iMessage Setup Info?

Having just upgraded to Mountain Lion, I set up iMessage (I thought) so I can send and receive text messages without using an app like Textie. I can send messages just fine, but the reply comes to my phone.

I have read the threads from others who have similar problems. Can somebody just tell me in plain English how iMessage is associating the addressing? Is the association by phone number or by email address? Thanks.

I have them for both the ph no. and email address if you want the message across all Apple devices send using email phone to phone use the number.

OK. Right now I can send a text on my iMac and when the recipient replies, I don't get a copy on the iMac, I get it to my iPhone. When I go to Messages -> Preferences -> Accounts I have a couple of email addresses to choose from, but no way to put in a phone number (which is apparently already in there somewhere, else how would SMS know to send the reply to my phone??). Can you clarify what is going on here? How does SMS know where to send the reply?

Hi,

You need to specify the correct email addresses you want to use and phone numbers as my screen shot, its a little messy but gives you an idea.
My good lady has two emails addresses and the one on the Mac is different to the one on the iPhone so in messages on my Mac she appears as two accounts / user names that I see.
Thus depending on which one I send a message to she will receive either on the phone or Mac. Obviously you could use the same address and get all messages on all devices. Its that simple.

That's helpful and I'll do that. I'm probably dense, but even after I put numbers and email addresses into my preferences, when I send a message from my iMac to my son (who has an iPhone), why does his reply to me go to MY iPhone and not my iMac where the message originated? Is this because of the setup on his iPhone???

Also, I am unable to put phone numbers in, only email addresses.

Click on the blue circle in the upper right in Messages which will bring up your contacts then you can add either phone no or email or both.

I set mine up by sending "test" to myself.
Example, i sent from my phone (with phone number) to my Message App on my Mac to one of the email Addresses i have on there and so on until it all gelled and worked. I have now Apple ID, Spam email address and my iCloud email address and my iPhone number on my Mac so now if im working on my Mac and someone sends msg to phone then it pops up on my Mac.

Here is a great article that explains what to do in non tech speak

TidBITS: Use Your iPhone

Helpful but ...

The Tidbits article was helpful, but if I understand correctly, most of the replies to my post have to do with setting up the phone numbers and email addresses that can receive SMS messages on my Apple devices.

I still would like to understand more about how SMS works. Some time ago I tried sending a message on my iPad. To my surprise, somehow SMS knew to send the recipient's reply to my iPad and not my iPhone. OK. I assumed that the sending device's credentials were embedded in the SMS header. Then, after upgrading to Mt. Lion and sending the same recipient a trial message, his reply did NOT come back to my iMac, it went to my iPhone. OK, so hence my post.

Can someone tell me how SMS works? How does it know where to send the reply to a message? Is that something I need to set up somewhere, or should that be embedded in the message?

Also, finally, the preferences setup screen for some reason won't accept my primary email address. It says it is sending the verification email, but in fact, it never is sent or it never is received. ????

I found an answer to my question, as far as Apple SMS messages are concerned. It is found here:

ios 5 - How does iMessage know that the recipient is an iOS 5 device? - Ask Different

As far as SMS from a non-Apple device is concerned, I still don't know how that is going to work.

You can still send a text to a non-Apple phones from your iPhone just like normal. You can't send an iMessage from your iMac to a non-Apple device. But I can send a message from my AIM account to any phone, and it will be sent as a normal SMS. (It'll just say it's from my AIM screen name).

Are you sure iCloud is enabled on all your devices?

Just remember that if you're messaging from one Apple device to another, it will be sent as an iMessage. If you're messaging to a non-Apple device (or if for some reason your device can't connect to Apple's servers), it will be send as an ordinary SMS through your phone carrier.

I understand about Apple's SMS (which has a different acronym) being different from usual SMS. What I found from the post above with the link is Apple allows you to specify a number of devices for iMessaging. When you set these up, it would appear that the Apple 'SMS' server sends any messages sent by you or received from another Apple device to all of those specified devices you have set up.

a) I don't understand why this information is so difficult to come by.

b) My original question was how SMS or Apple's version thereof knew where to send the reply to a message. I found out the hard way by trying things that SMS will just reply to the device that is sending but Apple SMS (whatever they call it) will reply to all the Apple devices that are set up by the owner of the sending Apple device.

OK. Case closed. Communication is difficult among us humans sometimes!