[BlackBerry Guy]

Those of you who think bbm is more secure than iMessage don't know a lick about Secuirty.

If you're using bbm on bes for example, you're employer can intercept any message you send. In an iOS world this isn't possible at all.

Rim is more than happy to hand over encryption keys for foreign governments where as apple just can't do this based on architecture.

iMessage is way more secure than bbm.

There's a difference between security and privacy.

Having your info handed over to, as an example law enforcement, by your service providers/device manufacturers , is a matter of privacy. Your employer accessing your messages on a device they provide you is also an issue of privacy...or rather in this case expectations of privacy (there is none...it's not your phone).

Having your information and messages purposely hacked into by an unauthorized party is a matter of security. When they start reading through your stuff, then it also becomes an issue of privacy as well.

Want security and privacy? Setup your own BES and deploy handsets to all your friends

[Cleveland]

There is no character limit on any gsm iPhone regardless of iMessaging or not and you do not need to give out your number, you can assign iMessage caller ID to your email address even on your iPhone - plus whether it's a MacBook iPhone iPad or iPod touch you can text any of them with iOS 5 or higher - iMessage is great

[[email protected]]

There is still a bug when you go from on wifi to off wifi your info on the top banner changes from your email to your phone number.

I experienced this personally with my ipod. I was chatting with a friend that I only had her email for imessage and her # popped up without her permission.

Sent from my BlackBerry Bold 9900 using Tapatalk

Sorry. This is not true. I have friends that go from one to another and there's no pop-up.

And if it's folks who don't use iPhone, there'd be no number to display.

[[email protected]]

During irene I was shipped up to NH and CT for recovery efforts as I work as a lineman for comcast.

Power, phone and cable lines were down so with all the rescue and residential carrier traffic only about 15% of peoples texts/calls went through.

Interesting. I was in CT during Irene. And was communicating back and forth with my brother and friends here in Manhattan the entire time.

No loss in service for anyone I know.

Is 15% an actual stat or your best guess?

[gariac]

The Apple Bug That Let Us Spy on a Total Stranger's iPhone

BBM sends messages to a device, not a user. Imessage sends messages to users, not specific devices. If all works well, there isn't a problem with imessage. When it doesn't work, just hope the message isn't too embarrassing. If you RIM buddy has a phone and playbook, they have separate PINS and the message needs to be sent to both if you want it to be on both devices.

There is nothing private to Apple with imessage. Apple honors law enforcement requests.

It is still arguable if RIM has allowed India and Saudi Arabia to intercept BBM over the network (not BES). Talking to someone at RIM, there is no way for them to hand over the messages based on the technology, so the stories that India and Saudia Arabia can intercept BBM could be a smoke screen.

All this said, I fine all messaging annoying. RIM has push email on BIS, which is plenty fast for me. I will admit BBMing is fun if you are able to totally focus on it, but for basic communication, just use email.

[[email protected]]

The Apple Bug That Let Us Spy on a Total Stranger's iPhone

Interesting. I'm with Sprint. No SIM cards. That I know of. Only on the World Phone.

[SK122387]

As someone who has used both, I prefer BBM a lot more. Imessage is extremely basic and lacks the full featured experience that BBM provides. The BBM on my first BlackBerry, the Pearl, had more features than IMessage does.

In iMessage:
�no avatar pictures of ANY kind
�no "Read," just "Delivered"
�the over all look and feel of it just appears sterile and plain. Bland.

I like BBM because you can send voice notes, location, and the "share with BBM contact" in menus is becoming more fully integrated into the UI, which I hope continues with BB10.

BBM also let's you change the chat bubble color for your contacts, which is a cool feature.
IMessage feels like an afterthought of Apple's, like they threw it into iOS5 because people were asking for it, not because they felt like spending time making it "special" which I think RIM has done quite well.

[slashd0t]

There's a difference between security and privacy.

Having your info handed over to, as an example law enforcement, by your service providers/device manufacturers , is a matter of privacy. Your employer accessing your messages on a device they provide you is also an issue of privacy...or rather in this case expectations of privacy (there is none...it's not your phone).

Having your information and messages purposely hacked into by an unauthorized party is a matter of security. When they start reading through your stuff, then it also becomes an issue of privacy as well.

Want security and privacy? Setup your own BES and deploy handsets to all your friends

Fair enough.

If we focus on the security side, bis/bes use a shared encryption key, meaning, while technically the communication is encrypted, it should never be considered protected or secure.. Meaning.... RIM, the carrier, or BES admin can read your bbm's

I believe iMessage uses something called identity based encryption with iMessage, meaning, it derives your key from your device or email address meaning only you or your recipient can read your messages... Not Apple, not the carrier, and certainly not any employer.

There is a false sense of security with bbm...

Your device is aes encrypted should you lose it, but, email is still sent clear text (unless sent internally) and pin/bbm can clearly be intercepted by multiple parties.

[hurds]

From personal experience I think they are two very different services and personally I prefer BBM. Imessage for me was unreliable and the only benefit was free txts and txting internationally, but it didn't seem to work if I was internalional and sending back to the US. I switched from an iPhone to and BB and for about a month afterwards I was still receiving imessages if my iphone was on wifi, but for some reason now it has stopped. I don't know where the problem is but lately messages between me and people with iphones are often delayed, sometimes for hours. I could see it being a problem with how iMessage is routed seeing as it has to choose between iMessage or SMS. BBM works flawlessly and its been cool using it with my playbook which I was doing and then videochated with my parents while they were in Europe. I think hands down BBM is the better service but I guess it comes down to what the people you communicate with have. I don't see either being the deciding factor on what phone I buy.

[hornlovah]

There is nothing private to Apple with imessage. Apple honors law enforcement requests.

Absolutely!

It is still arguable if RIM has allowed India and Saudi Arabia to intercept BBM over the network (not BES). Talking to someone at RIM, there is no way for them to hand over the messages based on the technology, so the stories that India and Saudia Arabia can intercept BBM could be a smoke screen.

There is one encryption key for BBMs, so intercepting and decoding them is definitely possible. BIS BBMs are first sent to your wireless provider, then transmitted to RIM. Intercepting messages transmitted over a poorly secured public WIFI access point is relatively simple using popular tools like Wireshark. One can only imagine the tools that security agencies, law enforcement, and sophisticated hackers have, so BBMs and iMessages should be considered secure against casual interception and hacking only.

Since any provider will provide "Lawful Access" according to the laws and regulations where the data is stored, those data centers in India and Saudi Arabia provide convenience and timeliness for the authorities. Still, you have got to wonder what kind of information these governments want. The first lesson taught in Bad Guy/Gal 101 class is to never send anything nefarious via text or instant message because you never know who's holding the receiving phone.

[belfastdispatcher]

IMessage is an Instant Messenger, BBM is a social network now, no longer an IM client, big difference.

[_StephenBB81]

Plain 'ole txt messaging didn't work either?

I have no idea what gTalk is.

as mentioned "Plain 'ole txt messaging" worked the worst, I'd suspect it was because a larger portion of the people were using SMS, since in 2010 I'd bet more users had feature phones over smartphones, and SMS is competing with voice call attempts, but BBM was only competing with other data services, and probably was the most popular service


It is a matter of bandwidth, something that gets laughed off a lot in these forums by those who've switched from BlackBerry and say "I have unlimited data I don't care about compression" or "Carriers don't care about compression" Both Carriers and consumers SHOULD care about compression, the compression allows more people to get use out of a single tower, meaning more consistent transmission of information in high population areas, and more money per tower for the carriers

[ichat]

It all depends on what the dominant device is.

If you live in a town with 70-80% iPhone's, imessage is the way to go.

Same goes for the blackberry.

Still, bbm has many more features such as iMessage but there are some limits nevertheless.

Sent from my BlackBerry 9860 on 7.1.0.342 with Tapatalk and my fingers

[xandermac]

First thing to do is figure out how many of your contacts use either system, that would be more of a factor for me than anything else.

iMessage (in some instances) can be buggy. I have my iMessage to sync across multiple devices, to do this I have to use an email address as my "caller ID". I've found a side effect of this is messages are sometimes not delivered. Here's why. iMessage is supposed to be smart enough to know if your contacts have iMessage, if they do it will send iMessages by default. If, however you or your contact loses data iMessage is supposed to switch to SMS automatically. If I use my phone number as my "caller ID" this switch seems to work well, however, when using my email as the "caller ID" this switch never seems to work. Also, if I lose data, instead of the messages being recieved as SMS, I seem to get random messages arrive as email to my default att.net address.

iMessage has a way to go before its as reliable as BBM.

If I decided to do away with the device syncing and merely used my phone number as my "caller ID" iMessage works perfectly, but doing that eliminates one of the best features of the sysyem. Hopefully Apple continue to work out these bugs.

[hornlovah]

I believe iMessage uses something called identity based encryption with iMessage, meaning, it derives your key from your device or email address meaning only you or your recipient can read your messages... Not Apple, not the carrier, and certainly not any employer.

I looked around for information about the iMessage encryption key. There�s not a lot of info out there, but one can deduce that Apple is using a shared key in a manner similar to RIM. The iMessage encryption key's kSecAttrAccessible value is 'AlwaysThisDeviceOnly.' 'Always' means this key is decryptable right after the device boots, and 'ThisDeviceOnly' simply means that the encryption key is tied to a specific device and non-migratable. The 'Always' value also makes this key attackable, but I�m not going to beat that very dead horse right now.

Bottom line, if your device is able to view misrouted messages to and from another device (see gariac�s link) using an encryption key tied your device, then that encryption key is shared. Anyway here�s a link to a PDF file explaining kSecAttrAccessible values: iOS Keychain Weakness FAQ.

[GingerSnapsBack]

In another thread it was mentioned that in emergencies (Ex. earthquake, fierce storms) BBM still works and the others don't because BBM uses the data stream

After a tornado last year, none of my data would work either on my Storm2 or my iPhone. I had two glorified dumbphones for texting. That was it.

Also, iMessage isn't 'transparent'. You have to open your message app to compose a message...you're opening an app

Don't you have to open your BBM app to use it? isn't it kind of the same thing?

�no "Read," just "Delivered"
�.

Wrong. You can turn read receipts on.

[belfastdispatcher]

Don't you have to open your BBM app to use it? isn't it kind of the same thing?

You don't, you can compose a new bbm from within messages folder or the sms folder.

[xandermac]

You don't, you can compose a new bbm from within messages folder or the sms folder.

Honestly, this is a bit of a stretch. An app of some kind has to be opened.

There's no need to grasp at straws to defend BBM, it's obvious that it's better than iMessage.

In fact, the only thing iMessage has in its favor over BBM is that it automatically recognizes other iMessage users and negates the "do you use iMessage, what's your pin" aspect.


Sent from my iPhone4s using Tapatalk

[belfastdispatcher]

Honestly, this is a bit of a stretch. An app of some kind has to be opened.

There's no need to grasp at straws to defend BBM, it's obvious that it's better than iMessage.

In fact, the only thing iMessage has in its favor over BBM is that it automatically recognizes other iMessage users and negates the "do you use iMessage, what's your pin" aspect.


Sent from my iPhone4s using Tapatalk

I'm not clutching at straws, you can send bbms without ever opening the bbm app, for example if you want to send a webpage to a bbm contact you can do so without leaving that webpage. But that's the same with facebook, twitter etc

Edit, BBM Is not something you want to be automatically recognized, it's like anybody that has a gmail account to be automatically added to you Google Talk, that would be a bad idea.

[Snafufubar]

As someone who has used both, I prefer BBM a lot more. Imessage is extremely basic and lacks the full featured experience that BBM provides. The BBM on my first BlackBerry, the Pearl, had more features than IMessage does.

In iMessage:
�no avatar pictures of ANY kind
�no "Read," just "Delivered"
�the over all look and feel of it just appears sterile and plain. Bland.

I like BBM because you can send voice notes, location, and the "share with BBM contact" in menus is becoming more fully integrated into the UI, which I hope continues with BB10.

BBM also let's you change the chat bubble color for your contacts, which is a cool feature.
IMessage feels like an afterthought of Apple's, like they threw it into iOS5 because people were asking for it, not because they felt like spending time making it "special" which I think RIM has done quite well.

Bbm has been out for years - I message has been out for 7 months, of course there will be a disparity in function and features. That being said we all know apple is great with updates and I'm sure ios6 will include features that will push it past bbm

[xandermac]

I'm not clutching at straws, you can send bbms without ever opening the bbm app, for example if you want to send a webpage to a bbm contact you can do so without leaving that webpage. But that's the same with facebook, twitter etc

Edit, BBM Is not something you want to be automatically recognized, it's like anybody that has a gmail account to be automatically added to you Google Talk, that would be a bad idea.

That's not a function of BBM that's a function of the BlackBerries app integration which I've said many times is by far the best of any manufacturer.

Honestly, I would like BBM to be automatically recognized and I think the option should exist for those that do want it. I'm not sure where you get the idea that random people would be added to your contacts list. It's just a matter of recognizing which of your contacts do use BlackBerry messenger.


Sent from my iPhone4s using Tapatalk

[belfastdispatcher]

That's not a function of BBM that's a function of the BlackBerries app integration which I've said many times is by far the best of any manufacturer.

Honestly, I would like BBM to be automatically recognized and I think the option should exist for those that do want it. I'm not sure where you get the idea that random people would be added to your contacts list. It's just a matter of recognizing which of your contacts do use BlackBerry messenger.


Sent from my iPhone4s using Tapatalk

Sorry, I'm not arguing, I'm just pointing things out. I wasn't referring to randoms, I was talking about my own contacts, I wouldn't want them all on BBM.

By the way, there is a way you can tell if another person you email has a BB, the read receipts shows up as an R beside the email if they read it on a BB, if they read it on something else the read receipt comes back as a separate email.

I have added people to BBM after I saw the R, mainly clients.

[BlackBerry Guy]

First thing to do is figure out how many of your contacts use either system, that would be more of a factor for me than anything else.

iMessage (in some instances) can be buggy. I have my iMessage to sync across multiple devices, to do this I have to use an email address as my "caller ID". I've found a side effect of this is messages are sometimes not delivered. Here's why. iMessage is supposed to be smart enough to know if your contacts have iMessage, if they do it will send iMessages by default. If, however you or your contact loses data iMessage is supposed to switch to SMS automatically. If I use my phone number as my "caller ID" this switch seems to work well, however, when using my email as the "caller ID" this switch never seems to work. Also, if I lose data, instead of the messages being recieved as SMS, I seem to get random messages arrive as email to my default att.net address.

iMessage has a way to go before its as reliable as BBM.

If I decided to do away with the device syncing and merely used my phone number as my "caller ID" iMessage works perfectly, but doing that eliminates one of the best features of the sysyem. Hopefully Apple continue to work out these bugs.

Thanks for the explanation. My iMessage is setup only using email addresses on my iPod touch and iPad and I've always wondered why they get all out of sync at times.

[Chrisy]

I would love if BBM scanned my contact list and had the option of adding those with a BlackBerry to my BBM. I like that about iMessage.

Then I wouldn't care either way about BBM using a PIN because it would automatically recognize other BlackBerry devices and auto add. Right now, I find it a pain to use Pins and ask my friends and family if they have, or switched to, a BlackBerry.

Also, since starting school I have added a few people to my address book. I have to ask them what device they use so that if they have BBM I can add them. So far, it's been two people.

I'd rather just have an app scan and auto add or give me the option to add the contact to the messaging app. Live Profile has this feature as well.

[Chrisy]

Sorry, I'm not arguing, I'm just pointing things out. I wasn't referring to randoms, I was talking about my own contacts, I wouldn't want them all on BBM.

By the way, there is a way you can tell if another person you email has a BB, the read receipts shows up as an R beside the email if they read it on a BB, if they read it on something else the read receipt comes back as a separate email.

I have added people to BBM after I saw the R, mainly clients.

When using the BlackBerry.net email address or any email address? Send me an email to my Gmail and I'll reply. I want to check that out. Never noticed it before. My Gmail is my user name.