The most humorous thing I've seen about iMessage is how it's automatically opt in, with no opt-out should you lose your device or switch to a new (Android) phone.
Our head of IT switched from iPhone and got a new Android phone. Suddenly he found that none of this Apple-using friends were messaging him anymore.
Actually they were, but Apple re-routed their SMSes through iMessage to a dead Apple-account. Without telling anyone about it.
Until he discovered what happened (due to a very angry and ignored-feeling Apple-using wife), he just assumed SMS was broken on Android.
iMessage really shows Apple at its core: So utterly self-centered that it's unable to comprehend that it even needs a interoperability story with the rest of the world.
You're kidding right? It's trivial to turn off iMessage; it's one toggle switch in the settings.
On top of that I've had friends switch away from iPhone to Android; iOS switched to using SMS not but a day later (and I know at least some of them didn't turn it off manually because their iPhone was broken).
He's wrong. I just swapping my iPhone5 for a MotoX a couple weeks ago. iMessage was definitely a pain since I left the (SIM-less) iPhone on at home and my wife's messages went there since it was on the WiFi.
Turn the old phone off and problem solved.
iMessage specifically confirms delivery. That's why you occasionally get the "Send as SMS" prompt if it can't go through for whatever reason.
If there's no device actively logged into iMessage, no attempt is made to send through iMessage. You don't have to "deactivate" anything.
That said, when iOS7 came out, and I logged back into my iPad, and my wife on her iPad Mini, and her iPhone 5, iMessage reenabled on all of them with my phone number.
So that was a bit inconvenient.
That obviously wouldn't happen if you had reset and sold the device.
If you sold the device without a reset you have a lot more to worry about than iMessage I think. Though a password change to your Apple ID, or managing the associated phone numbers there should address the issue.
BTW, SMS on Android... wow. That's probably the shittiest thing about switching. It's hard to appreciate how unreliable, low quality and all around bad SMS/MMS is if you've been using iMessage for a few years.
Messages get split up over 140 characters. You can't forward vCards. MMS take forever and you're lucky if you even get half the messages in a timely fashion in-sequence. It's really truly awful.
I haven't used straight SMS for many years now. I use Google Voice. But before I started using Google Voice, I used to use Handcent SMS which does all of that. Check it out if you are interested - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.handcent.n...
Thanks. I really want to keep my (10 year old) number. Transferring it to Google Voice sounds a little scary. Is that unfounded? Is it really pretty seamless? I want to cancel my contract and go to a prepaid plan anyways. Which is apparently too difficult for AT&T to do over the phone without risk of losing my number. :-/
So... I could go get a GoPhone plan with a new number. Transfer my existing number to Google Voice. When the transfer is complete my old plan will be cancelled, I can swap in the GoPhone SIM, add it's number to Google Voice as a forwarding number, and I've got it all done with improved text/group-messaging? Does that sound about right?
I can confirm this exact thing happened to me. A year ago I switched back to Android and after a week of not receiving messages from most of my friends and numerous calls to AT&T/Apple I figured this out.
Really was one of the most frustrating experiences I've had with customer service.
Yes. You have to alter your Apple-iD or go to Apple's website to "unbreak" SMS on your new non-Apple phone. I'm sure that makes sense and is everyone's first guess when they first end up in a situation like this.
Sarcasm aside: There are comments unlike like yours, which takes it as a granted that everyone should know about these things and how Apple does everything internally.
Ironically enough, they perfectly highlight the self-centeredness of the Apple community and ecosystem. Which was the one thing I complaining about in the first place.
It's not so trivial when your phone breaks and you're stuck with an old Nokia for two weeks. I managed to disable iMessage through some weird lost/stolen procedure through Apple support but that required human intervention. iMessage was pretty new back then, I hope they've since then improved on this (e.g. an option on icloud.com or something).
It is not trivial for my girlfriend. It took her long enough just to work out SMS. To her that settings icon is a scarey place where all kinds of complex life threatening buttons and switches lurk..
Everyone refuting this is missing the point. No one, not even geeks would realize you have to specifically de-activate iMessage before you switch to any other phone.
This exact thing happened to me. I switched back to Android and after a week of not receiving messages from my friends and family it took me hours and quite a few calls (sadly) to both AT&T and Apple before it was figured out.
In fact at first Apple had denied that anything should be wrong, thus all the wasted time figuring this out. Left a really poor taste in my mouth from the whole experience.
Your comment history shows that you tend to lean towards Apple bashing comments, but I was curious about this one and tried it out myself.
I was unable to reproduce this. Took girlfriend's SIM card from iPhone and put it back in her old Android phone. Sent a couple text messages. When it couldn't send it as an iMessage, it failed on my end and asked me to send it as a text message.
To opt-out I had to unregister my devices from my Apple Account, and at start this did not worked because I had an iMessage client in my MBA, even if it was configured to just receive iMessage targeting my email address. A Nightmare.
Our head of IT switched from iPhone and got a new Android phone. Suddenly he found that none of this Apple-using friends were messaging him anymore.
Actually they were, but Apple re-routed their SMSes through iMessage to a dead Apple-account. Without telling anyone about it.
Until he discovered what happened (due to a very angry and ignored-feeling Apple-using wife), he just assumed SMS was broken on Android.
iMessage really shows Apple at its core: So utterly self-centered that it's unable to comprehend that it even needs a interoperability story with the rest of the world.