Remember when we originally reported that Apple had finally admitted that people who had left iOS and iMessage for Android or Windows phone were experiencing issues with getting messages or sending messages? And that Apple had finally owned up to the fact that they were to blame for probably millions of missed phantom messages? Well, after owning up to the problem and realizing what the issue was, Apple has finally introduced a fix.

So, if you’ve left Apple and ditched iMessage for Android or Windows phone, but are having problems getting messages from friends you can now deregister your phone number from Apple’s iMessage database. The process to deregister your iMessage account from your phone number is a simple one. You simply head on over to Apple’s iMessage deregister site and do the following steps:

If you still have your iPhone, you can actually put your SIM card into your iPhone (before you sell it or give it away) and prevent this whole thing from even being a problem before it starts.

If you no longer have your iPhone, you can still deregister from Apple’s iMessage by entering your phone number into the field on the page and then getting a confirmation number from Apple via SMS (yes, Ironic) and using that confirmation number to deregister your phone number from Apple’s iMessage service. This should free 99% of people that were having problems with SMS after leaving Apple.

So, if you plan to ditch Apple, remember to deregister your phone number from iMessage and if you ever had an iPhone with iMessage, its probably a good idea to deregister as well. The real question will be whether Apple will be found liable for anti-competitive behavior as there have been rumors that this was an Apple problem for quite some time and it took the company at least a year or so to own up to it. In fact, many Apple users that left the company for another brand eventually came back due to the high volume of missing messages, not knowing that the reason was squarely because of Apple.

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Apple has finally admitted that they are to blame for the constant issues that iMessage (iOS) users are having with communicating with anyone outside of iMessage with some SMS messages simply never getting delivered. This has been a fairly well-known issue and many people suspected that it was actually happening and then it was finally confirmed that Apple has acknowledged the issue and is working on a fix. iMessage has been around for a solid 3 years now and ever since it was launched with iOS 5 users have been experiencing issues with undelivered messages, this includes text and multimedia messages being sent to a non-iOS device.

The problem occurs whenever someone tries to switch from an iPhone to any other device but keeps the same number, Apple’s servers effectively continue to try to deliver the messages to that person’s iMessage account instead of sending it as an SMS outward. As a result, many users have thought and blamed Android phones for this problem, and I have actually seen it first hand and a few people even ended up switching back to Apple’s iPhone because of how awful the problem was. It also doesn’t help to have other iOS devices on iMessage even though you’ve switched your primary phone to something else. I don’t know if this is a bit of poor programming on Apple’s part or an intentional goal to make switching incredibly frustrating. I have a feeling that the truth is somewhere in the middle.

Apple doesn’t really benefit from fixing this problem, in fact they benefit from not fixing it since they increase their already firm grip on users that wish to switch. The experience of switching from iOS to Android is incredibly frustrating and Apple’s closed systems result in making the switch incredibly painful and anything but frictionless. As a result many users never try to make the switch or try and then come back because of the friction they experience. But the good thing is that Apple is supposedly working on making a fix now and should resolve this issue that has caused so many users major headaches.

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