I give Apple a lot of hurt, but here they fixed something big and nobody else seems to have noticed. Even better, by fixing it they put more hurt on a deserving AT&T.
A few months ago I wrote about iMessage use on an AT&T iPhone without a SIM card (iPod Touch mode) using .me accounts. Problem was Message/iMessage 5.0 wouldn't let me enter a .me account in the iMessage app, nor would it show .me email addresses. I could only iMessage my son from the Contact UI. From Message.app, since he's on H2O wireless rather than AT&T, I could only initiate a conversation using SMS (20 cents for me, 5 cents for him).
I'm still on iOS 5.0 on my phone [1], but my son is on 5.1. So I could see than on his phone I can enter email addresses (the keyboard has a '.' now) as well as choose a .me address -- all from the Message.app UI. I've now updated my phone to 5.1 and it works there too.
It's a significant enhancement, but I don't think anyone else noticed ...
[1] I was concerned it wouldn't work with MobileMe, and I've yet to switch to the inferior and problematic iCloud alternative.
Reliability is still a problem. SMS is expensive but delivery and delivery notifications are reliable. iMessage on the other hand sometimes reports successful delivery although the recipient has not received the message yet. In addition, delivery sometimes takes days … and if a recipient is identified as an iMessage user, you cannot simply choose to send an SMS.
ReplyDeleteReliability is still a problem. SMS is expensive but delivery and delivery notifications are reliable. iMessage on the other hand sometimes reports successful delivery although the recipient has not received the message yet. In addition, delivery sometimes takes days … and if a recipient is identified as an iMessage user, you cannot simply choose to send an SMS.
ReplyDelete