Photo: Neil Godwin/Future via Getty Images A couple of weeks ago, I was in the airport, about to get in the security line. My wife wanted to text me my digital ticket, which is a very normal task that should not have presented any difficulty. She tried. It didn’t work. We both had internet connections on our phones. I checked my phone, which informed me that I was unable to receive or send text messages. This is not something that normal people would ever encounter.
I have bounced back and forth between iOS and Android for years, for no particular reason other than boredom. I currently use a Google Pixel 3A, because it is a very nice phone that cost $400. I like my Pixel 3A. I like that it’s playfully designed with a contrasting neon power button. I like the notification system, which Apple has never really figured out. I like that it charges over USB-C, that it has a headphone jack, and that the camera is exceptionally good.
To get AirMessage running, you have to install its server program on a Mac computer that is always running and always connected to the internet. If someone texts you via iMessage, the server takes that message received on your Mac and forwards it along to the AirMessage app on your Android phone.
You also have to give AirMessage unfettered access to your Mac in order to work. Letting a program access a user’s messages is considered such an egregious privacy violation that your Mac will make you repeatedly confirm that you want to do this. To give AirMessage access to your messages, you basically have to give AirMessage carte blanche access to your entire computer. This is, to be clear, a terrible idea. Obviously, I did it anyway.
With normal iMessage, if there’s some issue with your internet connection, iMessages will automatically be downgraded to SMS texts and delivered that way. This is not the case with AirMessage, because those texts are still being delivered to Apple’s centralized server. If your AirMessage server is down, texts from friends will end up in a void; Apple thinks everything is fine, because it delivered the text to the associated Apple device, but your AirMessage server can’t forward it to your phone.
AirMessage is, objectively speaking, not a good solution to the Android-iOS communication gap. But I like it both because it does work, technically, and because it is a truly deranged hack that requires constant fiddling and results often in frustration. It is fun, and funny, to me. I thought it was interesting and amusing that my phone had suddenly broken in an airport. I don’t know how to work on old cars, but I imagine the feeling is sort of similar. You could just buy a new Honda.
YanfleurFleury would you be interested?
kurtome VladChituc
Just buy an iPhone!
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