The ability to communicate while outside cellular coverage using Messages via satellite is so useful that Adam Engst recommends everyone with an iPhone 14 or later upgrade to iOS 18 for disaster preparedness—especially if you’re in Hurricane Alley.

SMS text spam was driving David Shayer crazy, and with the US election season heating up, the problem was only getting worse. After trying various strategies, he managed to rein in the problem with Nomorobo. 

In an announcement that the tech press likely cares about more than everyday users, Apple said Messages will support the RCS messaging standard alongside SMS and MMS sometime next year.

After failing to receive SMS text messages from five financial services websites that use them for two-factor authentication codes, Adam Engst resolved his problem with a quick call to T-Mobile to remove an automatically created system-level block on those numbers.