iMessage: Broken and Filling up your iCloud Backups

When texting on the iPhone, your text bubbles are either blue or green. Green denotes SMS and is used when texting any phone but an iPhone. Blue means the message is an iMessage and is sent over the internet to another iPhone, iPod, iPad, or Mac. iMessage debuted in 2011 and was great. It featured visual typing cues, read notifications, and overall, a more reliable method of messaging compared to SMS.

Fast forward to 2014 where Messaging services are now all the rage. Recently Whatsapp was sold to Facebook for 19 Billion. In addition to the new acquisition, Facebook has made a push with Messenger, Google has been reworking Hangouts, and Snapchat is raging in popularity.

Meanwhile, back on iMessage, we've got some problems that are in need of immediate attention. With WWDC less than a month away, we can only hope Apple is ready to show improvements to the iMessage platform—one that is starting to show its age.

My main beef with iMessage has to do with its interaction with iCloud. iCloud is the free service (5GB is free, after that it is quite expensive) most iOS users take advantage of to sync content and create backups of their devices. The problem is how iOS, and more specifically iMessage, stores messages. Every photo, video, and text received is stored locally on the device. The iPhone then automatically backs up iMessage to iCloud. There is no option to exclude iMessage from backing up or to just back up certain messages. This isn't a problem if you delete message threads on a regular basis, but if you like to keep messages for reference, blackmail, or nostalgia, you are going to run into a problem.

My iPhone no longer backs up to iCloud because there isn't enough free space and I have not upgraded to a priced storage plan. I looked at usage stats and my messages was taking up 2.7GB of storage on my device and thus 2.7GB of my 5GB iCloud allotment. Granted this is because I wasn't deleting message threads, but should I really have to? I don't delete Google Hangout threads nor do I have to worry about them.

So how can it be fixed?

• Ideally, Apple would give users an option to auto save media received in iMessage. 
• Another great feature would be the ability to view just the media in a thread without having to scroll through the entire text conversation to find old photos. 
• And finally, add an auto-archive option that would archive (or delete) message conversations after a specific amount of time has passed, i.e. a month. 

There are other things that need to change in iMessage, like the ability to leave a group conversation and the ability to create groups in Contacts. Additionally, Apple needs to lower the price on iCloud storage to be more in line with other services like Google and Dropbox.

Here's to hoping Apple takes what was great in 2011 and makes it terrific in 2014.

Note: I think Photo management is an even bigger problem than messages but that is for another post, another day.