Whats your experience been like with Messages?

[RumorConsumer]

Hey there. For those of you who have taken the plunge on Big Sur, how would you characterize your experience with Messages so far? I have a big database (70gb+) with many threads from being in an organization that liked iMessage, dealing with community members, threads with all different permutations of people, etc. so my iMessage world is kind of intense.

What are you noticing? Is it fast? Does it update quickly after waking from sleep? Do you notice the background processes like IMDPersistenceAgent still taking tons of CPU time when updating? Does it feel lighter on its feet? Id love to hear your impressions.

 

[tomi03]

Excellent, I don’t use it.

 

[Taz Mangus]

I am curious if the issue has been fixed in the Messages app where sending a photo or file (such as a Pages doc) will cause the app to fail to send the file.

 

[RumorConsumer]

Excellent, I don’t use it.

Haha the voice of experience
[automerge]1595570495[/automerge]

I am curious if the issue has been fixed in the Messages app where sending a photo or file (such as a Pages doc) will cause the app to fail to send the file.

Oh interesting I’m not familiar with that issue

 

[Taz Mangus]

Oh interesting I’m not familiar with that issue

In my experience, the issue seems to happen whether you have the file on an external or local drive.

Sending photo's from external drive via iMessage

I just tried 3 different tests to send a picture from messages. First one from an external hard drive, second one from a second partition on the internal drive, and last one from the main partition on the internal drive. All failed as Not Delivered. I did some searching and someone mentioned...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[RumorConsumer]

In my experience, the issue seems to happen whether you have the file on an external or local drive.

Sending photo's from external drive via iMessage

I just tried 3 different tests to send a picture from messages. First one from an external hard drive, second one from a second partition on the internal drive, and last one from the main partition on the internal drive. All failed as Not Delivered. I did some searching and someone mentioned...

forums.macrumors.com

Goodness that looks like a real bug.

My sense is that they punted on a lot of bugs in the old versions for the rewrites of the apps. Like, who cares about fixing it in the old broken dinosaur versions when the Catalyst versions will be new and spiffy. We shall see.

 

[xnsys]

That bug was present for months, maybe years - it was worse from a network volume, at least from an external volume it would eventually send.

For me, messages has been a bit slow when clicking about, doesn't always want to take focus onto the correct chat so you have to watch out for who you're typing to - but apart from that seems to be okay.

Should be really given that it's just the iPad app installed through catalyst.

 

[RumorConsumer]

how

That bug was present for months, maybe years - it was worse from a network volume, at least from an external volume it would eventually send.

For me, messages has been a bit slow when clicking about, doesn't always want to take focus onto the correct chat so you have to watch out for who you're typing to - but apart from that seems to be okay.

Should be really given that it's just the iPad app installed through catalyst.

how's the updating action after being asleep? I get somewhere like 100 iMessages while im asleep so those all need to download on my mac once i wake it up.

 

[xnsys]

how

how's the updating action after being asleep? I get somewhere like 100 iMessages while im asleep so those all need to download on my mac once i wake it up.

There's a slight delay while it catches up with itself - nothing that didn't happen in Crapalina.

 

[RumorConsumer]

There's a slight delay while it catches up with itself - nothing that didn't happen in Crapalina.

But is it better for you? Do you use it and think thank god? Why?

 

[xnsys]

It was better - fixed a couple of issues that I was having with connecting to NAS shares from the finder - but they have surfaced with the latest beta - think that they built the previous one off Mojave and now Crapalina code is coming over.

Messages seems like it's always done, It seems pretty stable - not a bad application - updates fine...But that's just at the moment as the betas progress who knows what may change - if you're thinking about jumping on the bandwagon I would wait till the public is out as this tends to be at a point where they are fixing bugs rather than tweaking and adding features.

 

[RumorConsumer]

It was better - fixed a couple of issues that I was having with connecting to NAS shares from the finder - but they have surfaced with the latest beta - think that they built the previous one off Mojave and now Crapalina code is coming over.

Messages seems like it's always done, It seems pretty stable - not a bad application - updates fine...But that's just at the moment as the betas progress who knows what may change - if you're thinking about jumping on the bandwagon I would wait till the public is out as this tends to be at a point where they are fixing bugs rather than tweaking and adding features.

I cancelled my ADC this year so no beta for me. I am too in production to run it on a machine I will use daily or care enough to use my production time to play with it. Im happy watching from the sidelines. Formerly a beta 1 superstar.

 

[amaze1499]

I find Messages quite unreliable. Not to talk about Facetime Video/Audio. Many times it simply does not sync. Messages Pictures not coming in instantly. Or when placing calls, it just rings out. However the other side never recieves a call. Group FaceTime calls are a complete fail. Sometimes Video. Sometimes not. Sometimes the other party receives the invite. Sometimes not.

 

[RumorConsumer]

I find Messages quite unreliable. Not to talk about Facetime Video/Audio. Many times it simply does not sync. Messages Pictures not coming in instantly. Or when placing calls, it just rings out. However the other side never recieves a call. Group FaceTime calls are a complete fail. Sometimes Video. Sometimes not. Sometimes the other party receives the invite. Sometimes not.

Is this in general or specifically related to Big Sur?

 

[fisherking]

it works great here (it does take a little longer to catch up than in catalina). since i'm now always at my macbook, am doing far more texting here than on my phone; much preferred, too. my only disappointment is, the minimum width of the window is now almost half my 12" macbook screen; otherwise, all is well.

 

[RumorConsumer]

it works great here (it does take a little longer to catch up than in catalina). since i'm now always at my macbook, am doing far more texting here than on my phone; much preferred, too. my only disappointment is, the minimum width of the window is now almost half my 12" macbook screen; otherwise, all is well.

Any other functional and optimization noticings?

 

[fisherking]

Any other functional and optimization noticings?

honestly, i just updated (to the public beta), and went back to work. some cranky behaviors; the whole OS feels like... a first public beta.

but messages just worked (and is fine on my iphone on the ios 14 public beta). all of this is, of course, just my experience; as will all betas (and 'finished' oses), there's a lot of variables, and different experiences.

 

[synicalx1]

I'm finding Messages to be pretty good so far, slightly prettier than before I guess. I don't send a huge volume of messages though since not everyone I know has an iPhone/Mac. There's a slight delay for it to sync messages I've sent/received from my iPhone if my MacBook has been asleep but that's not unexpected.

 

[KoolAid-Drink]

Is Messages.app on Big Sur now Catalyst/Maripzan'd? Or is it still a native AppKit application?

 

[RumorConsumer]

Is Messages.app on Big Sur now Catalyst/Maripzan'd? Or is it still a native AppKit application?

The former

 

[RumorConsumer]

ok here is a question - when you page up in Catalina messages it sometimes takes quite a while to decompress and then display the previous texts. Is that smoother in new Messages?

 

[TravisM661]

Since installing the Public Beta, messages is not working for me at all. Every time I try and send an SMS it takes forever and then tells me "Message Failed to Send". Anyone else having this issue?

 

[RumorConsumer]

Can somebody running the Big Sur beta quickly take a look in Activity Monitor and tell me if IMDPersistenceAgent is running? I pray it is deprecated.

 

[xxray]

Can somebody running the Big Sur beta quickly take a look in Activity Monitor and tell me if IMDPersistenceAgent is running? I pray it is deprecated.

It's running for me.

 

[RumorConsumer]

It's running for me.

lord help us.