Satellite Messaging with iPhone IOS
 

This may be America only at the moment, but apparently, you can now use your iPhone if it has IOS 18 to send texts via satellite when off the grid. More in this blog post at Bikepacking.com.

I saw a YouTube video recently comparing this feature on the iPhone to the GPS messaging devices. I believe that the GPS messaging devices are much better for the task than the iPhone.

If I read that correctly, it only works Apple to Apple, not Apple to rest of world.

Actually, the blurb says you need iOS 18 to send. SMS routed via satellite should reach any type of phone.

How ?

InReach is $400, I already own an IPhone that can take iOS 18. Saves a lot of money. If you are doing a very remote trip I can see paying for the rescue insurance that an InReach can work with.

If I were in a position to make use of it, I could see it being handy for texts (less hassle than doing it via the inReach), but as an emergency device, I would only include it in my 'toolbox' as a backup device to my inReach Mini 2.

plus, one device vs two, no additional fees for two years, frequent updates and improvement. for most people this will be a big increase in safety in remote areas. for the very hard core who often take long trips far far away, a dedicated device may be better.

Cant say about costs. Not likely this is free from Apple, I’m certain there’s a cost involved. As well, the InReach is a tiny device, not a game changer, except need to keep charged.

you're certain? the feature is free for two years. then it will likely cost money. two years is a long time when we're talking about wireless tech.

Looking at how Apple prices their products, undoubtedly this won't be cheap once their two year testing phase ends. Garmin charges $50 per month for unlimited text messaging.

This. It's not Apples business model to give stuff away for free,

Has anyone made use of this feature? I live and ride in an area with very poor to nonexistent cellular coverage. The ability to send an emergency text or a non-emergency Messages.app message could be really helpful, but I hate shelling out for an iPhone 14,15 or 16 unless the feature works reliably. (I'm currently on an iPhone SE1 from 2016. I would likely get the 15.)

They give away their operating system updates for MacOS, iOS, TVOS, watchOS, etc for free. They give away their whole Developer Tools suite for free. They give away Pages, Numbers and Keynote (MS office equivalents for free). I could go on, but perhaps I am missing something?

What you're missing is the reality that in order to use their so called "free" MacOS, iOS, etc, you need to buy a MacBook, an iPhone, etc. Ergo, it's not "free". Their software ecosystem exists as an integral part of making money via their hardware business. And furthermore, their software ecosystem is a walled prison that keeps you in jail stuck to Apple. Anything they give away (developer tools) is simply a method of enhancing their own eventual bottom line. Any "free" software they provide (Pages, Numbers) only work on their own hardware. You have to spend money on a Mac to use the "free" Pages. It doesn't work on other computers. A Mac costs double an equivalently spec'ed PC. Pages and Numbers cost Apple money to develop. That's where your extra money went. You were force-sold bundled software that you have no option of opting out off.

What you are missing is that satellite messaging occurs within their "walled garden." It is a place where people can come or go, unlike Gaza, so it is misleading to call it a prison. The question is whether Apple, within their "walled garden" is going to charge for satellite messaging after two years. The analogy that I was making is with other "walled garden" software that they do not charge for. (I was using "free" to mean "no charge, not GPL free/open source, fwiw.)

Anyway I just bought an iPhone 15, mainly for the satellite messaging. I'll give it a try after setting it up tomorrow. [sarc]I figured since I just bought yet another computer (the $500 mac mini and $800 Macbook Air and $1500 M3pro I am typing on now sure were vastly overpriced compared to the PC/Windows world -- not), I might as well cash in on that subsidy.[/sarc]

Let us know what you learn.

I've done everything apart from transferred cellular service. I have a sim card in the old one, and all the instructions say "just swap over your sim card." The newer ones have eSIM (and have for awhile I think).

I do not know how that works, I think you need to get your phone company to send you a code or something that you put into the phone. I am sure there are youtube videos that describe it, there are videos for everything else these days.

I bought a new phone two months ago (Android, not Apple), and I made sure I was buying one that took a sim card, SD card, and a socket for headphone jack, these things are costly to include so phones are starting to ditch them. I got lucky and found a dual sim phone for a good price, global international model.

Yeah, you can theoretically "come and go", but what's the reality? Do people actually "come and go" in practice? Look in the mirror at your own behavior and get back to me.

Every detail of their ecosystem is carefully designed to steer people back within the ecosystem. Your free will is an illusion. You've been Stockholm Syndromed to the point where you not only do not realize it, you actually like it. I have nothing against Apple's tactics, they have smart management and it clearly works.

There is a wide range of pricing in computers, it depends on the spec level of the components. You have to compare like to like when reviewing the price / performance ratio. The way you talk sounds like you are too tech-ignorant to know the details of the guts of your computer, or understand the relative performance of different component tiers. Oh well... you are the perfect target audience for Apple. They make great products for both professionals and lay people. Their high end stuff works well but is vastly overpriced ($6000 vs $3000 for similar specs), but professional practices are not sensitive to pricing. Their low end stuff, where they make the majority of their money, revolves around selling lay people $900 computers for $1500. Their industrial design is very good. The average grandpa doesn't know anything, sees a nice looking laptop, has no problem forking out $1500. Grandpa ends up with a slower computer than he could have bought for the same money, but he neither knows nor cares because he's merely using it for browsing the web and typing.

I don't want to come off as being against Apple. I think their product strategy makes perfect sense. For the vast majority of consumers who are doing nothing but watching movies and filing their taxes, it makes no difference whether a laptop has powerful guts. Take some reasonably decent internals, wrap it in a well designed shell, build an ecosystem around it, and sell it at a premium price. Apple does this perfectly.

Feel free to nerd out on benchmarks here: https://www.notebookcheck.net/

I'm doing something stupid with satellite messaging. I can find the satellite ok, but if I try to message, I get an error that the thread is unavailable or something, and now Messages only lets me send via text, so something is messed up. Almost certainly user error, but uncharacteristically problematic for Apple. (i cloned the phone but I have a new line and number, so my guess is that screwed something up. It was working fine with wireless and cellular, fwiw.) I just checked and remembered I texted my google voice number, and that seems to have worked, and has the correct time stamp.

So, ironically, what is outside of the walled garden is less problematic.

I'm almost there, and as a side benefit, I have fewer cellular dead spots.

[Edit: I think I found the problem. As predicted, it was the new phone number, and it might have not helped that I gave the new phone the name of my old phone, and changed the name of the old phone instead. ]

I am not really a typical Apple user. I'm more of a unix geek, and like OSX/MacOS for that reason. (I need a unix-based OS for biophysics computational stuff.) I don't really give a **** about their phones. Their computer hardware is usually of a premium quality, so price comparisons need to take that into account. Also, by your own argument, the price includes a lot of bundled software that MS charges through the nose for. I mostly run Linux on PCs, not Windows. (My one dedicated windows box is a 2010 Mac mini in my garage; I use it mostly for Di2 stuff).

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None of which is forced on the user. (In the days of the intel processor, you could easily wipe the drive, or partition the drive, and install Windows or Linux or freeBSD or whatever suits you (except maybe VMS).

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Comparing Apples to hand grenades.

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Again, there is no one shooting at you from the turrets in the wall.

What matters to me is the computational stuff we need to do. The fact is that processor speed long ago stopped being the bottleneck. I can do major computations on my 2020 Intel MacBook Air. I can do them 5X faster or more on my current mac mini. Ease of use is at least as important.

Now, if you want to ***** about soldered, unupgradeable memory, stupidly expensive internal hard drive upgrades, and iMacs that require a pizza cutter to open up, you will get no argument from me. Those are real problems. What you are talking about simply is not one.

A few years ago, I saw a guy getting ready for a desert race that had a satellite phone, so I asked him how much the service cost. He said the phones can still call 911 if not activated with the carrier and he had bought the phone on eBay for $150.

Nice hack:thumb:

I also read somewhere recently that one of cellular carriers (not ATT or Verizon, I hope) is offering Starlink connectivity with an iPhone. No idea of the cost.

Elon Musk is one bright dude.

I think I just re-discovered this limitation:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/120930


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This is a cool development, that the hardware (antenna) and software to communicate to satellites has gotten small enough to be incorporated into a phone. This tech will eventually make its way to Android.

Meanwhile, back to the topic.

To use it for iMessages, vs. 1-way texting, both the sender and the receiver would need an iPhone [14,15,16] and be updated to iOS 18.

(If not, it behaves the way I described above.)

I just got it to work successfully. I sent a series of messages to someone who has an iPhone 15:

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...d0b487f49.jpeg

The first one (in green) was a standard SMS text message, which I guess it had defaulted to, either because it didn't yet know the recipient had the correct iOS and hardware yet, or it was residue from yesterday. In any case, this problem resolved itself, and the next series of messages I sent (in blue) are iMessages via satellite, from my front yard.

In short, it appears to work (although it is extremely slow -- I wouldn't want to do much more than send a quick check-in message or ask for a pickup).

I think if you are crashed and in a gully under a redwood canopy, it isn't going to help unless you can walk out to a place with open sky. The satellite signal is much harder to acquire than a GPS signal.