Do you get frustrating iMessage spam from people you’ve never met, or companies you’ve never heard of? You’re not the only one. Until now, you could either make friends with them and save yourself from loneliness on those cold winter nights, or you could ignore them and hope that they don’t text again.
But now you can report them to Apple, too.
We all have at least one friend who is just verbose as hell on iMessage. Like, dude just doesn’t get the fact that you don’t want to read a novella about how the Chipotle burrito roller lady ripped his tortilla twice, so he sends his 1852 character rant to you like it’s an honor to know of his guacamole debacle.
Rather than having to scroll through extremely long iMessages in the chat window, iOS 7 has a new feature which allows users to expand them into full screen mode. A truncated version of a long iMessage will display in the chat window with a little arrow at the bottom to expand it and read more.
Here’s a GIF of how it works:
Apple has issued a statement which explains its commitment to customer privacy and how it handles government requests for data following the PRISM scandal. The Cupertino company has reiterated that it did not know about the PRISM program until June 6 when it was first contacted by the media, and that it does not provide government agencies with direct access to its servers.
During a Q&A session at D11 last night, Tim Cook was asked whether Apple would ever port any of its apps to rival platforms like Android or Windows Phone. His response was somewhat surprising; Cook said that Apple wasn’t against porting apps and services to other platforms — if it made sense.
The only problem is, Cook doesn’t believe that it does make sense.
The new Google Hangouts app for Android and iOS is the best messaging service Google’s produced yet, but one thing that will probably prevent it from taking off is its lack of SMS support.
If you tried the Hangouts yesterday you probably noticed the amount of people you can talk to is sparse. That’s because Hangouts only uses Google+ to connect to other humans so all of your friends would have to sign up for Google+ before you can use Hangouts to send them a message.
The dearth of people on Google+ probably means that Hangouts isn’t quite ready to be your go-to messaging app quite yet, however, Google’s Community Manager says SMS integration is coming to Hangouts soon.
At its BlackBerry Live event in Orlando, Florida, BlackBerry just announced that its popular BlackBerry Messenger service is going cross-platform. This summer, BBM will finally be available on Android and iOS — and it will be completely free.
Carriers have made a killing over the last decade by charging customers absurd rates on SMS texting plans, but the times are quickly changing.
To avoid SMS fees, smartphone users have embraced free chat app messaging via apps like iMessage, WhatsApp, and Kik. As a result, SMS is starting to die a slow, and hopefully painful death, because free app messaging has officially overtake SMS as the most popular way to text message on a smartphone.
There’s a weird glitch that has started affecting Apple’s iMessage platform. When users text certain phrases over iMessage the last word of the text is deleted once its sent, but a large space is left behind where the word once was.
Right now there are only a couple known phrases that appear to be affected by the glitch, and one of them involves Obama. To test for the glitch, send someone an iMessage of the phrase “I could be the next Obama” but leave a trailing space at the end.
Everything will look fine when you hit send, but then the last word suddenly disappears on both users’ screen. The glitch also works with the phrase, “The best prize is a surprise”
Nope, it’s not just you: iMessage and FaceTime are experiencing issues this morning, with loads of users on Twitter (and, for that matter, my girlfriend) reporting problems. Yesterday, iMessage and Facetime also reported a number of issues. Jeez, Apple, get it together.
Source: Apple
Having a hard time sending iMessages to friends recently? You’re probably one of those that are affected by the current iMessage and FaceTime outage.
Word of the outage quickly spread across Twitter this afternoon that users are experiencing outages with iMessage. A FaceTime outage quickly followed and Apple just updated its support page to acknowledge the service outage.
We’ll let you know once things are back on.
Update: Looks like everything is back up and running.
Do you ever worry that federal agencies might be hacking into your smartphone to read your text messages and listen to your calls? Then you’re probably up to no good, but you can sleep easy if all of your dirty business deals are carried out through iMessage on your iOS device.
Apple’s iMessage encryption is so good, not even federal agencies are able to crack it.
One of the wacky things you may notice if you’ve just gotten a new iPhone is the default double alert whenever you get a text message, whether iMessage or SMS. Why Apple has this as the default, I’m not sure, but it kept freaking me out before I figured out how to turn it off.
However, I’m willing to see that you might want the double alert, or more (shudder), and there’s a simple way to make that happen, as well.
Here’s how.
Not too long ago, there were a couple of iMessage service outages. When that happened, I (and many other folks, I bet) wasn’t able to send out my iMessages. The little red exclamation point would show up, mockingly, and I waited for the service to go back online to send them again.
Luckily, there is a way to easily turn that iMessage into a regular SMS text message, thereby avoiding any service outages from Apple. Here’s how to do just that.
Has this happened to you? You’re out and about with friends, and a text message (or iMessage) hits your iPhone. Being a serious iPhone user and Tweeter, of course, you’ve left your iPhone out on the tabletop. Unfortunately, the text message that shows up on your screen isn’t very flattering to the friend sitting immediately to your left. She sees it, gets upset, and storms off. Nobody wins.
With a quick trip to Settings, however, you can prevent this tale of tears and keep your iMessages for your eyes only. Here’s how.
Here’s another one of those tips that should be blindingly obvious, but isn’t. At least, it wasn’t to me, at first.
If you try to send a photo via iMessage (or text message), you’re limited to one photo at a time. Go ahead and give it a shot. I’ll wait. No, really–give it a shot.
See? From the Messages app on your iPhone, you only have the option to take a photo or choose an existing one. What if you want to send more than one photo at a time, though?
Let’s be honest, the fact that you can conduct iMessage conversations across your iPhone, iPad, and Mac is pretty freakin’ cool.
Let’s also be clear, sometimes this very same feature is a pain in the butt. Getting iMessages on all three of my Apple devices in the same room can be a bit daunting, especially when I’m trying to concentrate on, say, writing an iOS Tip for the next day.
What’s a busy, popular, connected person to do? Manage those devices and their iMessage settings a bit better, that’s what. Here’s how.
After texting on the iPhone for awhile, you get used to seeing the “…” bubble mid-conversation. Whenever someone with iMessage is typing to you, the ellipsis bubble appears in that thread of the Message app. It helps you know that whoever you’re talking to is about to respond, and it also gives people away when they choose to start an iMessage and then stop.
What if you could see when someone was sending you an iMessage no matter where you are in iOS? The iPhone’s status bar would be the perfect place to display such a notifier, wouldn’t it?
There have been a ton of great tweaks released for jailbroken iOS devices in 2012. Innovation in the jailbreak community is far from dead, and ideas are continuing to evolve alongside iOS itself. What makes jailbreaking great is the sheer amount of customizability it unlocks. Sometimes a simple idea gives way to a crazy amount of potential.
That’s what this top 10 list of 2012 jailbreak tweaks is about: pushing the limits of what your iOS device can do. Here are the very best quality jailbreak tweaks from the past year:
Wow, I could have used this tip last week when I was getting constant iMessage errors, having to tap the “please try again” icon again and again to send some messages along to my friends. There have been a few iMessage service outages lately, and when that happens, there’s the potential for some upset.
Luckily, there is a way to easily turn that frown upside down as well as turning that iMessage into a regular SMS text message. Here’s how to do just that.
Happy Thanksgiving! This year to observe the holiday we asked each of our writers to tell us a bit about the things they are most thankful for in 2012: specifically, the Apple product, app, service, third-party accessory and person they most relied upon and were grateful for this year. All through the rest of the day, we’ll be posting these thanksgiving observances. Here’s Cult of Mac News Writer Alex Heath’s list of the things he’s most thankful for this year. You can find the rest of our Thanksgiving Smorgasbord entries here.
Looks like iMessage is having some more trouble after yesterday’s news that Apple iOS guru Scott Forstall is leaving the company. 5 days ago we reported a widespread iMessage outage that affected many of our readers around the world for hours. The issue was never addressed by Apple, but now we’re getting word that another outage is plaguing iCloud services.
Apple is currently holding its earnings call for Q4 2012, and now we’re hearing that many of you are experiencing iMessage problems around the world. Despite the fact that Apple is saying all systems are fine on its iCloud status page, it seems that many can’t send or receive iMessages. Game Center and FaceTime also seem to be down for many in different countries, namely areas in North America and Europe.
Last week we discovered the funniest way to play Connector Four on an iPhone. It’s silly and slightly painful, but completely awesome in a nerdy way. Now someone’s raised the stakes and figured out that you can also create games of Checkers or Chess using emoji. If you’re really bored trying to figure out how to celebrate Columbus Day today, now you have an activity that’s guaranteed to take up a few hours of your time.
Source: Reddit
Back in August, we told you about a serious SMS security flaw with the iPhone that opened the door to text message spoofing. At the time, Apple told users they could protect themselves by using its iMessage service rather that traditional SMS messages, but the Cupertino company appears to have rectified the issue in iOS 6.
Today, three months after its first preview at WWDC, iOS 6 has been released to the public and is now available to download via iTunes. We’ve already presented you with a comprehensive guide to everything that’s new — big and small — but which of those features really stands out?
So that you can jump into iOS 6 and quickly start using its killer new features, we’ve compiled a list of our top ten for you to check out. These may not necessarily be the biggest features Apple has introduced, but we’re confident that once you start using them, you’ll agree that they’re the best.
