Comment by cplease
11 years ago
First of all, I'll wager a supermajority of iPhone users do not understand any distinction between iMessage and SMS. Apple designs away the distinction. Secondly, when an ex-iPhone user ports away their number and is able to send SMS's without issue and receive SMS's from most of the world except for iMessage senders, how are they supposed to 1) discover they have lost messages before they lose something critical, and 2) discern that the cause of their inexplicably lost messages, is that they need to "disable iMessage", when they are not even an Apple user anymore?
I'm not an Apple hater, I use Apple products, but this is a huge fuckup and the OTT fragmentation is a real issue vis-a-vis SMS.
And SMS is not IM so your premise from the start is a nonsequitor. It's telephony, it's wildly and widely overpriced and non-open.
I think you're right about the lack of widespread distinction between SMS and an iMessage. It's sad.
Even sadder are the news articles (like ones you find in the technology section on the BBC website) where they refer to instant messaging as wonderful and then "if you're a bit old fashioned" and still use email...... At least emails can be easily retrieved and archived.
Perhaps people don't care about the transport medium (phone network or Internet) but it is an important distinction. It's even more important for Google users because Hangouts is very flaky for me, unlike SMS.