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> with graceful fallback

Have you ever tried to stop having an Apple device? Hopefully better now, but a few years ago there was no way to unlink iMessage. So say good bye to all your Apple friends, as them texting you goes to the Apple cloud and not your new phone.

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> a few years ago there was no way to unlink iMessage

Deregistration[1] has been supported since November 2014.

[1]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203042

Maybe that would be obvious to the average Apple user, but as a non-Apple user, it would never occur to me that I'd have to explicitly de-register my phone number with Apple after activating a new phone.

That seems okay? It's only applicable to the Apple user to begin with.

heh, fair point. I was mainly thinking about somebody dipping a toe in or trying out an iphone for a little bit before switching back

There was a time after you still needed to have the iPhone to do it, though. And I'm not sure how many are actually aware you have to do this, just getting messages for them sent into the void.

Yep, I used to switch back and forth between iPhone and Android every couple years. I'd deregister the phone number when switching over to Android. I don't remember a time they didn't offer that ability.

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