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There are business reasons why we have so many different protocols and apps. Everyone wants a piece of the pie and letting "your" users talk on someone else's n
by voltagex_ 10y ago
There are business reasons why we have so many different protocols and apps. Everyone wants a piece of the pie and letting "your" users talk on someone else's network is seen as a risk. Your competitor might not want you on their network, either.
In the case of Apple, I'm pretty sure they aggressively ban anything that doesn't look like a real iDevice. I've heard the same of WhatsApp but I've successfully tested a couple of third party protocol implementations.
XMPP isn't great for mobile (bandwidth/battery usage) but I don't know enough to comment on that.
Have a browse back through some HN threads on chat and IM - these kinds of points come up every time. We've lost the war. One of my friends just asked me to install LINE and I'd be up to 6 different apps if I didn't just give up and go back to SMS.
- erlehmann_ 10y agoThe claim that XMPP on mobile can only result in lots of bandwith and battery usage is false, according to Daniel Gultsch, developer of the Android XMPP client conversations: https://gultsch.de/xmpp_2016.html https://gultsch.de/xmpp_2016.html Money quote: “XMPP is not suited for mobile devices. That’s a myth that has been around for ages. It is mostly spread by people who want to sell you their own proprietary instant messaging solution.” From my own experience, high battery usage is the fault of the XMPP client. Regarding bandwith, I have been chatting over throttled 3G and regular 2G connections. The initial connection takes noticeably longer, otherwise everything except file transfers seems fine.
- voltagex_ 10y agoThanks for that. Now, I just need to convince all my friends to move to a single client...
- erlehmann_ 10y agoYou do not need to convince them to use a single client. The one must-have feature for mobile XMPP that many clients have built-in is message receipts (XEP-0184).