I own both an iPhone and a MacBook. I have disabled iMessages on the iPhone and I prefer to keep it this way. I employ the latest versions of both iOS and OS X.
When I send SMS text messages from my iPhone to contacts who also use iPhones their replies arrive on the MacBook (in its Messages application) but not on the iPhone.
I suspect this could be the case because those contacts have iMessages enabled and so their replies get routed by default to a device of mine which supports it as well (i.e. my MacBook but not the iPhone).
Is there a way to remedy the situation without me having to enable iMessages on the iPhone? (I don’t care for iMessages over SMS and I would like to receive all text messages on the iPhone.)
Best Answer
If their reply is in blue, it's an iMessage, and you disabled iMessage, so it won't come through. If the message is in green it is an SMS, which will always come through. The only way around it is to disable iMessage on all your devices so that your friends' iPhones don't pick you up as iMessage-enabled contact and hopefully send you SMS instead of iMessage. If the iMessage didn't went through they can touch and hold the blue message and tap "Send as text message" to send as SMS.
So the solutions are to enable or disable iMessage on all your devices. I'll go with enable, because you have nothing to lose and makes life easier for everyone and yourself.
If you really don't want to enable iMessage on your phone, at least narrow down the emails/numbers where one can get to you. (if that is the reason why you don't want iMsg??)