Apple being sued because someone forgot to turn off iMessage when they switched to Android

May 18, 2014

A scorned ex-iPhone user is suing Apple over lost text messages that she is not able to receive after switching from an iOS device to a smartphone on another platform. Apple's iMessage service doesn't de-activate the iMessage service when a user switches to a non-Apple phone. In this case, messages do not get delivered and the service thinks that the message should be routed as an iMessage rather than a traditional SMS or MMS, meaning that switchers away from Apple would not receive messages from their iOS counterparts.

The suit, filed in a San Jose court and seeking class action status, comes after Apple began acknowledging this glitch earlier this month.

For switchers, as we had noted in the past, one way to workaround this glitch is to de-activate the iMessage service manually in the iPhone's settings before removing your SIM card and placing it in a non-Apple device. This should remove the associated telephone number from the iMessage server and force messages sent from a friend's iPhone to be routed as a traditional SMS or MMS message. Without performing this step, Apple's servers continue to assume that the SIM card is still associated with an iPhone and will continue to deliver messages sent from iOS users as iMessages rather than as a text message. In this case, messages will get "lost" in the cloud and the switching party will not receive said messages.

Another solution that is being proposed as a temporary fix by AppleCare staff is to have iPhone users delete the contact of their switching friends and then re-adding them manually.

Via: Business Insider