An Apple Employee Admits That iPhone Won't Deliver iMessage Texts To Android

Jim Edwards | Business Insider | May 14, 2014

For years, Apple has said very little about persistent rumors that its iPhone text messaging system in some way discriminates against Android users, either by delivering messages to them late or not delivering them at all. Now an Apple customer support employee has admitted to Lifehacker's Adam Pash that, in fact, "a lot" of users have this problem: If you switch from an iPhone to an Android, iMessage won't deliver texts from iPhone users to your new Android phone.

There is no fix in sight, Pash says he was told. (At Business Insider, I've had a version of this problem firsthand: My iPhone colleagues get my texts immediately; those on Android seem to get them later, up to a few minutes behind.) The issue was raised earlier this year by The New York Times, Mashable and Fast Company. The latter went so far as to allege, "Apple is punishing you for ditching your iPhone by cutting you off from your friends, and they want to make it feel like you need to be on an Apple device to talk to the people you care about."

We spoke to Apple recently and it pointed us to this customer support page which instructs users how to turn off iMessage so that other iPhones don't continue to try to deliver messages to your disused iMessage address...