Apple IMessage Is Slow

Apple IMessage Is Slow




The bug in Apple's iMessage text system has caused annoyance and frustration to many, many users, so has it been fixed with the iOS 7.1 software update?

Introduced at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in 2011 the Apple iMessage feature was intended to be a great way of keeping in contact with family, friends or business associates for free using WiFi or 3G - free of charge providing both the sending and receiving devices are Apple devices. If the receiving device is a non Apple device then the message will be sent as a normal SMS (text), Apple has cleverly differentiated between the two and iMessages are colored blue whilst SMS are colored green.

Unfortunately the iMessage system has been plagued by problems since the iOS 7 software update with users reporting flaws such as messages being delivered very late, not being sent at all with the sender receiving an alert saying "message not sent" with an exclamation point! Other glitches to come to light include iMessage just stops functioning completely or that the time out function fails resulting in sent messages appearing to just hang in limbo, neither sent or not sent, just remaining forever in the state of "send". A temporary fix for this was often to switch off the device and switch it back on again, but this was found to be very temporary with the problem coming back again in time for the next iMessage attempt. Apple were well aware of the problem, intending to fix the bug with a software update to iOS 7, this statement was released to the Wall Street Journal:

We are aware of an issue that affects a fraction of a percent of our iMessage users, and we will have a fix available in an upcoming software update," Apple said in a statement. "In the meantime, we encourage any users having problems to reference our troubleshooting documents or contact AppleCare to help resolve their issue. We apologize for any inconvenience this causes impacted users.

Unfortunately users were still reporting problems after updating their operating system to iOS 7.03 so there were many hopeful Apple device owners waiting for the arrival of iOS 7.1 in the hope that this time the iMessage bug fix would work for them.

iOS 7.1 arrived in March 2014 and we are pleased to tell you that, in our experience, it has fixed the flaws in the iMessage system. Other than the fact that we needed to re-activate iMessage, we have had no issues with it at all, however there are still reports of users suffering the same kind of problems mentioned prior to iOS 7.1 - although it should be said that at the time of writing these reports seem to be few and far between. If you are still experiencing problems with the iMessage system it might help if you give some of the following steps a try:

Turn iMessage off and on again

Go to Settings > Messages > turn iMessage switch to off (white), wait for a minute or so then turn iMessage switch to on (green). iMessage should now re-activate

Reset your iPad

Depress and hold the Home Button and the Sleep/Wake Button simultaneously until your device switches off then hold the Power Button until it switches back on again

Reset Network Settings

Go to General > Reset > Reset Network Settings

We hope this helps and any issues you might have been experiencing with iMessage are now solved, if you still have problems more information is available on our site iPad Repair alternatively check for updates from Apple