Do you use messages across several devices? And do you have group chats?

If I use Messages just on my iPhone, it works just fine. However, when I use it between 2 macs, an iPhone, and an iPad, it just breaks.

Sure, it's an edge case use - most people use messages just on their phone - but it's a pretty basic feature.

Yep, to the first one. No, to the second one.

Works fine for me across the board. My only issue with it is how it's eating ~2gbs of disk space on my phone for attachments. I haven't figured out a way to get rid of it without going through and purging all my messages or formatting my phone.

I use it across an iPad, iPhone, and Mac -- works fine, and I have an abundance of group texts.

The only odd behavior I get is that, occasionally, the desktop client will take a moment to catch up to the other devices, or be missing chunks of a conversation. That usually sorts itself out in under two minutes or so, though, so I assume it has to do with the time it takes iCloud to respond.

EDIT: I'm still on 10.8, if that's relevant. I intentionally lag a point version behind because of audio software (the latest and greatest always breaks audio).

I use it across group and individual messages on multiple devices (iPhone, iPad, Mac), it seems to work fine.

Occasionally there is a hiccup where a conversation thread is not immediately synced with the other devices, but that seems to be happening less and less.

It works fine on iPhone, but the client for Desktop Mac has had all sorts of weird problems.

I've had two big problems with Messages and all my friends have the same problems. First, typing anything in the Search box would beachball the app indefinitely until Mavericks. Second, there are issues with messages not being sent and having a red exclamation point by them – that has happened so much we have a backup Skype chat for when Messages is acting up.

Also Mavericks removed the ability to disable graphical smileys :(((((( (Is there a workaround or fix anyone knows? please tell me!!)

I mostly use Messages on Mac but use iOS some too. There's a huge problem on iOS which is scrolling to the bottom when people type stuff, which prevents you from catching up on conversations until everyone stops talking. That's super frustrating.

(Auto scrolling to the bottom when you talk, on Mac, is also annoying. I want to read through chat I missed, reply to things as I go, and not lose my place. You have to open a second copy of the window to deal with this.)

I don't think Messages.app converts emoticons into graphical smileys on the recipient's side. It's that the sender's text is autocorrected into emojis (which can be cancelled out of).

FWIW I've found that it worked for me just fine as well. Used it up until a few months ago when I transitioned to a Nexus 5.

Hangouts is pretty good too, although a few nitpicks - the emoji icons are ugly as sin (I'm willing to bet that some sort of copyright/patent law is to blame here), and it's gotten a few messages stuck (to be fair I can't say the same thing hasn't happened to iMessage).

Strangely, both Hangouts and iMessage are better than plain SMS though, even with just sending plain text messages back and forth.

Yep, totally agree with that sentiment about hangouts / iMessage being better than SMS. Although, I've found that with a really shitty cellular connection (1 bar), SMS still performs better, probably since nothing else is competing for data.

iMessages is completely broken for me across devices. Group chats just miss messages entirely on my mac. I need my phone around to use iMessage on my mac, in case I get a message that doesn't make it to the mac somehow somehow.