When I saw that ios 6 had texting, I thought I could text to a phone with my ipad. when I talked to a Apple tech (at an apple store) he said no. Since the iPad doesn't have a phone number, it won't know about my iPhone. Now I'm discovering this is not true. I texted my wife iphone and the entire lifetime of the text thread to her showed up on my ipad 2. I replied to her from my iPad 2 and it shows up on my iPhone. Cool. My vet texted my iphone and it showed up on my iphone and my iPad. I replied to him with my ipad and it showed up on my iPhone. But this apparently only works for iOS devices. I've got a bunch of other text threads that don't show up on my iPad, presumably because they aren't ios devices. This is at least partly not dependent on the icloud. My wife on not on the icloud, yet she shows up on my iPad. My vet is obviously not on my iCloud but he shows up on my ipad. I'm thinking when my phone is texted, ios uses the fact my phone and ipad are on the same icloud account to sync up the texts. That's my story and stickin' to it.