Ondrej Holzman There is no need to debate the popularity of iMessage. The simplicity and native implementation within Messages is something that makes "blue bubbles" popular. However, Apple began to eliminate that simplicity a little last year, also due to the pressure of competing communication platforms that offer more and more.
That's why Apple decided in iOS 10 its communication service significantly enrich and offered many features that users used extensively in, for example, Messenger or WhatsApp. However, the biggest innovation was the App Store itself, which was supposed to make iMessage a real platform. For now, though, the success of the app and sticker store is debatable.
A year ago, even before the introduction of iOS 10, I am wrote about it, how Apple could improve iMessage:
Personally, I mainly use Messenger from Facebook to communicate with friends, and I regularly communicate with a few selected contacts via iMessage. And the service from the workshop of the most popular social network today leads; it is more efficient. This is not the case with iMessage or in comparison to the other applications mentioned above.
After three quarters of a year with the improved iMessage, I can clearly state that Messenger is still leading the way for me. Although Apple has really improved its communication service considerably, i.e. equipped it with new features, but in some cases, in my opinion, it has overcombined it.
The proof is the App Store for iMessage, which I haven't visited many times outside of the first days when I was full of enthusiasm and anticipation exploring what my own software store could actually bring. And that's largely because it's not even very simple, intuitive.
One of the biggest themes of the new App Store is stickers. There are an endless number of them, at different prices and with different motives, which Apple, together with developers, responded to the success of stickers on Facebook. However, the problem is that unlike Messenger, stickers are not as easy to access in iMessage.
In his "Is the iMessage App Store Dying or Already Dead?" na Medium Adam Howell writes about this well:
I love the idea of an App Store for iMessage. I love Apple's focus on privacy. I love building on top of an app I use every day. But not only is the iMessage App Store dying—I fear it may already be dead.
Even after five months, regular users have no idea where the iMessage App Store is, how to access it, or how to use it.
Howell goes on to describe how the current implementation of the App Store in iMessage is hidden under an unnecessarily large number of steps that don't even make sense in the end. If Apple wanted users to be able to liven up their conversations with original stickers as easily as possible, it failed. Especially when we compare it with Messenger.
In the Facebook messenger, we tap on the smiley icon in the conversation and immediately see all the downloaded sticker sets. If we want a new one, the shopping cart lights up at the bottom left - everything is logical.
In iMessage, we first click on the arrow if we are in the text field, then on the well-known App Store icon, but it surprisingly does not take us to the App Store. You can get to the store by clicking on the undefined button at the bottom left and then the icon with the plus sign and the inscription Store. Only then will we get to buying stickers and much more.
That comparison says it all. After all, Facebook has a much better-designed button bar in Messenger, which is located between the keyboard and the text field. Open the camera, image library, stickers, emoji, GIFs or recording with a single touch. With iMessage, you'll be looking for the vast majority of these features longer.
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That's also why I never really started using stickers in iMessage. In Messenger, I tap, select and send. In iMesage, it usually takes at least one step longer, and the whole experience is a bit worse, also because some packages take longer to load. This is undesirable for fast communication.
However, Apple is not going to give up, on the contrary, this week it came out with a new advertisement that directly promotes stickers in iMessage. However, its message is not entirely clear from the spot, in which people stick different stickers on themselves. Apple has yet to comment on the success of the App Store for iMessage, so it's unclear if it's just trying to rekindle the message among users that there is such a thing as stickers after a lukewarm launch.
One of the reasons why they put stickers in iOS 10 in Cupertino is certainly an effort to appeal to younger users. In the age of Snapchat and many other communication and social networks, the slogan "say it with a sticker" can work, but it must be accompanied by very simple functionality. Which is not the case in iMessage.
On Snapchat, but also on Instagram or Messenger, you simply click, upload/take a photo/select and send. iMessage would like so much to be similar, but they can't. For now, their App Store looks a bit like "overkill" that many users don't even know about.
Promotional crap won't solve that implementation :-O
So, only after reading this article did I find out that iM has some stores. And I use them thousands of times a day.
iMessage is confusion on top of confusion. If I send an SMS to an addressee who also has iMessage, it goes via iMessage and not via classic SMS – that's fine. However, if I happen to be somewhere where there is no internet, but I have a signal from a mobile operator, the iPhone tries to send it via iMessage, despite the fact that there is no internet connection (and not through the operator), and the SMS is not sent at all. Then later (in 2 to 5 hours), the SMS will be sent either via iMessage or via the operator - as the iPhone wants.
If you have "send via SMS" enabled in Settings - Messages - on your iPhone, if the iMessage delivery fails, the sms will be sent by itself in 5 minutes.
this 'message in 5 minutes alone' is also awesome :D
This is a normal method for iMessage to verify that the targeted person has had a short-term signal outage while traveling. 5 minutes is a sufficient tolerance. If she didn't have it, then send an SMS.
I have it set - Send as SMS. It doesn't work anyway.
Nj. But you have ios6, right?
I have iOS 6 on an old 4S, iMessage does not work correctly on iPhone 6 with iOS 10.2.1.
Damn what stickers. What I personally miss a lot is the lack of Search within a single conversation. One would consider this basic functionality, but you can only search all conversations at once.
It is impossible to say that the messenger from FB would be a win. Not since they make it snapchat/instagram. I want the Messenger "lite", I just want to write and not have a lot of other crap around.
I'm slowly but surely starting to leave iMessage. What bothers me the most is the fact that if my friend doesn't have a signal or the internet is off, my phone still sends him an iMessage, thinking that he has received it (yes, the status 'delivered' is also written to me). However, the reality is that the message will reach him in maybe x hours.
The biggest benefit of iMessage is encryption anyway.
In addition to the sporadic functionality of the service, I consider the main disadvantage of iM to be its isolation only on Apple devices.
I mostly use iMessage and the most of the new features I use (within my circle of friends) is the feedback to the message (thumbs up/down, heart, exclamation mark or question mark) and full screen animations here and there. What we don't use at all are various bubble animations. I'll stick a sticker here and there when there's time, because as the article says, it's not exactly at hand. I didn't even find the need to use the various widgets, again because they are not at hand or do not offer themselves at the appropriate moment. As someone has already mentioned here, I am also experiencing some messages not being delivered or not being received or being delivered late here and there. I wonder what they will come up with for us in the next version of the system.
I'm responding to comments that point to an issue with sending from iMessage offline - both sender and receiver. Tick Send as SMS in the settings. This does not mean that the messages will be sent automatically as sms, but just in the case of offline, the classic sms will go away. I'm not saying iMessage is bug free, but this is what I know a lot of people don't have turned on and then it gives them the problems you describe.
yes of course i have, it doesn't work right for them.
Everything works as it should between 3 macOS, Watch and 2 iPhones. So "it doesn't work properly for THEM" I wouldn't promote like that here. :)
in that case solved. It works for you, so just don't have a problem there in the back case.
No Robin, but the term doesn't work for THEM, that's right, it's a little misguided when it works for millions of people. I doubt you've tried a fix bigger than "reboot device" on your own initiative.
If it doesn't work for millions of people (including me and probably everyone around me), then there will probably be a problem. And if I have to try to repair more than a restart, it's a pretty clear sign that there's a problem somewhere.
I have it on and it doesn't work.
And how to do it if the recipient has one device (iPad) at home on WiFi and the other device abroad without data? When I know about it, I turn off the data, send a message and turn on the data. But what if I don't know about it?
Well, I myself have a Macbook, an iPad and an iPhone. My daughter also has an iPad and an iPhone, and the devices are mostly always connected at home. Same mate. I thought that the message is primarily aimed at the phone - there it is important if it is off or online. If it doesn't, that's weird because we've never experienced this problem.