Sunday, July 06, 2014

Why I turned off iMessage on my iPhone

Years ago, Apple enhanced its iPhone text messaging with something called iMessage.  Whenever you were texting between two iPhone's, you went through the data network and Apple servers instead of through the cellular network to the carriers' servers.  Back when you were paying per text or had a small number of free texts, this was a great thing.  Going through Apple was free and iMessage was smart enough to use normal texting to get to non-iPhones.

Over the past several years, most carrier plan either include unlimited texting or some very large number of free texts per month. This means the financial benefit no longer exists.

Now the bad stuff....  Apple has a bug in their iMessage system.  If you are using it with your iPhone (which is the default) and then change phones to to Android, Apple doesn't clear their server's knowledge of you.  So when iPhone people try to get in touch with you by text, Apple stills tries (and fails) to reach you by iMessage.  It should know that you are no longer using iMessage and tell the phone to reach you by normal texting.

Julie switched phones lately and this was a royal pain in the butt.  When you call Apple service, they try a few things and get you to try some things, none of which does much. It's a bug in their design and they have known about it for quite a while.

I am still an iPhone user and will be for at least another year.  However, I went into my settings and turned iMessage off.  I have no intention of ever turning it on again.  I suggest everyone with iPhones do the same.

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