14 DAY TRIAL // Benjamin Stein, CTO of Mobile Commons, father, and urban gardener, relays an interesting story on his blog, one that will make some wonder whether Apple is trying to prevent people from switching to Android.
Ben starts off his story, saying, “Two months ago I switched from iPhone to Android. I’ve been a huge iOS fan since the first day, but just couldn’t deal with iOS7 (although that’s topic for another post).”
Praising his stellar Android experience as a newfound love, he continues, “I got a Verizon MotoX and couldn’t be happier. I could switch pretty much every app I used and was up and running w/ Android as my primary phone, fully loaded, within 24 hours.”
He then noticed something really strange going on. He wasn’t getting text messages from a lot of people. Upon trying to text those same people himself, the same issue would arise: the SMS wouldn’t get sent.
Upon investigating the matter, Ben learned that his friends’ iOS devices were still trying to send iMessages to his number, as their iPhones were now associating Ben with an iPhone, even though he’d switched to a Droid.
He went through the motions with Apple trying to rid his number of the iOS creed, but to no avail. The only solution, Apple said, was to tell all his iPhone-wielding friends to erase their entire SMS conversations with him.
“...the vast majority of messaging I’ve done in the past 3 years are group messages with pictures of our children. It would be bad enough if *I* had to delete 5 years of messaging history. But to ask my wife, my sister, my best friends, and literally every person I know to delete THEIR message histories? You’ve got to be kidding me!” he writes.
“I feel completely hostage. They have no solution and it’s insane that Apple has my phone number held hostage with no way to get it back,” he concludes.
The full post is available over at blog.benjaminste.in, where he also relays that Apple Support has been very helpful, despite his troubles.
Apple could theoretically patch this flaw in a future software update but, until then, Ben is still a hostage in the iOS ecosystem.