iOS 7: Apple Removes Text Messaging Options in Messages

No Text Messages For iDevices! iMessage or the Highway!

There are numerous stories reporting on an iMessage bug or outage that meant that iMessages failed to send or took a long time to send. In iOS 6, this wasn't too big a problem, because users could pretty easily just resend that failed message as a text message. Not in iOS 7, at least based on my own iPhone 4S.

When iMessage failed in iOS 6, resending a message as text message could be done two ways. One way to invoke that was to long-press on a sending message, then tap "Send as Text Message" from the context menu. That was also an option when an iMessage failed to send. Tapping on the red exclamation point next to the failed iMessage would bring up a dialog box with the option to "Send as Text Message".

Neither of those options seem to be available anymore. So, Apple has stripped away the abilty to choose to use normal text messaging between Apple's devices (iPhone, iPads, Macs?) when iMessage fails. The only way to send text messages between two "i-devices" is when one of them has iMessage turned off in Settings > Messages.

Sending messages to those without iMessage (so, all non-Apple phones) continues to be available as it should be.

iOS 7: Make Messages Stop Using Nicknames

I was wrong in my iOS7 First Impressions article. There is a way to get Messages to use normal names instead of nicknames!. The answer is on the Short Names page in Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars [look in the Contacts section] > Short Names.

Once to that page, flip the toggle labelled "Prefer Nicknames" from the "on position" (green background) to the "off" position (white background), et voila!

I saw this setting while reading an iMore article by Allyson Kazmucha on how to change Messages from using first names to using full names for contacts: "Don't like how iOS 7 only shows first names in the Messages and Mail apps? Here's how to fix it!". The screenshot she offered or her solution also showed the "Prefer Nicknames" toggle.