https://appleid.apple.com
Try going here and removing the phone number from the "Phone Numbers" section.
I still have friends who try to message me and their iOS assumes I'm using iMessage. The "retry as SMS" feature is the only method that works.
Also make sure to tell them "Send as SMS" is enabled on their iMessage settings. This will automatically try to re-send it as a text without manual intervention.
(They would like to bet against the claim that Facebook will lose most of their users. That's a bet on Facebook's long-term value, and maps to buying their stock.)
I would agree that the Blackberry experience for app developers is indeed inferior to that of Android and iOS.
Here are my observations:
The Blackberry Vendor Portal.
1. App submission
An absolutely dated interface for submitting applications. One thing that really upsets me is that Blackberry did not segregate the interface for pre-BB10 applications and BB10 applications. Throughout the submission process, I was constantly given the option to submit my Cascades/BB10 application as a pre-BB10 bundle. Even after I submitted my application as a BB10 application, I was given reports that someone had downloaded my application on their pre-BB10 device. How could this happen?
2. Viewing reports
Again, a dated interface for viewing reports. Reports are only produced on-demand either as a ZIP file of CSVs or a static GIF that looks like it was exported with excel. I could imagine those who rely on BB apps as a source of income have written excel applications to process this data into a user-friendly format. Both iOS and Android have reports in beautiful charted format directly in their app portal.
3. Responding to users
I had a review on my applications in which the reviewer was requesting a feature. I did have this feature in my application, but due to a ux flaw, it was not easily recognizable. I would have loved to drop the user a comment notifying them of this feature. Regardless of denying/approving the review, I think this is a fantastic feature in the Android (Google Play) model.
iOS and Android app portals are built for the common developer. As they are built for the common consumer. Blackberry vendor portal is built for the enterprise, very much like their original phones.
4. I would consider myself a "Qt/QML expert", so from a programming standpoint, I find it much easier to convert complex UI designs into working code. This is thanks to the wonderful Cascades framework with QML syntax (originally built by The Astonishing Tribe, acquired by BB a few years ago). I think it's much easier to deploy code with BB compared to iOS/Android. This is of course dependent on the developer.
5. Blackberry, prior to releasing the Z10 in the US, released an "Application Generator". This generator converted RSS feeds into running, "native" applications for BB10. This flooded the BB10 app world with garbage applications. There are still hundreds of applications on the store that are blatant rip-offs of Android applications (search Maps on your Z10 and you will see several GMaps rebundles)
6. App services like advertisements and push notifications are still not up to par as iAd or Admob, and APNS.
Are you kidding me? Regardless of privacy, this is incredibly useful. I would love having even the slightest amount relevance with the iAds popping up on my iAds.
+ new releases, right on time.
+ high quality (on wifi)
- terrible to use on my commute 1hr. seems like the app doesn't buffer data properly for low signal scenarios (pandora does!)
- when a song doesn't buffer properly, i "pause" the song and play local music. when the song buffers it stops my music and starts playing. this get's ridiculously annoying.
- i've noticed my battery life being drained with the rdio app running (not playing or streaming) in the background. this may have been fixed in recent updates.
imo, these guys have a lot to learn from pandora on ux
I'd add the varying availability of tracks as a major problem. Having some things simply not available is an annoyance, but I can live with that. What's worse is finding some albums I like, adding them to my collection, and then having them disappear later without warning. Almost just as bad is when that happens and they replace it with another copy of the same album, it doesn't get added to your collection.
Posted this on HN last time the Rdio discussion came up when Spotify launched in the US, still relevant:
"I'm in Canada and was disappointed that we were cut out of the stateside Spotify launch, so I went looking and heard a number of recommendations for Rdio. Out of 18,384 tracks it matched 3,142. Considering my tastes are pretty mainstream and my files have very clean tags, it's hardly impressive."
For comparison, iTunes Match launched not long after that. More than half of my library was matched without uploading, and by that point it had grown to 21679 songs. Honestly, since iTunes Match I haven't even considered a cloud music service like Spotify or Rdio again. The way I see it, why pay to access someone else's crappy library missing tons of content when you can just upload your library and cut out the middleman?
I agree, but instead of just calling this ux I'd call it engineering. Pandora has some amazing engineers. I know one of them, Casey, because he lives here in Colorado. He's one of the smartest engineers I've met.
Rdio's great, but in addition to the issue you mentioned, they had an issue with Backbone.js and a Chrome Dev Channel bug, where rather than making some Backbone.js source changes to work around the Chrome bug, they simply waited it out. I doubt Pandora would have taken that approach.
I think Microsoft would make Rdio more technically sound. They might screw up the business, but Skype seems to be doing alright and Yammer keeps plugging along, so I'm optimistic.
I'm a web developer. I have Chrome Canary, WebKit Nightly and Firefox Minefield installed.
I still can't bring myself to prioritize a bug which affects only Chrome Dev channel users – and I don't have access to the log files to prove how little that matters.
As a counterpoint, I've found the iPhone app to be quite adept at handling horrible network conditions. I'm on AT&T – you need a massive buffer to soak up poor network engineering.
I have a fair amount of streaming issues with Spotify as well. UI doesn't indicate any buffering so I'm stuck wondering if the app is having problems playing the song or it is going to play. I often find myself hitting next and then previous to see if the song will play. Sometimes I just flat out kill the app and restart and it'll play. I have no idea if that is actually doing anything, but it seems to work sometimes.
I am also a subscriber...do you use the desktop application or the web app in your browser. I found the desktop application to be terrible (as you described) however have found much much better luck with the browser. Ever since then I only use the web app and maybe have it buffer (stop playing) maybe once or at most twice a day.
This is exactly why I stopped paying for (and eventually using) Rdio. Their mobile app (where I used Rdio 80% of the time) was HORRIBLE at keeping the music playing non-stop, without tons of pauses and dropouts.
Pandora, on the other hand, is nearly flawless in the same signal areas.
I have similar troubles with the mobile application when in "low signal" environments. It should decide to swap to local or do a better job buffering, but having 1 bar is not going to sustain a stream.
Would have loved to get a "push" notification from AAPL regarding this..
Seems like Apple is no longer signing the iOS 5.1.1 ipsw -
this is ridiculous..I was hoping on downgrading to iOS5 before hawking my 4S to Google Maps grovelers.
On another note..I cannot restore to my iOS6 (beta) backup with the real iOS6..thanks Apple!
> Would have loved to get a "push" notification from AAPL regarding this..
If you managed to miss the iOS 6/iPhone 5 announcement, a push notification wouldn't have helped. Also, this is standard practice, happens every year, and is mentioned in the dev notes before you download the beta.
> Seems like Apple is no longer signing the iOS 5.1.1 ipsw - this is ridiculous...
Or standard practice and mentioned in the developer notes when you download the beta...
> On another note..I cannot restore to my iOS6 (beta) backup with the real iOS6..
You're mad that there was a bug in a developer-only beta? Did you ever stop to consider that if you're going to sarcastically chide Apple over a beta issue, maybe you aren't the type to be running betas?
IKEA should acquire / host this community on their dime & domain