7 ms·

I switched to iOS (via a used iPhone on a BYOD plan) primarily for iMessage. I was tired of being the odd man out, missing out on things that were being planne

by Kadin 7y ago

I switched to iOS (via a used iPhone on a BYOD plan) primarily for iMessage. I was tired of being the odd man out, missing out on things that were being planned via group messages, etc. Nobody was going to switch to an entirely different mode of communication just for my sake, so the existence of theoretical alternatives doesn't really matter. (And I do try to use Facebook Messenger for group chats, so as not to lock Android people out myself, since I've been on the other side of that and it sucks.) But really this is Google's problem, not Apple's. Google could have owned this space if they hadn't taken their eye off the ball and fucked up Hangouts. There was a period of time where everyone used Hangouts, and they did a brilliant job getting market penetration by including it in Gmail. It's cross-platform, so it could have been the lowest-common-denominator in over the top messaging services, the thing that everyone knew everyone else could use when you want something that's not SMS or kludgy MMS. But Google snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, seemingly intentionally driving people off of Hangouts into other apps. This was incredibly stupid -- when you tell your users to switch to a different app, they may well switch to a competitor's. If they wanted to roll out additional features, they should have done it in Hangouts, not by building new services. (And RCS is garbage. I don't know who wants a carrier-dependent, unencrypted messaging service in 2019, but certainly not me.) The lack of a viable iMessage alternative is entirely because of Google's failure to invest in the Android platform and produce one.

wronglebowski 7y ago
I can't imagine RCS getting the momentum to become a real viable platform. Even if it's integrated into Android phones and seamless from the users perspective the major carriers have no interest in putting forth the effort or making it a real thing. I suspect it will be a nice to have feature like "HD Calling" where calls have increased quality. With Google lacking any real leadership in the Android division(See Wear OS) this problem won't be solved anytime soon. I recently switched from Android to iOS because I have faith in their ecosystem and vision. Sure it's a walled garden, but I'd rather have a nice walled garden that's tended to than a forest with no supervision, direction or purpose.
- jvolkman 7y ago
  Google is moving forward without carrier buy-in: https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/17/18681573/google-rcs-chat-android-texting-carriers-imessage-encryption https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/17/18681573/google-rcs-chat-...
rconti 7y ago
Thanks for bringing up how this is Google's fault -- or, at least, the failure of Google and everyone else who isn't Apple. iMessage has lots of problems. I've screwed it up a lot of times switching SIM cards, I can never understand why it needs to know if I want to contact my iMessage contact by email or by phone number, or why the messages thread differently depending on what I use. But it GENERALLY works okay. Meanwhile, I use Signal with one friend, and just about every time I launch the damn app on my phone or desktop, it complains that I need an update, or I need to re-link something, or my safety numbers of changed, or some such crap. And it's all better than Messenger. And all of THAT stuff is better than Google's incessant abandonware. I loved hangouts.. until I didn't.
- qwerty456127 7y ago
  Use Telegram, Luke! :-) It's almost perfect. The only thing I can imagine that could make it better is an option to sort its contacts list manually.
  - corndoge 7y ago
    >It's almost perfect All it needs is research-verified encryption!
    - SergeAx 7y ago
      Oh, come on! The $200000 bounty for breaking Telegram encryption is there forever. SHA-1 BTC piñata was broken in 2017[1], and MTproto still stands. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13714987 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13714987
    - SergeAx 7y ago
      Russian government needed to use it's leverage on a telco to break into political activist's Telegrams[2] about the same time some script kiddies easily broke into dozen of celebs' iClouds. [2] https://www.ft.com/content/74d5ce00-12dd-11e6-839f-2922947098f0 https://www.ft.com/content/74d5ce00-12dd-11e6-839f-292294709...
asclepi 7y ago
> Nobody was going to switch to an entirely different mode of communication just for my sake Please elaborate. No iPhone user has to switch from the "iMessage" app to the "SMS" app to reach an Android user or include an Android user in a group chat. While it does indeed involve a different mode of communication, it's all handled seamlessly in the background from the same app. In fact, if it wasn't for the coloring, they wouldn't even have noticed, except if you exchanged other data than pure text, but I can't imagine this being a real deal-breaker for planning? Note how the Twitter OP also explained how they were texting the Android student from iOS until they decided to abandon him and create a new group. Not because they had to switch to another app to reach him, but "because he was on Android and turned the thread green" (sic).
- grawprog 7y ago
  >Not because they had to switch to another app to reach him, but "because he was on Android and turned the thread green" (sic). That's a sneaky odd bit of social engineering. Wonder how many iphone sales they've actually gotten because of this.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - asclepi 7y ago
    83% of US teens have an iPhone according to Piper Jaffray in April 2019 [1]. That number is biased, however, as 1) it's solely based on a survey done in high schools, and not every teen will feel comfortable admitting they have something else than an iPhone 2) the surveys are performed by DECA Inc. which is more affiliated with private schools and public high schools in affluent neighborhoods. Still, I estimate that about 3 in 4 teens (and increasing) have an iPhone, either new or a model that was previously used by a parent who bought a new one. That's huge, and iMessage plays a very big role in that. [1] https://www.ped30.com/2019/04/08/apple-piper-jaffray-genz/ https://www.ped30.com/2019/04/08/apple-piper-jaffray-genz/
    - rootusrootus 7y ago
mattmcknight 7y ago
Google's abandonment of Hangouts was phenomenally stupid, and it should itself really have just been an evolution of Google Talk. It's a symptom of something very wrong in the incentive structure and product portfolio management there where you have to roll out a new application to add a feature, and the various applications cannot interoperate. Perhaps the underlying issue is that none of these made money directly. For what it's worth, I still use Hangouts.
- e40 7y ago
  It's even more stupid when you find out that Hangouts is still alive and well for Google Fi customers. I'm one and I haven't stopped using Hangouts, even though most of the people I know on GFi use something else because they read it was being turned off. The fact is, Google doesn't yet have a replacement for something they stopped developing years ago. It is completely insane.
  - soonoutoftime 7y ago
    I still use hangouts with my friends (because of its OTR feature) and none of us are Google Fi customers.
  - zormino 7y ago
    Google has a nasty habit of making solid features/apps available for everyone, then building an in house device/service that can use said feature, then making that feature exclusive to their new service in an attempt to drive consumers to it. In the end they just piss people off and whatever they were trying to do fails. The latest update to chrome on Android in the last few days removed support for 90/120hz devices. Now everyone who was enjoying a nice smooth chrome experience on the OnePlus 7 pro, Razer phone, etc. has a nice jarring switch to 60hz when they open chrome. This happened at the exact same time as they announced the new pixel 4 would be a 90hz phone, with exclusive 'smooth display'. Bleh.
    - WWLink 7y ago
      Have you tried the android version of firefox? I really dig it, especially because the desktop plugins still work in it. :D
mbowcutt 7y ago
> But really this is Google's problem, not Apple's. I'm not sure we agree on what the problem is? If Google monopolized years ago, the story would play the same - only now it's the kid without Hangouts/Gmail. Sure, you're not locked into a physical device, but you're still locked into a service, and that's not guaranteed to hold true forever. IMO we need a modern messaging standard that's vendor agnostic. SMS/MMS were good but feel ancient now. XMPP seems promising but there's too many extensions such that it's nearly unusable for the layman. I don't see an obvious solution, and asking the top vendors to collaborate on a common messaging protocol seems like a far cry.
- HNcantBtrustd 7y ago
  Users that promote priority network effects are bad for everyone else. This isn't Google's fault. It's low education users who get whatever phone their parents bought.
- istjohn 7y ago
  I'd much rather be locked into one app than be forced into an entire ecosystem.
- kethinov 7y ago
  Matrix is the answer. Unlike all the other trendy competitors (Signal, Telegram, etc) it is both fully open source and—crucially—federated. But just because it's the best technical solution doesn't mean it'll take hold. If the best tech always won, we'd have adopted XMPP a long time before Matrix was created. Sadly, I'm beginning to think the only way we're gonna put a stop to this crap is to threaten companies like Apple with antitrust regulation for such actions.
throw7 7y ago
> RCS is garbage. The _only_ universal _carrier_ solution for messaging is SMS. What does iMessage do to get to all cell phone users? That is the only thing that matters here. full stop. I have many relatives that wanted me to "install" Whatsapp. I refuse. So whatsapp is the failure here? Or is it me because I refuse? What is garbage is OOT. Google is not the failure. Hell, the problem is right in the title of the OP: "Lock-in". At least google is trying to get SMS into the 90's. You know what, I'm drunk and tired here... it's really just ignorant users that don't understand why everyone just doesn't use iMessage (apple proprietary) vs not understanding how open standard protocols and file formats work (email). We'll each be fighting this war till the day we die. It's in our nature.
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  I trust Apple for security a lot more than I trust my local telecom.
- erichocean 7y ago
  > What does iMessage do to get to all cell phone users? It falls back to using SMS if you don't have iMessage.
- mr_toad 7y ago
  > What does iMessage do to get to all cell phone users? SMS fallback. iMessage is the default SMS app. You send a message to a phone number. That’s it, you’re already using it. If they have an iPhone too you get extra features. From an onboarding and UX perspective it’s genius/obvious.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
Scoundreller 7y ago
> Google could have owned this space if they hadn't taken their eye off the ball and fucked up Hangouts. And going even further back in time, RIM/Blackberry could have owned the space. Instead they focussed on hardware instead of the real driver of their sales: BBM. Their market cap these days is $4b, while Whatsapp sold for $18b. It didn't help that Blackberry's comms encryption for consumer devices was complete and utter garbage.
NotSammyHagar 7y ago
My son and all his friends just use discord. they are a mix of android and ios, discord or another third party app meets their needs.
zifnab06 7y ago
Google always does what they decide is best. This is their main fault - they take the inane edge case and design a tool for it. If they made spoons they'd be sharp. You'd cut your mouth on them, but they'd be insanely efficient at scooping ice cream, although entirely useless to a normal human as a spoon.

by Kadin 7y ago

wronglebowski 7y ago

I can't imagine RCS getting the momentum to become a real viable platform. Even if it's integrated into Android phones and seamless from the users perspective the major carriers have no interest in putting forth the effort or making it a real thing. I suspect it will be a nice to have feature like "HD Calling" where calls have increased quality. With Google lacking any real leadership in the Android division(See Wear OS) this problem won't be solved anytime soon. I recently switched from Android to iOS because I have faith in their ecosystem and vision. Sure it's a walled garden, but I'd rather have a nice walled garden that's tended to than a forest with no supervision, direction or purpose.

jvolkman 7y ago
Google is moving forward without carrier buy-in: https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/17/18681573/google-rcs-chat-android-texting-carriers-imessage-encryption https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/17/18681573/google-rcs-chat-...

rconti 7y ago

Thanks for bringing up how this is Google's fault -- or, at least, the failure of Google and everyone else who isn't Apple. iMessage has lots of problems. I've screwed it up a lot of times switching SIM cards, I can never understand why it needs to know if I want to contact my iMessage contact by email or by phone number, or why the messages thread differently depending on what I use. But it GENERALLY works okay. Meanwhile, I use Signal with one friend, and just about every time I launch the damn app on my phone or desktop, it complains that I need an update, or I need to re-link something, or my safety numbers of changed, or some such crap. And it's all better than Messenger. And all of THAT stuff is better than Google's incessant abandonware. I loved hangouts.. until I didn't.

qwerty456127 7y ago
Use Telegram, Luke! :-) It's almost perfect. The only thing I can imagine that could make it better is an option to sort its contacts list manually.
- corndoge 7y ago
  >It's almost perfect All it needs is research-verified encryption!
  - SergeAx 7y ago
    Oh, come on! The $200000 bounty for breaking Telegram encryption is there forever. SHA-1 BTC piñata was broken in 2017[1], and MTproto still stands. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13714987 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13714987
  - SergeAx 7y ago
    Russian government needed to use it's leverage on a telco to break into political activist's Telegrams[2] about the same time some script kiddies easily broke into dozen of celebs' iClouds. [2] https://www.ft.com/content/74d5ce00-12dd-11e6-839f-2922947098f0 https://www.ft.com/content/74d5ce00-12dd-11e6-839f-292294709...

asclepi 7y ago

> Nobody was going to switch to an entirely different mode of communication just for my sake Please elaborate. No iPhone user has to switch from the "iMessage" app to the "SMS" app to reach an Android user or include an Android user in a group chat. While it does indeed involve a different mode of communication, it's all handled seamlessly in the background from the same app. In fact, if it wasn't for the coloring, they wouldn't even have noticed, except if you exchanged other data than pure text, but I can't imagine this being a real deal-breaker for planning? Note how the Twitter OP also explained how they were texting the Android student from iOS until they decided to abandon him and create a new group. Not because they had to switch to another app to reach him, but "because he was on Android and turned the thread green" (sic).

grawprog 7y ago
>Not because they had to switch to another app to reach him, but "because he was on Android and turned the thread green" (sic). That's a sneaky odd bit of social engineering. Wonder how many iphone sales they've actually gotten because of this.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- asclepi 7y ago
  83% of US teens have an iPhone according to Piper Jaffray in April 2019 [1]. That number is biased, however, as 1) it's solely based on a survey done in high schools, and not every teen will feel comfortable admitting they have something else than an iPhone 2) the surveys are performed by DECA Inc. which is more affiliated with private schools and public high schools in affluent neighborhoods. Still, I estimate that about 3 in 4 teens (and increasing) have an iPhone, either new or a model that was previously used by a parent who bought a new one. That's huge, and iMessage plays a very big role in that. [1] https://www.ped30.com/2019/04/08/apple-piper-jaffray-genz/ https://www.ped30.com/2019/04/08/apple-piper-jaffray-genz/
  - rootusrootus 7y ago

mattmcknight 7y ago

Google's abandonment of Hangouts was phenomenally stupid, and it should itself really have just been an evolution of Google Talk. It's a symptom of something very wrong in the incentive structure and product portfolio management there where you have to roll out a new application to add a feature, and the various applications cannot interoperate. Perhaps the underlying issue is that none of these made money directly. For what it's worth, I still use Hangouts.

e40 7y ago
It's even more stupid when you find out that Hangouts is still alive and well for Google Fi customers. I'm one and I haven't stopped using Hangouts, even though most of the people I know on GFi use something else because they read it was being turned off. The fact is, Google doesn't yet have a replacement for something they stopped developing years ago. It is completely insane.
- soonoutoftime 7y ago
  I still use hangouts with my friends (because of its OTR feature) and none of us are Google Fi customers.
- zormino 7y ago
  Google has a nasty habit of making solid features/apps available for everyone, then building an in house device/service that can use said feature, then making that feature exclusive to their new service in an attempt to drive consumers to it. In the end they just piss people off and whatever they were trying to do fails. The latest update to chrome on Android in the last few days removed support for 90/120hz devices. Now everyone who was enjoying a nice smooth chrome experience on the OnePlus 7 pro, Razer phone, etc. has a nice jarring switch to 60hz when they open chrome. This happened at the exact same time as they announced the new pixel 4 would be a 90hz phone, with exclusive 'smooth display'. Bleh.
  - WWLink 7y ago
    Have you tried the android version of firefox? I really dig it, especially because the desktop plugins still work in it. :D

mbowcutt 7y ago

> But really this is Google's problem, not Apple's. I'm not sure we agree on what the problem is? If Google monopolized years ago, the story would play the same - only now it's the kid without Hangouts/Gmail. Sure, you're not locked into a physical device, but you're still locked into a service, and that's not guaranteed to hold true forever. IMO we need a modern messaging standard that's vendor agnostic. SMS/MMS were good but feel ancient now. XMPP seems promising but there's too many extensions such that it's nearly unusable for the layman. I don't see an obvious solution, and asking the top vendors to collaborate on a common messaging protocol seems like a far cry.

HNcantBtrustd 7y ago
Users that promote priority network effects are bad for everyone else. This isn't Google's fault. It's low education users who get whatever phone their parents bought.
istjohn 7y ago
I'd much rather be locked into one app than be forced into an entire ecosystem.
kethinov 7y ago
Matrix is the answer. Unlike all the other trendy competitors (Signal, Telegram, etc) it is both fully open source and—crucially—federated. But just because it's the best technical solution doesn't mean it'll take hold. If the best tech always won, we'd have adopted XMPP a long time before Matrix was created. Sadly, I'm beginning to think the only way we're gonna put a stop to this crap is to threaten companies like Apple with antitrust regulation for such actions.

throw7 7y ago

> RCS is garbage. The _only_ universal _carrier_ solution for messaging is SMS. What does iMessage do to get to all cell phone users? That is the only thing that matters here. full stop. I have many relatives that wanted me to "install" Whatsapp. I refuse. So whatsapp is the failure here? Or is it me because I refuse? What is garbage is OOT. Google is not the failure. Hell, the problem is right in the title of the OP: "Lock-in". At least google is trying to get SMS into the 90's. You know what, I'm drunk and tired here... it's really just ignorant users that don't understand why everyone just doesn't use iMessage (apple proprietary) vs not understanding how open standard protocols and file formats work (email). We'll each be fighting this war till the day we die. It's in our nature.

Scoundreller 7y ago
I trust Apple for security a lot more than I trust my local telecom.
erichocean 7y ago
> What does iMessage do to get to all cell phone users? It falls back to using SMS if you don't have iMessage.
mr_toad 7y ago
> What does iMessage do to get to all cell phone users? SMS fallback. iMessage is the default SMS app. You send a message to a phone number. That’s it, you’re already using it. If they have an iPhone too you get extra features. From an onboarding and UX perspective it’s genius/obvious.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

Scoundreller 7y ago

> Google could have owned this space if they hadn't taken their eye off the ball and fucked up Hangouts. And going even further back in time, RIM/Blackberry could have owned the space. Instead they focussed on hardware instead of the real driver of their sales: BBM. Their market cap these days is $4b, while Whatsapp sold for $18b. It didn't help that Blackberry's comms encryption for consumer devices was complete and utter garbage.

NotSammyHagar 7y ago

My son and all his friends just use discord. they are a mix of android and ios, discord or another third party app meets their needs.

zifnab06 7y ago

Google always does what they decide is best. This is their main fault - they take the inane edge case and design a tool for it. If they made spoons they'd be sharp. You'd cut your mouth on them, but they'd be insanely efficient at scooping ice cream, although entirely useless to a normal human as a spoon.