Unexpected problem switching from iOS to Android - people keep iMessaging me

[ponyo]

Actually it's quite nice. Especially if you are out of cellular range or international and can still get wifi access. You can still send & receive messages. Plus you can send from other iOS devices without cellular radios.

You can do all that with Google Voice. And probably the same with Google Hangout but I don't use Hangout since it requires Google+. But this thread has made me realize I shouldn't order the Nexus 5 and switch back to Android. My daughter has become accustomed to iMessaging and Facetiming me from her IPod Touch while I'm at work. I could train her to use Hangout but I don't use it myself and she's comfortable with iMessage and FaceTime. I guess I'm stuck on iOS ecosystem.

 

[ibex333]

I can't imagine the $@%^ you had to suffer through....
If I don't reply to the boss in a reasonable amount of time, I get to sleep in the dog house....

Haha.. I know how that is...

 

[lothar]

You can do all that with Google Voice. And probably the same with Google Hangout but I don't use Hangout since it requires Google+. But this thread has made me realize I shouldn't order the Nexus 5 and switch back to Android. My daughter has become accustomed to iMessaging and Facetiming me from her IPod Touch while I'm at work. I could train her to use Hangout but I don't use it myself and she's comfortable with iMessage and FaceTime. I guess I'm stuck on iOS ecosystem.

Hangouts does not require Google+.
I use it and I don't have Google+.

 

[ponyo]

Hangouts does not require Google+.
I use it and I don't have Google+.

On Android, not yet. On iOS, it's required. I made a big stink about it here. And it's too bad because iOS version of Hangouts is so much better than Android version since it has VOIP Google Voice.

 

[kategirdlelock]

ohhh i would like to share about chatwing live chat have now android apps

 

[Kaido]

I've run into this before. You need to de-register your phone at Apple:

https://supportprofile.apple.com

Sign in with your Apple ID, edit your products, and X out of the iPhone. Super lame.

 

[RandomFool]

I had the same problem for awhile. Luckily only a few of my friends use iMessage. I figured out I was missing messages when I pulled out my 3GS to use it as an alarm and had a couple dozen messages.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

I was going to ask why he brought Hangout into the conversation, but seems too much like feeding the troll.

Edit, and if you don't like the Hangout being SMS -- switch it out I'm using Textra

I didn't attack Hangouts. The reason I brought up hangouts was because people seemed to be clamoring for integration. While integration sounds great, there are challenges, and we've seen Facebook Messenger and Hangouts run into those issues regarding integrating SMS and chat. It's not the easiest. People keep clamoring for integration without realizing that it's far better to get people on board one standard rather than to fragment messaging.

Also, my post was on 11/6, and the Hangouts update came out 11/7 ironically. So I didn't realize that SMS and chat were separated at that time. At the time of my post, Hangouts seemed to be next in terms of getting the integration update, so I was rallying against the integration aspect seeing that iMessage has its growing pains. It's kinda pointless to slam iMessage if the integration work has been done and there's no rolling back.

Now that we know how Hangouts actually behaves, I can say I'd rather have SMS and data messaging separated into two distinct buckets. Integration that's self-managed by these big companies just spells trouble like iMessage. The other option I see troubling is CyanogenMod's WhisperPush. I enabled it to see what's up and chatted with a friend on CM for fun. Now how do we disable this? What if I change phones? Format my phone? Leave CM? I guess I won't ever get texts from him again. The damage is less than iMessage in that it's contact-specific, but once again... pushing solutions that wreak havoc for the power user is not ideal.

 

[cliftonite]

I didn't attack Hangouts. The reason I brought up hangouts was because people seemed to be clamoring for integration. While integration sounds great, there are challenges, and we've seen Facebook Messenger and Hangouts run into those issues regarding integrating SMS and chat. It's not the easiest. People keep clamoring for integration without realizing that it's far better to get people on board one standard rather than to fragment messaging.

Also, my post was on 11/6, and the Hangouts update came out 11/7 ironically. So I didn't realize that SMS and chat were separated at that time. At the time of my post, Hangouts seemed to be next in terms of getting the integration update, so I was rallying against the integration aspect seeing that iMessage has its growing pains. It's kinda pointless to slam iMessage if the integration work has been done and there's no rolling back.

Now that we know how Hangouts actually behaves, I can say I'd rather have SMS and data messaging separated into two distinct buckets. Integration that's self-managed by these big companies just spells trouble like iMessage. The other option I see troubling is CyanogenMod's WhisperPush. I enabled it to see what's up and chatted with a friend on CM for fun. Now how do we disable this? What if I change phones? Format my phone? Leave CM? I guess I won't ever get texts from him again. The damage is less than iMessage in that it's contact-specific, but once again... pushing solutions that wreak havoc for the power user is not ideal.

Not me. I don't want to use separate apps.

 

[cronos]

Now that we know how Hangouts actually behaves, I can say I'd rather have SMS and data messaging separated into two distinct buckets. Integration that's self-managed by these big companies just spells trouble like iMessage.

I completely agree. We also now knows how extremely easy it is to *not* use Hangouts as the default sms program. How is it with iOS?

 

[Eug]

As mentioned earlier, I never use iMessage. SMS for my phones. However, for my iPhone 4, it is registered to my account, but I just gave it to my mother-in-law.

I have iMessage deactivated on that phone so she's just using SMS as well. However, I did install some apps from my Apple account on that phone. Will de-registering it from my account do anything with the apps? I think not, because I note that my wife's iPhone 5 is not registered to my account, but I installed apps on that phone with my AppleID just fine.

But before de-registering it I want to make sure I don't fubar some apps on her phone since she lives in a different city. Not easy to troubleshoot if I screw something up.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

I completely agree. We also now knows how extremely easy it is to *not* use Hangouts as the default sms program. How is it with iOS?

Well you can't use iMessage and SMS separately. It's only a strict on and off switch. That on and off switch is a bit harder to find for the general audience.

Not me. I don't want to use separate apps.

I can see this becoming a problem, but that's only if you're doing 500 messages a day on Whatsapp, SMS, and Hangouts each. In most other countries, SMS is effectively dead, and most people already jumped on Whatsapp/Line. There isn't really an issue to juggle multiple apps. I see that it's better that people moved away from SMS in that case.

iMessage integration keeps SMS alive in many ways. Even if it makes sure iOS users are migrated away, there's a lot of cross-platform communication going around that remains SMS.

As a separate question--do most iOS users use Hangouts quite a bit? Because I can hardly find any iOS users I know that are even on Hangouts regularly.

 

[cliftonite]

Well you can't use iMessage and SMS separately. It's only a strict on and off switch. That on and off switch is a bit harder to find for the general audience.



I can see this becoming a problem, but that's only if you're doing 500 messages a day on Whatsapp, SMS, and Hangouts each. In most other countries, SMS is effectively dead, and most people already jumped on Whatsapp/Line. There isn't really an issue to juggle multiple apps. I see that it's better that people moved away from SMS in that case.

iMessage integration keeps SMS alive in many ways. Even if it makes sure iOS users are migrated away, there's a lot of cross-platform communication going around that remains SMS.

As a separate question--do most iOS users use Hangouts quite a bit? Because I can hardly find any iOS users I know that are even on Hangouts regularly.

Most of my iOS friends use hangouts when they are at their desk.

 

[Eug]

In most other countries, SMS is effectively dead, and most people already jumped on Whatsapp/Line.

Huh?

SMS is still the #1 used instant messaging method in the world.

 

[cronos]

Huh?

SMS is still the #1 used instant messaging method in the world.

Do you have the data to backup this statement? In the US, probably, because we're always the last to follow the trend in cell phone technology (remember back in the mid-to-late 90s when people in Europe and Asia were absolutely huge on SMS, not 1000 people in the US even knew what SMS was).

But for so many years now those people have moved on to Blackberry Messaging first (early-to-mid 2000s), and in the past five years they have mostly used third-party messaging programs like Whatsapp/Line/etc. I don't think there's any way that SMS is still #1 used in the world.

 

[Eug]

Do you have the data to backup this statement? In the US, probably, because we're always the last to follow the trend in cell phone technology (remember back in the mid-to-late 90s when people in Europe and Asia were absolutely huge on SMS, not 1000 people in the US even knew what SMS was).

But for so many years now those people have moved on to Blackberry Messaging first (early-to-mid 2000s), and in the past five years they have mostly used third-party messaging programs like Whatsapp/Line/etc. I don't think there's any way that SMS is still #1 used in the world.

Yes. The data suggests that all IP-based methods combined have more traffic than SMS, SMS still has significantly more users. Presumably this means that people who use stuff like WhatsApp and iMessage send more messages than those who use SMS, and also because a lot of people simply don't have smartphones. You can't use WhatsApp or iMessage if you don't have a smartphone.

What this also means is that SMS alone is still #1 compared to all other instant messaging platforms alone, even by volume, not just users.

http://gigaom.com/2013/04/29/chat-apps-have-overtaken-sms-by-message-volume/

Informa says 2012 saw nearly 19 billion messages sent over these apps each day around the world, versus 17.6 billion SMS messages.

However, things may not be as bleak for the mobile operators as they seem.

First off, while the volumes of non-SMS messages has overtaken that of traditional texts, the user numbers remain significantly lower – although how much lower is a bit unclear.

According to Informa analyst Pamela Clark-Dickson, there were 3.5 billion SMS users in 2012. Regarding the chat apps, Clark-Dickson only took 6 into account, namely WhatsApp, BlackBerry Messenger, Viber, Nimbuzz, Apple’s iMessage and KakaoTalk. At the end of 2012, she said, there were 586.3 million users of these platforms, but that’s not taking into account other giants such as Facebook Messenger for Android (somewhere between 100-500 million installations) and China’s TenCent (around 300 million users).

 

[MrSquished]

The problem, I've still got an iPad that I use, but I don't care it around with me. So all their messages are going to the iPad.

Edit: hmm.. Googled around and found some sites that suggest I turn off iMessage on my devices. I turned off iMessage on both my iPhone and iPad. People still try to send me iMessages and it looks like it sent on their end. After a few minutes they get an indicating that iMessage failed to send and gives them an option to use text. From there on out, it defaults to texting.

Looks like they have to try to send you an iMessage one time after you disable iMessage on all your devices before their phone starts using texting again. Not too bad, I guess.

check out the app Mighty Text for Android. It's awesome. You can then install it on your tablet and an extension for Chrome browser. Voila, you can now text from your browser. No matter how good Swype is, can't beat typing texts on a real keyboard. You can also add pictures to messages sent from the browser. It's a great app. Check it.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Yes. The data suggests that all IP-based methods combined have more traffic than SMS, SMS still has significantly more users. Presumably this means that people who use stuff like WhatsApp and iMessage send more messages than those who use SMS, and also because a lot of people simply don't have smartphones. You can't use WhatsApp or iMessage if you don't have a smartphone.

What this also means is that SMS alone is still #1 compared to all other instant messaging platforms alone, even by volume, not just users.

http://gigaom.com/2013/04/29/chat-apps-have-overtaken-sms-by-message-volume/

Informa says 2012 saw nearly 19 billion messages sent over these apps each day around the world, versus 17.6 billion SMS messages.

However, things may not be as bleak for the mobile operators as they seem.

First off, while the volumes of non-SMS messages has overtaken that of traditional texts, the user numbers remain significantly lower – although how much lower is a bit unclear.

According to Informa analyst Pamela Clark-Dickson, there were 3.5 billion SMS users in 2012. Regarding the chat apps, Clark-Dickson only took 6 into account, namely WhatsApp, BlackBerry Messenger, Viber, Nimbuzz, Apple’s iMessage and KakaoTalk. At the end of 2012, she said, there were 586.3 million users of these platforms, but that’s not taking into account other giants such as Facebook Messenger for Android (somewhere between 100-500 million installations) and China’s TenCent (around 300 million users).

Mobile messaging is still taking off, but most people who stay ahead of technology are already onboard. I just completed a trip through Tokyo, Taipei and Hong Kong, and virtually everyone on the subway was on Line. Whatsapp is already ancient to them. It didn't matter if they were on iOS or Android, they were all using a cross-platform messenger. Yeah, maybe in the US I see plenty of people on SMS apps and what not because SMS is still prevalent. You're right there's probably still a bunch of people stuck on SMS, but the trends are in favor of mobile messaging.

While I'd prefer for us to just get away from SMS quickly, if the intent is to go for integration, then the integration needs to be done smoothly without hiccups. Seeing how many people suffer from iMessage debacles and the whole Hangouts deployment fiasco, it's clear that integration isn't something where you just flip a switch and walk away from. There's going to be plenty of growing pains. It'd be far easier if people just jumped onto trends like Whatsapp faster. I remember how easy it was 10 years ago to get ahold of anyone in the 18-30 age group. You just get their AIM screen name. Done.

 

[Eug]

Yes, trends are toward IP-based 3rd party messaging apps, but my point was that the claim that SMS is dead already is totally false, as it is still the #1 individual messaging method worldwide, Asia included. Total 3rd party messaging volume combined only recently recently surpassed SMS alone.

Furthermore, the carriers have responded in many countries by including SMS/MMS "free" for all new plans. One of the big reasons for the migration to 3rd party messaging apps was because of the cost of SMS/MMS, but many carriers have essentially eliminated that cost in response. In my household one of the reasons we have stuck with SMS, besides its cross-platform nature, dumbphone support, and higher reliability, is because our current plans include unlimited messaging, both domestic and international, at no extra cost. In that context, iMessage becomes pointless to us.

I still think 3rd party apps will continue to gain momentum, but SMS is still the reigning king, and will continue to be so for quite some time.

 

[Seven]

Most people use whatever is set to default which is the SMS stock app. Why bother with something, when you get exactly the same results. It doesn't matter if you use Whatsapp/Line, or just SMS, the results are the same.

 

[Red Storm]

Most people use whatever is set to default which is the SMS stock app. Why bother with something, when you get exactly the same results. It doesn't matter if you use Whatsapp/Line, or just SMS, the results are the same.

It's about more than just results. With Whatsapp for instance, you can send audio, video, pictures more easily, you can see when the other person is responding, or when they were last online. And the most important thing, you can send messages over data, not rely on cell network. With other clients you can initiate voice and/or video calls.

 

[Eug]

It's about more than just results. With Whatsapp for instance, you can send audio, video, pictures more easily, you can see when the other person is responding, or when they were last online.

MMS.

And I don't want people to see when I'm responding or when I was last in the messaging application.

And the most important thing, you can send messages over data, not rely on cell network.

That is a drawback IMO, at least if you're in your own area. SMS and MMS messages do not count against your data plan in most places.

About the only time I'd use iMessage is if I was roaming.

 

[Red Storm]

MMS.

And I don't want people to see when I'm responding or when I was last in the messaging application.

It's more neat and organized in programs like Whatsapp or Hangouts. I can quickly see all media, past and current from within the app.

Why wouldn't you want your friends to see when you're responding? Do you text people you don't like?

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

MMS.

And I don't want people to see when I'm responding or when I was last in the messaging application.


That is a drawback IMO, at least if you're in your own area. SMS and MMS messages do not count against your data plan in most places.

About the only time I'd use iMessage is if I was roaming.

SMS and MMS aren't gobbling up most people's data plans. If I'm nearing data limits, I'll stop surfing the web and turn off picture uploading. If anything, data messaging is even more important when you go abroad unless you always slap in a SIM. But even then, how do you continue your conversations when your phone # keeps changing.

 

[Eug]

SMS and MMS aren't gobbling up most people's data plans.

No they don't, because they don't count toward data plans.

If I'm nearing data limits, I'll stop surfing the web and turn off picture uploading.

Video messaging via IP-based 3rd party plans can eat into data plans significantly, esp. if you have a smaller plan. eg. 200 MB per month is still a common amount.

If anything, data messaging is even more important when you go abroad unless you always slap in a SIM. But even then, how do you continue your conversations when your phone # keeps changing.

I said before that if I were in a region where I'd have to roam, I'd use iMessage. That would be over WiFi. However, if I went for an extended period, then I'd get a new SIM.