

The biggest iOS 5 bug you've never heard of - corywatilo
http://watilo.com/the-biggest-ios-5-bug-youve-never-heard-of

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james33
This exact thing happened to me last night. A friend got a new number and send
a group message out to around 50 people, I then got probably over 100 texts
the rest of the night as people had conversations through the group messaging,
and I was pretty sure those messages weren't supposed to be seen by me. Thanks
HN, now I know why!

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dakotasmith
This entire bug report is confusing to me. What is your expected behavior?

From what I can gather, you do (or did) not have group messaging enabled. You
were on the receiving end of a group message. Replies to that group message
also came to you, a recipient of the initial group message. Because you do not
have group messaging enabled, the messages which were in response to the group
message were not grouped.

I know I sound pedantic, but I do QA. If we're calling it a bug, let's get
some expected results and steps to reproduce.

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corywatilo
A commenter on the blog post summarized it well. Not necessarily a bug; just
bad design:

Group Messaging = OFF Expectation: Messages NOT sent to the Group

Group Messaging = ON Expectation: Messages sent to the Group

But Apple has it wrong ... reversed ... because message sent with GM OFF are
sent to the entire Group, and those sent with GM ON are not.

How can that possibly be intuitive/logical/intentional? It's a bug. Crappy
design.

~~~
greatreorx
It's not a bug. The problem is that most people don't know that MMS messages
can be one-to-many AND that iOS 5 turned Group Messaging on by default (which
causes group messages to be MMS instead of SMS).

The Group Messaging setting only affects messages you send out. If a third
party wants to (or unwittingly) 'reply all' to an MMS message that included
you, your individual Group Messaging setting won't stop that and you will get
that message regardless of your setting.

If you don't think it should work this way, then you are asking Apple to not
deliver messages that technically are addressed to you.

I do agree that Apple should have done a better job educating users on how it
works.

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bmuon
I think this is not the case. TFA seems to say that replying to a many-
recipient message sent with Group Messaging off is automatically considered a
"reply to all" action when it shouldn't.

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Firebrand
Oh wow, I thought this was a static feature.

It drives me insane when my mom sends out announcements to her five siblings
and their respective families who all happen to have iPhones. I never see the
end of the conversations.

It's bad enough I have to listen to them all compare apps at the dinner table.
"Hey Firebrand, how come your game isn't selling as much as Angry Birds is?"
Ugh.

~~~
jonknee
> It drives me insane when my mom sends out announcements to her five siblings
> and their respective families who all happen to have iPhones. I never see
> the end of the conversations.

I've been there too and wanted to throw my phone against a wall. It's like
being stuck in a chat room that you can't exit. Hard to believe Apple didn't
notice this.

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pepsi
I've had this happen with a non-smartphone when I sent an MMS to a group of
people and one of them had an iPhone (well before iOS5). His replies went to
everyone else that I included.

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arb99
This is with iMessage, not sms, right? AFAIK can't do that with normal sms
messages?

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corywatilo
That's correct, although I've seen the same sort of thing happen with MMS.

~~~
jesseendahl
With iMessage, everyone will see "Group Message" at the top of their screen
(see blog screenshot), which I think is pretty obvious.

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corywatilo
_If_ you've got it enabled...

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X-Istence
It's enabled by default.

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e03179
This happened in iOS 4 as well.

In fact, it happened to me on WinMo phone years ago.

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Derbasti
This happened to me, too. However, it seems that this only happens if the two
iDevices were actually logged into the same account at some point--so no total
strangers.

Logging out of iMessage and back in solves the issue. I've seen it happen with
calendars, too.

This is the primary reason I can not recommend Apples online services to
anyone.

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Soliah
I think the availability of this setting is controlled by carrier settings as
I can't enable or disable group messaging -
<http://cl.ly/3m2N1m3V3i0O1B0d451s>

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alastairpat
The title is a little sensationalist, isn't it?

I mean, this would be annoying to encounter and should be fixed, but I don't
imagine it'll cause the end of the world, as the title might suggest.

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Cl4rity
Not only is it sensationalist, but plenty of folks are already aware of this
problem. And frankly, I don't think it's that big of a problem. In fact, other
group messaging apps do this if you have SMS enabled when data is unavailable.

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jesseendahl
I personally love this feature. It's how I always imagined group messaging
should work. Kind of like a group chat.

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jonknee
Except the part where you don't know who a message is going to. It's very
unintuitive.

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corywatilo
Yeah, this is the part that's concerning. That and you might not even know
it's a group message.

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jesseendahl
Except for the fact that it says "Group Message" at the top of the screen (see
screenshot of blog post).

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corywatilo
I included the Group Message screenshot as an example of what it's supposed to
look like when it's working right. The first screenshot was how they all came
through for me.

~~~
jesseendahl
That's strange. Group Messaging was turned off in my preferences, but all of
mine looked like your screenshot.

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sjs
Another bug is that this option only exists in the USA. Why?

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shpoonj
This is not exclusive to iOS and it is not a bug.

~~~
ward
It is if there is no _indication_ that you are replying to everyone though.

Disclaimer: I don't have a fancy phone so I don't know how clear things are.

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shpoonj
Just because something doesn't work the way you want it to doesn't mean it's a
bug.

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ward
True, but an interface that you tend to use for messaging to one person should
give an indication that you are, instead, messaging to several.

