This sounds like a great idea, but is also very disingenuous. You see, as we pointed out yesterday, most other phone operating systems (even feature phones) are capable of showing the originating phone number for SMS. On Android and Windows Phone this has been the case for many years. On Apple’s iPhone this is not the case. They have left this flaw inside their OS since they introduced SMS in iOS (about five years ago). Why they have chosen not to correct the issue we cannot say.

After looking over what is required the fix would be very simple and would provide their customers with considerably more security and protection.

Instead of adding this in Apple has chosen to ask its users to switch to iMessage. iMessage is their proprietary messaging application that communicates with other Apple devices through Apple’s internal servers. When sending a message the app checks to see if the number you are sending to has an associated Apple id and then uses the Apple system. If there is no Apple id… well it falls back on the old SMS text message for sending. The same also appears to be true with receiving messages. When someone that does not have an Apple id attached to their phone number sends you a message you get it in SMS form.

Now if you are still receiving SMS messages from non-Apple phones how does iMessage protect you any better? You would think that simply adding in the ability to show the originating number AND the reply to information would be a much better solution than what Apple has come up with. We tend to think that Apple is simply pushing their own technology and services instead of doing anything to protect their customers from this long known issue with SMS. Considering the fact that the bug existed in iOS long before iMessage was even offered to the public we just cannot see this as anything other than an attempt to sweep the problem under the rug.

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