SMS Mac developer blog

SMS touch 1.2

2010-05-17T23:50:00.000-07:00

SMS touch 1.2 supports TextExpander touch snippet expansion.

With TextExpander touch, you can type faster on your iPhone or iPod touch using short abbreviations that expand into long snippets. Compose notes and send them directly to Mail and Twitter clients, or use them in other apps on your iPhone via copy-and-paste.

SMS touch 1.2 integrates with TextExpander, meaning you can type your abbreviations directly in your SMS text and they will expand immediately.

SMS touch 1.2 is available from the App Store.

SMS touch

2010-04-28T08:58:00.000-07:00

SMS touch is an application to send an SMS, just like SMS Mac, but designed for iPhone and iPod touch. SMS touch has its own web site and you can find more information, like screen shots and a demo video here:

http://www.smstouch.info

SMS touch 1.1 has been just released and it is available now from the App Store:

http://www.itunes.com/apps/smstouch

Please remember to register with your SMS Mac account ID to get 10 extra SMS.

Reply to Email

2010-01-23T10:31:00.000-08:00

In general, when you send an SMS text message, you will want to receive the reply to your SMS on your mobile. This setting is called Reply to Mobile in the Handle Replies preference pane. Here you can enter your own mobile number.

However, you can imagine a situation where you do not have a mobile. Or, for example, you lost your mobile or it was stolen and you are in the process of getting a new one. During this time, you might still have the need to send some SMS text messages.

In this case, you can not receive the SMS replies, because you do not have a mobile.

SMS Mac offers a solution.

You can configure SMS Mac such that the replies are sent to your email address instead. In the Handle Replies preference pane, select the option Reply to Email and enter your email address.

Replies that your recipient will send to your SMS will now be redirected to your email address.

You must be aware that the recipient sees an unknown sender ID. This is the mobile number where SMS Mac will pick up the replies, so please be sure to end your SMS text with your name.

Delivery Reports

2010-01-04T01:49:00.001-08:00

SMS Mac can give you information about the delivery status of the SMS you sent.

SMS Mac will always you send you an email when the delivery of the SMS has failed. There are several types of failures, for example, failed, expired and sim full. The kind of failure will be indicated in the email.

In the case of type failed, your SMS balance will be restored by 1 SMS.

The emails are sent to your SMS Mac account ID or the email address you have specified in the Reports preference pane.

Optionally, you can receive delivery reports when your SMS text messages have been delivered successfully. Open the Reports preference pane and select that preference if you are interested in receiving delivery reports of SMS that have been delivered.

SMS Mac and AppleScript

2009-12-17T12:28:00.000-08:00

SMS Mac also supports AppleScript.

So, if you want to send an SMS from an AppleScript, you can use SMS Mac to do that.

Just put the SMS Mac Scripting application (which is available from the download page) in the Applications folder and start scripting.

Many users have scripts running on servers that send an SMS to system administrators when something needs attention on the server.

The SMS Mac AppleScript page is here. There you can find various examples with, for example, the Apple applications Mail and iCal.

Lion and Snow Leopard and SMS Mac

2009-12-09T13:00:00.000-08:00

Since Snow Leopard (and also Lion), there is an issue with the Group SMS feature of SMS Mac.

In Snow Leopard and Lion, Apple has disabled support for Contextual Menu Items (CMI) plug-ins in the Address Book and hence the Control-Click or Right-Click (using the mouse) command through plug-ins.

The Group SMS feature of SMS Mac is implemented as a CMI command (like Send SMS to "group name") in the popup menu, which you get when you Control-Click or Right-Click on a group name (left column) in the Address Book. So this feature does not work anymore in Snow Leopard. That is, the command just does not show up anymore in the contextual menu.

Fortunately, there is a work-around. In the Finder, select the Address Book application, and choose the command Get Info (Cmd-I) from the File menu. In the Get Info Window, enable the option to run the Address Book in 32-bit mode.

When you now relaunch the Address Book, the CMI plug-in will again work and you'll have the Send SMS command again for groups.

By the way, you must upgrade to SMS Mac 2.5 for all this to work on Lion and Snow Leopard.

Message Routing

2007-10-15T11:00:00.001-07:00

When you send an SMS text message from either the SMS Mac widget or SMS Vista gadget, the message first goes through our server. Our server then submits the message to an SMS gateway. An SMS gateway has connections to the different networks in most countries. SMS Mac uses several different SMS gateways.

SMS Mac chooses the right gateway from the recipient's mobile phone number. The gateway depends on the country and sometimes even the mobile network.

We constantly monitor the sent messages. When a gateway has many failed SMS to a destination we change its routing to another SMS gateway. This allows us to quickly respond to problems and maintain a high quality of message delivery.

For almost all numbers our general routing works without problems. Once in a while a number is difficult to reach. Maybe it was ported to a different mobile network. We can then set up special routing for this number.

Send SMS Dashboard Widget

2007-10-12T10:30:00.000-07:00

I'd like to say thanks to Don McAllister who added the voice to a short QuickTime movie we just recently made about our award-winning Send SMS Dashboard Widget. It shows you in just a few steps how easy it is to configure the widget and then send a SMS text message to any mobile in the world.

The Send SMS Dashboard Widget won the second Apple Dashboard Widget Contest.

SMS Log

2007-09-14T04:25:00.000-07:00

Some SMS Mac users have asked for a history of the SMS they have sent with SMS Mac. At some point, we will add this feature to the SMS Mac software. At the moment, however, we don't have this feature in the SMS Mac software itself.

However, there is a kind of workaround that is similar to having an SMS log. Just enable the preference "Email a Copy of the SMS". You can find this preference in the Handle Reports preference pane.

In this way, you will build up a log of all the SMS you sent in your email box.

Send SMS Dashboard Widget and Leopard

2007-09-06T00:13:00.000-07:00

Some weeks ago, I received an email from Apple. They requested some changes in the code of the Send SMS Dashboard widget to make it fully compatible with Leopard, Apple's upcoming Mac OS X release.

So, we did that, and in the next few days Send SMS 2.1.1 will be released on our servers.

SMS Mac/Vista now has a blog.

2007-09-05T01:23:00.000-07:00

The developers of SMS Mac and SMS Vista will talk about their products in this blog. We plan to discuss tips and talk about our current and upcoming releases.