Each MacOS and iOs upgrade makes SMS frustrating…

[dburney]

I don't think I'm the only one experiencing this issue. Each subsequent OS (and iOS) update has been making it increasingly difficult to differentiate sending SMS/iMessage. My wife has an Android (not my fault) and an iPad Pro. Previously (in Sierra/High Sierra) I could force an SMS if I wanted the message to go to her phone with a long-click on her name in the "To:" field of Messages. I could switch on the fly between iMessage (to her apple ID) or to SMS (to her phone number). Catalina no longer does this. Occasionally if she messages me from her phone, I'll see the Green indicator and the text field says "Text Message" and can reply via SMS. But it's hit or miss. The Big Sur port of Messages from iOS is even worse.

The situation is similar iOS 14 - it's nearly impossible to send an SMS to my wife's phone. Even drilling down to her contact info and trying to start a new message from her phone number defaults to an iMessage.

I realize the easiest solution here is for her to get a new phone. My primary frustration is with the removal of the features that made cross-communication with another platform easy. Has anyone else experienced this? Has anyone found a reasonable workaround to this?

 

[brianmowrey]

It's an ordeal. It would be so easy to give us an option via long press of the send arrow in iOS. In Mac it should have a hotkey. Instead we get invisible ink. Apple could do it. It would make the iPhone and Mac better tools. The problem is, would anyone need this feature in the downtown SF? No.

I used to spend all day in the foothills of Altadena, and not only was sending any text a pain, but since my boss was on his iPhone in a better service area, I was unreachable. Why doesn't iOS know that it needs to tell iMessage servers when the phone has entered a low data area? Because that would never happen in downtown SF.

 

[posguy99]

I must be missing something. Turn off iMessage, done. It doesn't do what either of you want, but you insist on using it.

 

[mj_]

Does she have iMessage enabled on her iPad? That may be why your iPhone occasionally insists on sending her iMessages instead of regular text messages.

 

[brianmowrey]

I must be missing something. Turn off iMessage, done. It doesn't do what either of you want, but you insist on using it.

Oh, half the time my boss was just passing on requests from his client for me to, quite illegally, do extra work without pay - so I ”wanted” the problem as much as I hated it from a perspective of having a defective product.