Just a word of caution before anyone decides to dive head first into this. You need to use this app at your own risk. Several prominent developers within the community have expressed concern about the potential security issues revolving around the APK used here.
Now that the warnings are out of the way, let me show you how iMessage works on Android. This new app, entitled iMessage Chat, brings real cross platform iMessage chat ability to Android. Yes, it works. I've confirmed it on video.
A new knowledge base document has appeared on Apple's support site this evening, introducing a new spam reporting tool for iMessage users. The document outlines a way for users to report unwanted messages, or spam, directly to Apple.
The posting comes ahead of the release of iOS 7, which adds a new Contact blocking feature for phone calls and messages. Apple has obviously discovered that spam is a problem for its messaging platform, and it's doing something about it...
We thought Apple by now has figured its customers have come to expect better than this, but here we go again: in a massive outage earlier today, the company's messaging service for iOS and Mac devices went offline for nearly one-third of its installed user base, by Apple's own admission.
Now, I know iCloud now has more than 300 million accounts (Tim Cook labeled it “the fastest growing cloud service ever” at WWDC last month). Likewise, I'm aware that with 800 billion iMessages sent and more than 7.5 trillion push notifications received, Apple no doubt has the scale and computing power to drive iMessage.
But something seems to be amiss here. The more I think of it, the more I tend to be bothered by the frequency and sheer reach of these outages. At the very least, I'm beginning to question Apple's ability to cope with such an exponential growth of its cloud service...
Messaging is arguably one of the most oft-used features of mobile devices. And with folks overwhelmingly embracing services like WhatsApp, little wonder instant messaging has overtaken traditional SMS by volume. The October 2011 iMessage unveiling signaled an era of frictionless communication between Apple device owners, made convenient by blurring the line between SMS and IM.
iOS 7 elevates that experience by making it prettier while implementing a few evolutionary improvements. That said, the iOS 7 Messages app is nonetheless a pretty big departure from iOS 6. But don't worry - iDB has you covered...
If you’re looking for a jailbreak tweak that embeds your contact photos into your native Messages app, there’s several options to choose from. Just off the top of my head, I can think of Copic, ChatPic, and xMessages.
Today, we’re adding another one to the pile with Messages Conversation Photos. And like the others, it takes the images from your contact list and applies them to your messaging threads in the default Messages app…
Have you ever noticed that, by default, you can't send videos from the Messages app longer than three and a half minutes? It's a precautionary thing, so users don't unknowingly eat up their monthly data allotments by sending large clips.
But some folks out there still have unlimited data plans, and would like to be able to send longer videos via a text or iMessage. And for those of you who fall into that category, we've come across a few easy workarounds to that size limit...
We try to cover as many new jailbreak tweaks as we can here at iDB, from game-changers like Velox to the smallest of UI changes. And this next one we're going to be talking about definitely falls in the latter category.
Message Send Percent, by developer greensnow, is a simple little UI tweak that adds a percentage indicator to your Messages app. This enables you to get a more precise readout on the progress of your outgoing messages...
Well, it's not exactly what we were expecting, but it's still pretty intriguing. biteSMS version 7.6.1 is here, and it brings with it a new Quick Compose widget, that, for a time, was referred to as Text Heads.
It's a far cry from the Facebook Home inspired Chat Heads tweak brought to us recently by Adam Bell, but it'll no doubt still be a welcomed feature for hardcore bite fans.
TypeStatus will always have a special spot in my heart, because it's one of the few tweaks that I can say I envisioned. Brought to fruition by Hashbang productions' @thekirbylover, it's a tweak that allows you to see when a person is replying to an iMessage by means of an ellipses icon in the status bar.
The first iteration of TypeStatus was a very basic implementation of the idea, but it worked well. This latest version, TypeStatus 1.1, adds a ton of new features to the already excellent package. Not only can it show when someone's typing, but it can also show you the iMessage address of the person typing right on the status bar. As if all of that wasn't enough, TypeStatus 1.1 includes another new feature that let's you see when an individual has read one of your iMessages.
The tweak was already awesome before this update, but with this update it's quite possible that TypeStatus will make it on the "top jailbreak tweaks of year" lists. Want to know something even better? You can try it out right now via Hashbang Production's beta repo. Take a look inside for a few more in depth tidbits regarding the update.
For the first time, more messages are being sent via applications such as iMessage, WhatsApp and Viber than traditional texting. That's the message of a new study which found that messages sent using such apps outnumbered those sent through carrier-based SMS in 2012.
That lead is expected to widen this year as chat apps send twice as many messages as texting. The study by Informa suggests the lucrative business of text transmissions could be winding down for carriers.
Although traditional SMS has a larger user base, iMessage, WhatsApp or other chatting apps are sending more texts per user, giving them the momentum...
MessageSwiper is a jailbreak tweak that allows you to quickly switch between ongoing conversations in the Messages app using swipe gestures. You can cycle through conversations via left and right swipes to instantly go forward or backwards through your various message threads.
This is an extremely simple tweak that focuses on one particular area and does a commendable job of doing so. I do wish there was a swipe animation implemented when switching between message threads, but according to the developer, that's due in an upcoming update.
Sometimes I feel like I'm one of the only people in the world that doesn't use biteSMS. Don't get me wrong, I really like some of the tweak's features, like quick reply and compose. But in my experience, it's not very stable and tends to clash with the stock Messages app.
That being said, you can understand my excitement when I saw 'Messages' pop up in my Cydia stream today. The new jailbreak tweak, by Ma Jun (the creator of Bulletin), offers up biteSMS-like quick compose and reply features, without all of the extra biteSMS fluff...