelacanth 12y ago
      Not part of standard SMS, but it is a standard: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia_Messaging_Service http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia_Messaging_Service
      - mahouse 12y ago
        I actually meant group threads.
        rwong48 12y ago
        Group threads have been implemented as MMS on all major smartphone operating systems. Unfortunately, Android didn't get it until Android 4.2 or something. The key is that the recipient list is sent with the message, so the other clients know who else is participating in the group, and can also thread and send outgoing messages accordingly.
berberous 12y ago
What Android SMS app does he use? Tell him to try another. Group texts over MMS appears to be somewhat of a kludge, and different text apps support or do not support it to differing degrees. For some of the ones that do, 80% of their changelogs appear to be "Improved support for group texts / MMS bug fixes".
ogreface 12y ago
I have this exact issue. When I used the de-register tool, it said that I wasn't registered with iMessage. I don't have high hopes here...
- andale 12y ago
  Likewise here - switched from iPhone (on Verizon) to Android (on T-Mobile), and in several group threads I no longer see the replies of some of the participants. Truly frustrating, and makes you feel marginalized from the conversation.
- jevinskie 12y ago
  Seconded. I still have the old iPhone. I wonder if reregistering and deregistering with the new tool will help or just make things worse. This is only an issue for me because Apple made the arbitrary decision to make your iPhone functionally useless after a restore unless you insert a SIM. I still use my iPhone for dev. Guess what happened after a restore once I inserted my SIM? My iPhone automatically enrolled my phone number in iMessages. I spent months getting SMS working after switching to Android and I'm back at square one. This is antitrust level BS.
ben1040 12y ago
I've found that the best way to fix this is to get everyone who participates in the group conversation to delete the conversation from their phones. Then once everyone's done that, one person can send a message to everyone else and it should use SMS. In my experience, it looks like iMessage stores metadata about the chat medium for a given conversation, and that's determined upon creating the conversation. When sending individual messages, iMessage doesn't seem to attempt to determine whether conversation partner has gone dark from iMessage and fall back to MMS going forward. So everyone else gets the message, but not the person without an iPhone.

sudhirj 12y ago

Why is the list of countries so small? (India seems to be left out). That simply doesn't make sense for a global company. iMessages and iTunes SMSes worked perfectly, so it's not like they don't have capabilities here.

laacz 12y ago
Yes, as it also makes it impossible to deregister number from iMessaging service from those countries (my included).

atonse 12y ago

I have a different problem - I did a T-Mobile tryout and had an iPhone with a different number for a week. And then I returned it. I can't remove that number. I hope the new person that got it doesn't get my messages. Hopefully you can only associate one number with iMessage.

dignick 12y ago
I had this issue, reset your network settings and turn off and on iMessage. Maybe try without resetting first.
- JohnTHaller 12y ago
  The phone has already been returned. So, forget about getting texts from your iPhone friends.

leonk 12y ago

There's a much bigger issue, the default iPhone settings has "Send as SMS" off, this means that if a failed iMessage attempt occurs, it will just give up (rather than sending by SMS). I've tried disabling iMessage on my iphone several times. I then have nothing connected to my iMessage account, but I still miss out on loads of messages from people who have the "Send by SMS" option disabled. Their devices are not told that I am no longer using iMessage. I went to the apple store to ask about this, and I was told the only solution was to get all my contacts to ensure "Send by SMS" is turned on. Which is frankly absolutely ridiculous!

riaface 12y ago
Did they say that with a straight face? I can't believe that would be serious advice! "You literally need to contact everyone in your address book and make sure they have the right settings."
- dijit 12y ago
  No, you remove your number from the imessage "My Addresses" list and everyone else will see nothing different except the send button is green now. the problem that really exists with iMessage is that it's easy to enroll but people forget to unenroll when they move their number away from iPhone.
  - pessimizer 12y ago
    You're wrong, and the comment you replied to is right. According to Apple, it can take up to 45 days to receive text messages from Apple products after you turn iMessage off. http://support.apple.com/en-us/TS2755 http://support.apple.com/en-us/TS2755 This was the experience of the person who initiated the class action suit: "21. Apple personnel informed Plaintiff that even though she had turned iMessage off in her old iPhone she may still not be receiving all her text messages because some texters using Apple devices may not be using the latest Apple iOS version. Rather than Apple coming up with a solution to a problem created by Apple, Apple's representative instead suggested to Plaintiff that Plaintiff get her text message senders to update their Apple iOS to the latest version, or have them delete and then re-add Plaintiff as their contact, or have Plaintiff and these unsuccessful Apple texters start a new text conversation with Plaintiff." http://www.slideshare.net/harrisonrweber/apple-imessage-lawsuit http://www.slideshare.net/harrisonrweber/apple-imessage-laws...

lukeholder 12y ago

I think the problem was that sometimes the iMessage did get delivered, but to an iPad, a Mac, or some other device with iMessage set up using the same Apple ID - so they couldn't just wait to see if the iMessage failed and then just send as a normal SMS.

dzhiurgis 12y ago

My problem is sending SMS when you are roaming abroad. iMessage will attempt to send it's thing even though you are offline, then fail few minutes later and it's only then you can tap and hold to send as SMS.

pessimizer 12y ago

I assume Apple couldn't get the lawsuits dropped, so they were forced into making concessions to their customers. Prediction: this tool will be ungoogleable, and discoverable only from a visit to an Apple store, or the last step of a support call. There is no technical reason for iMessage to behave as it does, only business reasons. I can come up with a more intuitive UI for this tool right now - make disabling iMessage send "curl -X POST [whatever] http://apple.com/technicallyyoucanturnitoff.now http://apple.com/technicallyyoucanturnitoff.now ". Done. ----- edit: Is 45 days still in effect? "If you want to transfer your SIM card or phone number to a device that doesn't support iMessage "Go to Settings > Messages and turn off iMessage if you plan to transfer your SIM card or phone number from an iPhone to a device that doesn't support iMessage. If you don't, other iOS devices might continue to try to send you messages using iMessage, instead of using SMS or MMS, for up to 45 days." http://support.apple.com/en-us/TS2755 http://support.apple.com/en-us/TS2755 ----- edit2: This change was directly a result of the lawsuit, which went into mediation 2 weeks ago in preparation for a settlement. Lawsuit: http://www.slideshare.net/harrisonrweber/apple-imessage-lawsuit http://www.slideshare.net/harrisonrweber/apple-imessage-laws... News of settlement: http://www.law360.com/articles/590726 http://www.law360.com/articles/590726 better: http://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/lawsuit-news/42957-apple-imessage-class-action-lawsuit/ http://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/lawsuit-news/... Apple could have done this at any time, but chose not to. ----- last edit: from the lawsuit filing - "49. Apple's business practice of distributing, marketing, and its iMessage and Messages service and application in the manner described herein is also an unfair business practice because it, inter alia, threatens to harm competition in its incipiency. Class members and others who become aware that switching their Apple iPhone or other wireless devices in favor of non-Apple products will result in these persons not being able to receive text messages sent to them by other Apple users are likely to be disincentivized from switching from Apple to an Apple competitor. [...]"

bsaul 12y ago

Is it just an optical illusion, or does Apple really has a problem with anything related to network programming ? Every single time i hear about any technology they're developing that is vaguely related to network, i have the feeling something is going to break up. I say "network" because i think it goes from - web sites : their developper and itunes connect website is a shame, app store discovery simply doesn't work, i've never even tried to open an icloud drive document on the web because of how poorly advertized it is, etc.. , - their web related technologies: icloud sync in general feels historically unreliable, even more so when you combine it with coredata, no server-side programming language (swift could be a fantastic opportunity but nothing was even advertized by apple), their network api on iOS was so raw that the most popular iOS lib is AFNetworking that was developped by a single guy (at least the first release) and made a world of difference. - Even wifi and 3G connectivity is often buggy on iOS and MacOS: see the infamous bluetooth+wifi bug plaguing yosemite today. And i could go on and on. It seems that network is just beyond Apple. Now of course it may be a bit harsh to them because they do have among the biggest user base for their service, but if you compare them to Google, Dropox, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon and all the other tech giants of today, you can't ignore that there is definitely something special in that area with Apple.

acmecorps 12y ago
On the other hand, their bonjour service is top notch (anecdotally, but still).

jstultz 12y ago

It will be interesting to see if it actually works this time around; just having a new interface for deregistering from iMessage does not convince me that it will solve the issues. The most frustrating, for me, is that in a one-on-one conversation, if your iPhone attempts and fails to send an iMessage to someone, it will tell you that it failed and allow you to send it as SMS instead. However, in a group, if it attempts to send an iMessage to a member of the group that does not actually have a device supporting iMessage, it will silently fail; you will not know that the message was not sent to that person, nor will you be able to force it to send as SMS even if you know they did not receive it.