Speaking Of Primitive Old Forums From The 90's. . .

Being new to the "i" world I found it interesting to see how iDevices manage messages.
-You send a text
-It goes to iCloud to see if the recipient is an Apple device
--If the recipient is an Apple device, an encrypted iMessage is sent via data networks (not via text servers)
--If the recipient is not an Apple device, the message goes back to the iPhone where it automatically gets sent again, this time as a regular text message through your cell carrier's text plan

A text plan is not required to send iMessages from one iPhone to another (or between any iDevices) because iMessages always go over data networks...they are not SMS texts. This is why you can include attachments.

All of this is transparent to the User. The User just sends a message on their iPhone and doesn't worry about the recipient's technology. And it's that first stop to iCloud for all messages that enables iPads and Macs to be included in the loop without you doing anything special when you send it. If you sit down and play with it (as I did extensively in the Verizon store), you can see that the iCloud stop introduces a definite delay in regular text messages making their way from an Apple device to a non-Apple device.

Things get real interesting with an Apple watch that has LTE capabilities, meaning the watch communicates to the cell towers as a stand-alone phone so you can make calls and send messages without carrying your iPhone with you. When you send a message from an LTE Apple watch and the recipient is not an Apple device, the message always gets pushed back to the mated iPhone (never back to the watch) to be processed as a standard text message, regardless of where in the world the iPhone physically is. That means when you leave your iPhone at home and send messages from your LTE Apple watch to a non-Apple recipient, the iPhone must be powered up and it must be getting a WiFi signal or a cell signal so that the non-Apple text messages can get processed through it. Otherwise, you'll receive a "Failed to Send" message on the watch.

It's good to know this if you have an LTE Apple watch that you like to carry as your sole device (or if you sometimes decide to leave the iPhone at home when you go hiking, fishing, gardening, etc.) You gotta leave your iPhone powered up and in a place where it gets a signal if you want your Apple Watch messaging to work with Android users.

 

I cannot get cable. The best they have come up with in my rural county is to run cable along the paved roads, then do the last hop (where possible) to the houses via wireless of some kind. I'm too far off the paved road for the wireless signal to reach me, even if there weren't trees in the way.

I used to have Direct TV. Then a critter yanked the cable from the back of the thing. So I installed a roof antenna. That was around 2015 or so.

 

We have either DSL or cable here, and we jump back and forth. It seems that after a couple of years of service, whether through DSL or cable, the connections will start to suck. After a series of trouble requests, and some ups and downs in service, we switch to the other option, and have pretty good service for a time, even though it's the same thing we had tried a few years previous. They provide good service to new customers. When we first moved here, satellite Internet was our only option though, and both of the other options are better than that.

 

You probably know how DSL works better than I. It seems that when a new subscriber gets added to the DSLAM (where multiple subscribers are connected), the tech tweaks the settings to get the new guy up & running, and some of the existing customers lose their service quality. I would imagine that when you cancel your service and then sign up again as a fresh customer, you move to the head of the line as "the new guy" for functional settings...then someone else comes along and your position gets bumped.

I told my tale of my DSL being fine, then a new subscriber got added and my DSL got bad, and the company (Mindspring) finally cancelled my account because of all the service calls they made without it getting fixed...they claimed that my house suddenly moved farther away from the central switching station so I could no longer get service.

 

DSL providers tend to put too many customers on a system because each new customer means more profit, but each new customer uses up some more of the available resources, so service declines. It does seem that they have a way of giving a new customer better service than existing customers, however.

 

We (and by that, I mean myself too) are getting away from the topic, however. At one time or another, I have several of the available forum software and have seen some of the ones that I liked the best fall by the wayside. There are some great free forum scripts but the problem with the free ones is that, because they are free, including often the source codes, hackers have easier access to them, so it's only a matter of time before everything is gone.