#MIGHTYTEXT FOR IPHONE 2016 FULL#
#MIGHTYTEXT FOR IPHONE 2016 ANDROID#
#MIGHTYTEXT FOR IPHONE 2016 MAC#

Texts were once text based (hence the name), but they are increasingly getting much richer through the inclusion of emojis, animated GIFs, audio and video, effects, etc.

Text: Generic term for just about any kind of informal, predominantly mobile message.

Like SMS, MMS works across mobile operating systems and carriers. MMS is an extension of SMS that supports the transmission of images, audio, and video over cellular networks.

MMS: An acronym for Multimedia Messaging Service.

You might even say that SMS is a modern-day Rosetta Stone. Though ancient on the evolutionary scale of technology, SMS is still relevant because it enables almost any mobile device to communicate with almost any other mobile device, regardless of OS or carrier. Generally speaking, SMS is a communications protocol that allows mobile devices to exchange short sequences of text over carrier networks (typically 160 characters, though modern clients can break longer messages up into multiple SMS messages where they are seamlessly reassembled on the other end).

SMS: An acronym for Short Message Service.

(I know: it’s about as intuitive as using an app called iTunes to manage your smartphone.) The apps you use on your phone and laptop are both called Messages, but the things you send to other Apple users, as well as the messaging platform itself, are collectively called iMessage. The default assumption is that if it isn’t an email, it’s instant, so why bother with all the extra syllables? It’s mostly a generational thing as opposed to a fundamental technological distinction. If you’re using WhatsApp, you’re just sending a message (or a text more on that below).

Message: If you’re using AIM, you’re sending an instant message.

are all, at their core, instant messages we just don’t call them that anymore. Messages sent through WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Apple Messages, WeChat, Snapchat, Viber, Line, Skype, Hangouts, etc. Though once considered the cornerstone of the virtual social scene, the term “instant message” is no longer widely in use (though the concept certainly lives on).

Instant Message: What we all used to send back in the day using AIM, ICQ, and MSN Messenger (or, if you were a power user, Adium or Trillian).

While I don’t claim that the descriptions below are necessarily definitive, they are sufficient for the purposes of this article. Even the terms “message” and “text” are, at best, context-specific, and at worst, vague and ambiguous. One of the reasons cross-device texting is so complex is the fact that there are so many different types of messages. But if terms like “text” and “iMessage” sound to you like distinctions without differences, you might want to start with the glossary below.

If you are already intimately familiar with the problem and you’re just here for a solution, skip ahead to the “Apple Messages” section and go from there. What follows are all the ways I know of to text from both your desktop and your phone, along with the pros and cons of each approach.

#MIGHTYTEXT FOR IPHONE 2016 ANDROID#

A few of you might even be Android users who cling to the false hope of Google Voice, or who have sworn lifelong allegiance to Nexus devices for the privilege of testing Project Fi. Or you’ve allowed yourself to be subjugated by a more closed and proprietary messaging platform like Facebook Messenger.

#MIGHTYTEXT FOR IPHONE 2016 MAC#

If you bask in the privilege of texting from both your desktop and your phone interchangeably, chances are you are an iOS and Mac user who has discovered the brilliance of Apple’s Continuity. But for others, the loathsome cycle is seemingly unbreakable. Then: lock phone, set down, complete approximately twenty additional seconds of work, and repeat.įor some of us desktop texters, such onerous workflows are a thing of the past - anecdotes to be passed down to our children and grandchildren in futile attempts to make them appreciate the extravagance of modern life.

#MIGHTYTEXT FOR IPHONE 2016 FULL#

Think about that for a second: instead of applying the veritable supercomputers in front of us to the task of transmitting a few bits-worth of emoji - machines, incidentally, with obscene connectivity, full keyboards, mice/trackpads, and excellent spell checking - we’ve opted instead to pick up a phone, biometrically unlock it, open a messaging app, and risk autocorrect humiliation while laboriously tapping out a dispatch with less efficiency than a nineteenth-century telegraph operator. While sitting in front of our ultra-powerful, multi-thousand-dollar laptops, we’ve reached for our phones to send or read a text.

Mightytext for iphone 2016