I lost my ability to edit my post somehow just now. They need to fix the time limit and make it longer!
This is mostly a duplicate of above, but I needed to change the first paragraph because it is not what I meant. I also needed to add clarifications throughout.
Yes it is by design, and as person "B," my Macbook's iMessage app does NOT separate them but combines them into one thread, unlike my iPhone which is separating them. However, iMessage app on the mac is not showing within the thread any indicator above the text of what account it was sent from/to. It just combines all of them into one thread the way it should on our phones. If there was a design reason to have them separated on person "B's" iPhone, then why wouldn't it also be a reason on our mac OS X? If it is ok for person "B" to send to and receive from two different accounts (iPhone number and iCloud email,) all from within one thread, then why isn't it ok to do it on the iPhone?
WHY THIS ISSUE MATTERS and needs an answer or fix:
I just had a great example as to why this issue matters. Just now my son was at the store and I sent 5 texts of items for him to also purchase. He was just getting ice but we needed milk and bread. He just came home without any of it! He showed me his texts and the five texts I sent were not there. As we were trying to figure out why by looking into settings, etc., they suddenly came through!! Apparently receiving a text to an email address is not always as instantaneous as it is when you receive it to the phone number. AND, the receipt time on his phone states 11:38 am and is identical to the sending time on my phone, yet he did NOT get those texts at that time. He actually received them 20 minutes later at 11:59 am after he came home!!! We were in the app and watched them as they appeared so we saw the time at the top of his phone screen. That's a problem, especially in instances as the one today...or God forbid an emergency situation.
I know why this is happening....so I don't need an explanation. My son got a new iPhone 6S and until his phone number was re-registered on Apple's servers with that device, his first few texts to me came from his iCloud email account...because of the way iMessage sends texts. That in and of itself is not a problem, but rather very thoughtful/helpful.
The problem is that on his end they are all in the same thread, but on my end I now have two threads that split all my texts to him. If I'm in a hurry like I was today, wanting to catch him at the store, I don't have time to notice if I selected the thread with his phone number. I usually scroll down to the most recent thread with his name. And if I select the one that was from his email address, then I risk a huge delay in him receiving it. I don't want to delete the wrong/unwanted email thread either because I would lose those messages....but I also don't want to accidentally send from that thread again either!!!!
There has to be a better way. Why can't the other party be able to combine them into one thread by choice? I realize why they have to be separated on the other party's end....I guess....but it really is illogical when you look at the big picture. At least we need a user-initiated action to combine the threads sent/received up to the date you initiate the action. Any beyond that date would remain separate.....until you do the action again.
One last concern.....on my macbook's iMessage, they are all in one thread. You might think "hey, you won't lose them if you delete the thread on your phone." Won't I? How do we know for sure? If I delete the email thread on my phone, isn't it possible it might remove just those texts from my one thread on my macbook iMessage??? I'd really like an answer to that.
