You see, your iPhone can message all day long with Android phones, because between the carriers, and SMS messaging, that has evolved to be a relative piece of cake. Your tips via CashApp, Venmo, or Paypal are appreciated! Receipts will come from ISIPP. The Internet Patrol is completely free, and reader-supported.

So, cleverly, Apple created what might be one of the most useful hacks in SMS messaging of all time: they decided to use their iOS devices to do the job. You see, from a technical standpoint there was really no way for Apple to create direct communications between an Apple computer and an alien life form, namely an Android phone. Here is the most important thing to understand: even though it seems like your Mac is communicating directly with that Android user’s Android phone, it isn’t. (For those of you too young or too unnerdy to remember, the babel fish was a species of fish that would act as translators for beings who populated Douglas Adams’ science fiction book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (by the way, there is now a complete 6-volume set of all of the Hitchhiker’s Guide books available for just $30, which would make a great present for, well, lots of people, including teenagers and old geeks, you can see it here on Amazon). It’s almost as if there is a babel fish living inside your computer. It seems like your Macbook or Mac tower is almost magically exchanging messages with the Android device, even though they run completely different operating systems, and, in a sense, speak completely different languages. It’s important to understand how it’s even possible (which it didn’t used to be) for a Mac computer to communicate with an Android phone or other device. Well, before you give up completely, keep reading. You’ve got it all set up correctly, and you’ve searched the Internet, followed all the advice, and tried all the tricks, and you are still getting that awful “not delivered” message whenever you try to send a message from your Mac to someone who uses an Android phone.

If you’ve set up a new Macbook or Mac, or updated OS X, you may find yourself suddenly getting that frustrating “not delivered” error when you try to send a text message from your Mac to someone with an Android phone, even though it all worked just fine before.

Mac imessage not sending messages