Adrianne Moore has filed a class-action lawsuit against Apple, after finding that she has been unable to receive messages from her friends since she switched from an iPhone to a Samsung Android device.
The iMessage bug has been known to happen to users switching from an iPhone to an Android device without switching numbers, leaving the message in a loop where it tries to connect through an iMessage and then sends no follow up.
This leads to someone sending a message and the recipient never receiving it, this is a basic right of any phone owner and Moore says Android users are being “penalized and unable to obtain the full benefits of their wireless-service contracts.”
Apple might not take this as seriously as they would a $1 billion court case with Samsung, but apparently Apple engineers are already working on a solution and Moore will most likely get something out of the class action lawsuit.
iMessage is a great tool for iPhone and iPad users, allowing them to contact and chat for free to one another. The fun ends when one of your friends have an Android device, meaning they are unable to join group chats or get messages for free.
There are cross platform solutions like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and other alternatives, but non natively built into the SMS app on iPhones. This has made iMessage a rather popular service for iOS users, getting over 100 million active users.
This is especially impressive when considering these are all people using iPhones, but it is less impressive when it becomes almost impossible to not use the service, if you have friends that have iPhones. There is literally no downside to using iMessage instead of SMS, unlike other apps that take up chunks of data or need payments.
iMessage will undoubtably be fixed within the coming weeks, but Apple needs to sort out their cross platform issues to avoid any further lawsuits.
