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That's true and certainly the "global protocol" for lack of a better term on iOS is iMessage. Either using a phone # or email it doesn't matter, and they manage
by chrisfinazzo 8y ago
That's true and certainly the "global protocol" for lack of a better term on iOS is iMessage. Either using a phone # or email it doesn't matter, and they managed to get 95% of the people all talking to each other.
<Insert speculation about the total # of iMessage users being more than possibly either Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn>
That said, although people might be wary of the dominant messaging platform coming from the OS vendor, I don't see how Google can really connect everyone unless they are the ones who do it.
If only their messaging strategy was consistent - and not half assed, they might get somewhere.
- asdff 8y agoiMessage is only popular because it functions exactly the same as SMS on an iphone aside from the color of your chat bubble, and the software defaults to it over SMS. If Apple separated iMessage and SMS into two apps, it would have failed.
- jethro_tell 8y agoWhat's crazy, is google is still trying to figure out how to get sms/chat/video call into a single app like 7 years later. How can this be so hard to see as adding massive value? my iFriends have had iMessage for half a decade, and I've seen so many chat apps from google I've given up and gone with something else in the mean time.
- fossuser 8y agoThe saddest part of this to me is that Google had a huge head start with Google Voice which they let languish for years. When I realized I was being silently dropped from group messages because they were MMS and voice couldn't support it (which lead to people thinking I was ignoring them) I moved everything to Apple. Since then they've released and killed a bunch of chat applications that have all been pretty poor - as an outsider it seems like something is pretty wrong with how they're handling that strategy.
- jethro_tell 8y agoAnd what's crazy, is it's so obvious, and so easy that every other chat app out there has basically converged on exactly the same fucking thing.
- chrisfinazzo 8y agoNot sure what you're implying, but that was frankly the only solution if you wanted to create something that could be used by the majority of people with iOS devices. Proprietary "sugar" on top of standard protocols is almost the de facto answer for how Apple operates these days. Their efforts to get the extra stuff past standards bodies (so that everyone can use it) is at times hit or miss, but I'm increasingly convinced the overall approach is correct. Why Google can't do this on Android is an open question.