I wrote a blog post with a complete description of the details and what I learned from Apple Tech Support. I'll spare you the link to my blog (unless you want to see a bunch of meaningless posts on Baldur's Gate 3) and just post the conclusion here.
Solving the split conversations on the iPhone
For this one, I managed to find a solution on my own.
I like to have a history of my text conversations in sync on all my devices. I use iCloud for this. I have this option checked in Messages -> Settings -> iMessage.
The conversations were not split on my iPhone until I clicked the “Sync Now” button.
It’s reasonable to conclude that when I forced a sync of the split conversations to iCloud, I also forced iCloud to transmit the split to my iPhone.
I found the solution in one of the forum web pages that described the problem: Turn the iPhone completely off, then turn it on again. After that, the conversations merged again on the iPhone.
What I learned from Apple tech support
I spent four hours on the phone with Apple tech support to document the issue, speaking with different representatives. The last Case Support person created a full report (including screen shots and video captures) of the problem to send to the Apple Engineers. They got back to me a few days later (because I told them there was no rush).
Important: I am not an Apple representative. The odds that I misunderstood what the Apple Support Case person said to me, which in turn came from Apple’s Engineers, are probably 100%. With that understood:
The answer from Apple is “behaving as expected”.
Of course, I found that answer annoying. Here’s my understanding of why it’s expected.
There are three different communications protocols at play here:
- iMessage – This is the protocol used when all participants in a conversation are using iPhones. With iMessage, both texts and images are transmitted as part of the same conversation.
- SMS – This is the protocol used when there’s at least one Android user in the conversation, and all the messages are text-only.
- MMS – This is the protocol used when an Android user includes an image in the conversation.
I’m a bit fuzzy on this part: I think what used to happen is that when an Android user included an image in a conversation, the conversation would automatically be converted from SMS to MMS. I’m not sure who did the converting: the carriers or Apple. I’m also not sure where the conversion took place: at the carrier, within the iPhone, or within Mac Messages (I forgot to ask).
According to Apple, the carriers made a change to how they handled their “mixed” conversations. Apple had to follow suit, and did so with Sonoma 14.6.1. If they had not, some users would have their messages fail to be seen in conversations with mixed iPhone and Android users.
Now, if an Android user sends an image to an SMS conversation, instead of a conversation “upgrade” a new MMS conversation is created. That new conversation includes the Messages user.
I asked the obvious question: Will this ever be fixed? The response was that, in the past, Apple engineers have worked with the carriers when both have received enough complaints on an issue from the users.
So there we have it. Right now, we’ll have to live with it. If you want to do something about it, contact your carrier.
