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I'd love to see iMessage for Android or even desktop iMessage for Windows and Linux. I would use iMessage more. I think it would grow Apple's network, not threa
by api 6y ago
I'd love to see iMessage for Android or even desktop iMessage for Windows and Linux. I would use iMessage more. I think it would grow Apple's network, not threaten it.
- throwawaysea 6y agoThey make a lot of money off their hardware though, and iMessage is a key part of retaining users each upgrade cycle on their own hardware. It certainly has been an issue for me. On the other hand, I wish everyone would just use some other network as the standard, instead of something owned by Facebook or Apple or other giant Silicon Valley company. After Facebook started censoring private messenger communications between people, I just can’t trust them and am unwilling to give them a chance.
- angryasian 6y agoyeah, I really don't see a majority of apple users ever leaving the apple ecosystem because imessage is supported on Android and vice versa. What I do see is that Android users that aren't part of the apple ecosystem at all using it and now Apple has their foot in the door with these users.
- bobthepanda 6y agoThis is also not new grounds for Apple; this is the exact plot they did for iTunes to dominate digital music sales.
- viraptor 6y agoIt would be great, but I wonder how realistic it is to expect. iMessage seems to be pretty strongly tied to the apple account identity, their internal credentials, their push servers, etc. https://www.nowsecure.com/blog/2021/01/27/reverse-engineering-imessage-leveraging-the-hardware-to-protect-the-software/ https://www.nowsecure.com/blog/2021/01/27/reverse-engineerin... They'd have to either rewrite quite a bit to be more ecosystem-independent, or somehow port all the necessary layers to work on other systems. There's a good reason nobody reverse engineered and reimplemented iMessage so far, even though it's "just a messaging app".
- api 6y agoAFAIK those are all libraries that can be compiled in. It would be far less work than porting iTunes and they did that until iTunes died.
- sfifs 6y agoNot expanding iMessage and Facetime to other OSes when they had the chance was the single most foolish strategic decision Apple ever took. It's what allowed Whatsapp and WeChat and Line and Snapchat and Slack and Teams and Zoom even Instagram to a certain extent to happen. Not surprising given Jobs's famously monopolistic tendencies that he's passed on to the current leadership he's groomed but it did do the shareholders a major dis-service
- atonse 6y agoI think it’s the best decision they made and has taken courage to stick to it. There’s actually been a network effect especially with groups of people with being a “blue bubble” vs “green bubble”. Doesn’t look like this has cost them financially at all. I even feel like whenever I have to SMS someone, it feels like going backwards. It’s not encrypted, there’s no delivery receipt, no richness, etc. I’m just amazed that Google has utterly failed to build a viable alternative on Android in 10 years (which is why all the other services have thrived there), and boy have they tried.
- sudosysgen 6y agoIt has cost them hugely. Outside of the US and a few other countries iMessage is basically non-existent.
- Jtsummers 6y agoHow does it cost them? Do you mean in that a free service isn't being used by non-Apple product owners/users? Or that it's costing them sales of their Apple products?
- sudosysgen 6y agoIt's costing in usefulness. iMessage loses value if no one uses it, and outside of the US pretty much no one uses it, so it's useless.