

Apple finally makes it easy to disable iMessage - riaface
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-11/10/deregister-from-apple-imessage

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leonk
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!

~~~
Terretta
> _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)._

So by default, it sends a secure end-to-end message, and you'd prefer it to
fail back and send an insecure SMS logged by your telco? (Verizon, for
example, makes your SMS history available in a web portal.)

I think the bigger issue would be if iMessage burned your SMS plan and sent
insecure messages without you explicitly asking to.

Defaulting to losing the security and privacy seems more "frankly absolutely
ridiculous".

~~~
geofft
Availability is part of security, right next to confidentiality and integrity.
Systems that silently fail closed aren't secure in a meaningful way, because
you can't distinguish a DoS from "working as designed".

~~~
mhurron
Availability does not mean availability at any cost. When designing a system
at no point should it be considered secure if it fails open.

The issue is that there is little information provided to the user to indicate
why there is an issue, but it most certainly should fail closed.

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bsaul
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
On the other hand, their bonjour service is top notch (anecdotally, but
still).

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atonse
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
I had this issue, reset your network settings and turn off and on iMessage.
Maybe try without resetting first.

~~~
JohnTHaller
The phone has already been returned. So, forget about getting texts from your
iPhone friends.

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scrumper
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.

~~~
ogreface
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...

~~~
jevinskie
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.

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jstultz
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.

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lukeholder
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.

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

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pessimizer
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-
laws...](http://www.slideshare.net/harrisonrweber/apple-imessage-lawsuit)

News of settlement:
[http://www.law360.com/articles/590726](http://www.law360.com/articles/590726)

better: [http://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/lawsuit-
news/...](http://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/lawsuit-
news/42957-apple-imessage-class-action-lawsuit/)

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. [...]"

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dzhiurgis
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.

