iMessage i@j.je please

Update: Finally fixed - thanks to some reports in to Apply by various people - that you all - but still not rolled out and still causing issues. No need to send me a text/email/iMessage now - thanks everyone/


Update: Reward! If this gets fixed, the first person that emails me evidence that their complaint to apple got it fixed gets a free 6 character email address (forwarding to address of their choice).

Apple iMessage is broken, and lots of people are unable to iMessage me on my normal email address. Most of my family have similarly short email addresses. I have complained to Apple, and several of my friends have. We are getting nowhere with this. I even tried to convince OFCOM that Apple are a communications provider and so have to have ADR, but in spite of the wording in the Comms Act, OFCOM do not agree!

So, how can you help?

Note: Apple staff are welcome to send me test iMessages as well.

Step 1: Go to iMessage and start a new message and enter i@j.je and then put the cursor in the Message part.

The address changes colour, red, green or blue.

So, What do the colours mean on an Apple iMessage?

• Blue means you can iMessage. Please do just message me the word "blue" so I know how many people can.
• Green means you can text or MMS but cannot iMessage. It may be worth trying to message me the word "green" but I suspect you will get an error.
• Red means you cannot message. Do try and send the word "red" anyway. This is normally an iPad or Mac which cannot text/MMS.

Note, green will mean sending by MMS which may have a message charge, so you may not want to do that. But please do complain to apple that iMessage is not working!

Step 2: Type a message, ideally just the word "red", "green" or "blue", followed by "iPad", "iPhone", "MacBook", etc, and try send. You may however see a message like this saying that i@j.je is not available.

I can't easily see which address you messaged, so do say you are testing if not just sending the colour. Happy to discuss this on iMessage.

If you would rather just comment on the blog to tell me what happened, feel free. I am not collecting email addresses and numbers, honest.

I'll update notes on here to say what I have discovered.

Step 3: If it would not send as iMessage, contact apple support and tell them you cannot iMessage i@j.je or for a real bonus, ask one of their genius's if you are going to an apple store. Do let me know the various crazy excuses why they say it won't work!

I am sure that if enough people do this they will, eventually, fix it.

The issue, it seems, from various tests, is that some parts of their system block 6 character email addresses. It is fine if 7 characters.

What is especially odd is that if I iMessage someone from a 6 character email address they cannot reply, but if I iMessage two people from a 6 character email address then both can reply to the group!

If someone wants me to iMessage them and someone else as a test to demo this to a genius, please do let me know.

If you are a registered apple developer, please file a bug report. See notes below for details - main issue is unable to sent to 6 character email addresses.

As you can see, I have i@j.je set up for receipt of iMessages.

Obviously, at some point, I'll turn off i@j.je - I'll update this post when I do. Lets hope it makes them fix it.

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Notes.

• The address typically fails to verify, coming up red or green and not blue.
• On an iPad it seems that even when red, messages can be sent!
• On an iPhone it will try MMS or fail.
• On a Mac it fails to send as iMessage
• Replying to a message from i@j.je has the same problems, but when they try and reply I see the "..." (typing) icon, but no more, and the sender gets an error.
• If I message from i@j.je to a group of people then they can all reply to the group, and I get the replies.
• Someone hassled apple who gave their iMessage. I iMessaged them and they could reply! But that may, of course, have been an iPad. They weren't keen to talk.
• The best we have so far from Apple is that they recommend using a longer email address as a work around!!!!!
• We have an apple developer account, and like several others, we have reported as a bug - but Apple have actually asked for debug logs (which we have no supplied). You never know, they may be finally working on it.

Stats:

• "Green" arriving by MMS in my email: 38
• "Red" arriving by iMessage (from iPad): 16
• "Blue" arriving by iMessage: 1 (from iPad)*
• "Blue" arriving by iMessage: 2 (from MBP / air)
• "white" arriving by iMessage: 1 (from iPad touch)
• "Green but blue after 30 seconds or so" via iMessage: 1 ?
• Could not be sent: 1 (but I won't be told all of these)
• FFS, someone sent "red green or blue", really?!?!?!

* I did not ask, and have deleted the address, but it is possible this is one of those cases where  someone has looked at the colour of the message text, which is indeed blue when sent from an iPad, even though the address is red.