19 ms·

Eddy Cue wanted to bring iMessage to Android in 2013

125 points by embit 5y ago

exabrial 5y ago
They would have captured 100% of the messaging market. Reminds me of '90s *Nix companies with sales bros wanting to sling around overpriced hardware, preventing expansion of the company in other fronts.
- vmception 5y ago
  Agreed. They could probably monetize that better than hardware sales too, most likely via Apple Wallet payments and data. And the whole blue/green bubble pretentiousness would have never happened, which is funny because so many Android users still have no idea that's even happening to them or just assume they don't need to care about anybody that cares about that. (protip: its affecting your life and relationships)
  - musingsole 5y ago
    I quite literally don't need to care about the blue bubble nonsense. It's a great flag for a person I can happily ignore.
    - orangepanda 5y ago
      For 1:1 messages it doesnt matter, but breaks group chats when a green bubble is added
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - kop316 5y ago
        uhh...no it doesn't? I have a lot of group chats as the only Android (soon to be Pinephone) user. Group Chats work fine.
        prepend 5y ago
        And you likely miss a ton of group chats where there are no android (or Pinephone) users because you’ve been excluded because group chats don’t work fine.
        kop316 5y ago
        ....what? I am honestly having trouble parsing your meaning. My family mostly has iPhones, and we have several group chats with me in it on Group MMS. They work fine.
        ncw96 5y ago
        There are some features for group messaging on iMessage that aren’t available in Group MMS. If you add a non-iMessage user to your group, the group downgrades to using Group MMS, which does still work for basic messaging, but the group loses all of its iMessage-exclusive features.
        rblatz 5y ago
        I bet they also have side groups without you in it for when they want to share videos/photos or not deal with MMS jank. Nothing personal, we had to do the same thing to my brother and his fiance. Group MMS is busted it has inconsistent delivery, videos and images are compressed to the point of being basically worthless. Sometimes I'll get 3 of 4 people's messages leaving me with a partial conversation, then hours later I'll get the 4th person's messages. Sometimes they never come through. Sometimes I just don't get images, sometimes my wife and I will get different parts of the conversation and can piece it together. And the thing that causes all that friction is including an Android user in the group text. It's entirely not your fault, but also it's very natural for people to want to exclude Android users when the majority of the group uses iPhone.
        kop316 5y ago
        I'm really not sure how to respond to this, because you are assuming a lot of unheatlhy family dynamics there. I will say would hope if you value you relationship with your brother and his fiance, that you actually told him you do that and offered a comprimise on how to chat.
    - oneplane 5y ago
      I suppose you are one of the special few in that case. In other social groups people tend to gravitate towards a common messaging infrastructure, only sharing the absolute essentials when reminded of those that are not part of that shared system. This means that while you might be part of the group while physically present, you are not a part of the group outside of that. For billions of people around the world that is a problem (not the tech, but the isolation), and as such, that is where a good deal of focus goes towards. This isn't about selecting your friends or social groups based on tech, but about groups of people dynamically interacting. Replace the applied construct with something else and it still applies. (you don't like smoke signals because big smoke is evil to you, so you use carrier hawks, but al your friends still use smoke signals and can't be bothered to learn how to maintain a hawk)
      - musingsole 5y ago
        Eh, if you aren't able to stay connected to a group despite not using that group's chosen technology, you're not that critical to the group. I'm not advocating to hold your participation hostage, but someone organizing a group to use exclusionary practices despite knowing specific members can't or won't participate is a classic bullying tactic. Family members employ it often.
        oneplane 5y ago
        Eh, a social group isn't a business gathering nor is it a calculated construct. We're talking about people following their natural attraction. People don't consciously 'organise' a group with some 'group manager' and a nice hierarchy, technology choice panels, and acquisition procedures. There isn't some grand evil plan where the 'group CEO' selects the technology that everyone now has to use. This is just users using an end-user service on their end-user device that doesn't cause them friction and makes them happy. People don't think "I want to send an instant message to my group-colleagues on their mobile OS on their mobile hardware over their WWAN link to setup a meeting in our shared calendar for a ninety minute gathering for a consumption of nutrients". They generally think: "I could go for a bite, I'll let my friends know so we could go together". Everything that makes that harder just gets thrown out.
    - afavour 5y ago
      I have a family, small children, relatives. Grandparents loves to see videos of their grandchildren. Sharing a video via group MMS is fraught with problems, it often doesn't work, or the resolution is garbage. iMessage works every time. I'm not dismissing your experience but the green vs blue bubbles do make a big difference for many of us.
      - jonp888 5y ago
        There are many popular messaging applications(Signal/Telegram/WhatsApp) that are cross platform and handle multimedia content well. This is what is used outside of the US.
        afavour 5y ago
        I'm very aware of that. Convincing an entire extended family to switch app is not simple. Making sure they are all set up with an alternative messaging app is not simple. Getting them to remember to use it with your specific chat while they use the default app for other conversations is not simple. Using an iPhone is simple.
        rrrazdan 5y ago
        They don't. Whatsapp degrades image/video quality massively. Just a choice they made given that a lot of their customers are bandwidth constrained. If I have to send a photo that I took with my high quality phone camera, I prefer to use iMessage.
        vegardx 5y ago
        There are, but... Incoming rant: The one big thing about iMessage is that it never really changes. And it cannot be hijacked by some other application like on Android. For better or worse, and for basic services like text messages I'm erring on the side of better. I have no idea how many times I had to go fix messaging issues when my grandparents were using Android. Facebook tried to take over all messaging. Then it was Google, with whatever iteration of failed messaging application they were pushing out. Or when they had phones that actually received updates it would suddenly drastically change the user interface. We're having weekly video calls on FaceTime, and the superior sound quality of a FaceTime Audio has made it possible to even have a phone call with my hard of hearing grandpa. They don't even know they're using it. I send them high resolution pictures and videos of my hikes, that they can enjoy on their iPhone or iPad, whenever they want. Pictures and videos stay there without them having to do a ton of complicated tasks in a forever changing user interface, like Snap and the likes. The Apple Watches lets them know when someone is calling, and it gives us peace of mind knowing that they always have it with them. Everything uses a format they're used to from long before smart phones was a thing: Phone numbers. My grandmother is writing her life story on her now 7 years old MacBook Air. All their devices are backed up to my iCloud-family subscription. We've started using AirPods with Live Listen to include my grandpa in our conversation when I'm visiting them. If you haven't tried this, you should. It's mind boggling good. The amount of time spent fixing things for them have gone from an almost weekly thing to non-existing. Being seniors they also have a lot of time on their hands, and Apple-partnered stores, at least around here, provide excellent support for anyone that owns an Apple device, regardless of where it was bought. All their devices are updated almost effortlessly: They get a notification about a pending update that tells them exactly when the device will be updated and what they need to do. The one big wish I have would be to postpone major updates for a couple of months. The recent trend of Apple radically changing the user experience is not a welcoming trend. There's a lot of things I've really started to hate with Apple. And to be honest, at this point the things I just listed are more or less the only things holding me back. But the things mentioned in this post is such a huge quality of life improvements for all of us, almost like a cliché of Apple advertising. It's almost embarrassing.
    - vmception 5y ago
      "Does the person appear disconnected from family, friends, community organizations, or houses of worship?" https://www.dhs.gov/blue-campaign/indicators-human-trafficking https://www.dhs.gov/blue-campaign/indicators-human-trafficki...
      - musingsole 5y ago
        The weirdest thing is how gleeful you are in supporting socially exclusionary practices.
    - patja 5y ago
      I feel exactly the same. But it was a bit infuriating to realize how huge an impact it was having on my kids who were being socially excluded for the sin of Android. Many children have ipads and hand me down iphones with no SIM just for iMessage, which they all just refer to as texting.
  - ForHackernews 5y ago
    > (protip: its affecting your life and relationships) Haha, what? Anyway, joke's on them, I use Signal.
    - sodality2 5y ago
      Group MMS is terrible (group chats in general) and you can't really expect a group of people to all download and install a new app because one person has it. In all likelihood, you will simply be excluded or if it's important, you will be forced to use something like facebook messenger, google hangouts, instagram, etc which is worse than SMS.
      - musingsole 5y ago
        That logic would've applied to imessenger when it first appeared on the scene. Yet it is possible for challengers to displace the previous method despite not (yet) having the requisite network effects. To now argue that nothing can or should supplant it is just Applecronyism.
        sodality2 5y ago
        Sure, I agree, but that's not the majority of the population...
      - kop316 5y ago
        I'm curious, why do you say it is terrible?
        sodality2 5y ago
        It becomes terribly low-res. The MMS media limit means each video, if longer than a few seconds, has its bitrate crippled to fit in the limit. Photos too have their resolution lowered, less so than videos but if you send a bunch at once it gets worse.
        kop316 5y ago
  - llampx 5y ago
    The bubble is a US thing primarily. Not because Americans are uniquely prone to it, but because iPhones are not as common outside of the US. But don't worry non-Americans, people are judging you on the basis of how you dress, eat, walk and talk and deciding silently whether to let you in their social circle or not.
    - vmception 5y ago
      Yes and WhatsApp is not as popular in the US, with messaging being very fragmented between a variety of other Facebook products.
      - lotsofpulp 5y ago
        WhatsApp was a game changer for people that had international contacts. Before WhatsApp, all the mobile networks (at least in the US) charged exorbitant amounts of money for international SMS and MMS. Then, WhatsApp came and it was free and cross platform, compressed images and video to send them quick with decent quality, and free of spam. Absolutely perfect execution, in my opinion. If it was not owned by Facebook, I’d probably pay a considerable amount for it if it promised security and privacy.
        sumedh 5y ago
        > Absolutely perfect execution, in my opinion. There were no usernames with watsapp, its just your phone number, its so easy that even my mom can use it.
        patja 5y ago
        All it asks is to hand over all your private contacts. For me that is a ridiculously high price.
        ChrisArchitect 5y ago
        they owe a huge part of success intially to tricking people into what you describe -- that it's a replacement/better than SMS -- that it's "free". When it was simply that ppl couldn't tell difference between SMS network and Internet. And using phone numbers as accounts got a ton of people in non-American areas to use it (also north american texting rates crazy cheap unlike alot of the whatsapp-popular countries). Ridiculous. When all it is is another internet messaging app.
  - madars 5y ago
    Sure, not using iMessage means missing out on certain social interactions but so does not using Facebook, for example. Life can't be played optimally.
  - rovek 5y ago
    > And the whole blue/green bubble pretentiousness Honestly, reading the rest of the comments in this thread to this effect, it's terrifying that the runaway success of a single company can so degrade the fabric of personal relationships this way. The only people I've met who use iMessage have been Americans and the Americans I've met that live in the UK use WhatsApp or Messenger as their primary local comms, though frequently iMessage with friends in the US. I wonder why it is that iMessage hasn't enjoyed the same dominance here, even when the iPhone has. (45% iPhone in the US vs 40% in the UK)
    - monic 5y ago
      iMessage only makes sense on the iPhone with its full suite of Apple solutions. I don’t know why Google split up their video and then their chat into multiple directions but on Apple these exist as a workflow of solutions. Thus they are vulnerable to a do it all app like WhatsApp. IMO just exporting iMessage wouldn’t have been enough, they would’ve needed to combine FaceTime too.
      - jonny_eh 5y ago
        They promised FaceTime would be an open standard when it was first announced.
    - snowwrestler 5y ago
      The blue/green thing matters mostly to young folks, who are constantly on the lookout for signals of social distinctions. If it wasn’t chat bubbles, it would be something else. This isn’t derogatory; it’s literally how the human brain develops. Everyone goes through this phase. It’s not something that Apple created.
  - lemonade5117 5y ago
    Doesn't the green bubble mean that it's sent over SMS? I'm pretty sure the reason it exists isn't because of some "pretentiousness"
    - criddell 5y ago
      Yes. And messages sent over SMS are not private. It's a useful thing for Apple to indicate.
  - aryonoco 5y ago
    I'm in Australia, and here iPhones have about 50% of the smartphone market, with the other half being Android of course. I obviously know many iPhone users, including my wife and many close friends. I know of no one who uses iMessage. Here everyone uses Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp (and to a lesser extent Telegram and Signal). Is this iMessage fascinating a US thing? Why?
    - tobobo 5y ago
      In the US almost everyone uses SMS. iMessage uses the same app as SMS, changing the message type based on whether the recipient can accept iMessages. So, most iPhone-to-iPhone communication ends up being SMS because we don’t have to change what we’re used to.
      - prepend 5y ago
        s/being SMS/being iMessage/
    - HWR_14 5y ago
      iMessage in the US took over before WhatsApp or Messenger landed. So it's still going strong based on that (although I wouldn't want to switch to a FB product, so I may be biased.) But SMSs are free and therefore the number of people who use SMS (or RCS, whatever it's followup is), is really high.
      - asiachick 5y ago
        SMS is not free while traveling abroad. I know most people int he USA don't travel abroad but I do and is one reason I detest SMS. Further it's tied to my phone number, something I'd prefer not to give out.
        HWR_14 5y ago
        If you don't like SMS requiring people to know your phone number, wait until you hear how Signal and WhatsApp work. iMessage also works abroad (in fact, I tend to use iMessage when abroad because it appears to US based iPhone customers identical to domestic texts.)
  - monic 5y ago
    The blue green bubble is no more pretentious than letting people know if your messages are encrypted. It’d would’ve been inflammatory but accurate and informative to put an insecure padlock for unencrypted messages which may be read by your carrier.
  - MomoXenosaga 5y ago
    Anyone who has the audacity to send me an SMS in the year of our Lord 2021 has my full and undivided negative attention. WhatsApp or go home.
  - exabrial 5y ago
    Agree. One only has to look at the success of WeChat in China to see how this would play out.
  - bscphil 5y ago
    > so many Android users still have no idea that's even happening to them or just assume they don't need to care about anybody that cares about that. (protip: its affecting your life and relationships) To be as blunt as I know how to be: good. I really hope that anyone inclined to treat people that way goes all the way and cuts me out of their life completely. I don't need or want friends like that, and I've had no trouble making friends (including iPhone users) who aren't so absurdly shallow as to treat people differently based on the color of their message in a fucking texting app. In other words, I really do hope you're right about this and it's affecting my life and relationships, because the only way it could possibly affect them is positively by cutting assholes out of my life.
- afavour 5y ago
  Depends on location, IMO. I was an Android user for years (since the Nexus One!) and the vast majority of my contacts were on iOS. My lack of iMessage was a constant frustration and I would have signed up in an instant. But I'm in the US, which has a disproportionately high amount of iOS users. Across the rest of the world iMessage would be competing with WhatsApp and its existing network (something the e-mails in the article note) and I think it would have been an uphill struggle.
  - dan-robertson 5y ago
    Strongly agree. The US is weird in two ways: 1. iOS being uncommonly popular (in other words: the US is weirdly rich compared to even most developed countries) 2. People texting a lot (maybe other countries’ carriers used to just make texting too expensive?) Outside the US, people more commonly use messaging apps, and there is less peer pressure to be on iMessage as it is less likely for someone (in a certain social class…) to have a big majority of iOS-using peers. I had never even heard the term ‘green-texter’ until I went to the US
    - TMWNN 5y ago
      >2. People texting a lot (maybe other countries’ carriers used to just make texting too expensive?) Yes. US mobile plans gave enormous buckets (thousands) of SMS messages a month to mobile users 10-15 years ago, so there was little incentive to move to other mobile messaging systems. Conversely, the lack of such generous SMS allotments in most non-US countries drove widespread adoption of WhatsApp/Facebook Messenger/etc.
    - kiadimoondi 5y ago
      Adding on to what others have said, it's also that some non-US countries have much better internet infrastructure than telecom (which might've affected pricing, can't say for sure), so people flocked to internet-only messaging apps to avoid their telecom's faulty SMS/call handling.
- draw_down 5y ago
  Gee, that sounds an awful lot like a monopoly to me. Not sure why we as consumers would want that. Not sure why as a business they would want to take away a major selling point for their actual product, which is not a free messaging service.
- mcphage 5y ago
  > They would have captured 100% of the messaging market I'm not sure that would have helped Apple in anti-trust battles.
- Longhanks 5y ago
  No. In 2013, WhatsApp was already the de facto standard messenger in Europe. See https://web.archive.org/web/20140412064444/http://blog.whatsapp.com/index.php/2013/12/400-million-stories https://web.archive.org/web/20140412064444/http://blog.whats... Is this the typical american point of view where the US == the world?
  - imwillofficial 5y ago
    I don’t know why you’re taking this needlessly snide tone. It seems obvious that GP thinks that iMessage would have dominated, even WhatsApp in Europe.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- r00fus 5y ago
  > They would have captured 100% of the messaging market. Isn't that against their DNA? Apple doesn't like to capture market share - they instead go for high profit share regardless of marketshare. High profit share but median market share helps to avoid antitrust regulatory action.
- pwthornton 5y ago
  I don't know. Android is not exactly a place with a lot of paid software. No way Apple would make it free for Android and ad supported. Maybe they could have come up with some kind of iCloud Android bundle, and maybe it would have done well, but I am not convinced there is a massive market for a paid consumer messaging service.
  - cglong 5y ago
    OP doesn't sound like they were arguing that iMessage should be a paid service, just that Apple could've captured most of the market.
  - RandallBrown 5y ago
    I think making iMessage free on Android and then using it as a tool to migrate people from Android to iPhone would more than pay for itself.
    - bsaul 5y ago
      i think making it free for android would have certainly made it easier for people to try android for their next device, and thus the net balance isn't really clear..
alberth 5y ago
Reminds me of BBM (blackberry messenger). Only available on their hardware.
- opencl 5y ago
  They did eventually release it for Android and iOS, but only after they had declined into almost complete irrelevance.
- kevincox 5y ago
  I mean the logic is obvious. If you are popular enough you want to keep the platform exclusive. If you aren't then it makes sense to go multi-platform. BlackBerry thought their platform was strong enough and BBM would pull everyone else in. They were of course wrong. It seems like Apple is strong enough to keep iMessage useful even if it is platform limited, and surely some people are buying iPhones for the status-symbol of Green Bubbles (or Blue, I can't remember I don't use iMessage). Of course every platform wants to think they are strong enough to pull this trick, admitting otherwise is very difficult. Of course by the time it is obvious that you aren't strong enough it is probably too late.
  - indymike 5y ago
    Funny Blackberry story. The .jobs top level domain was launched around the time RIM was really struggling. .jobs was one of the first gtlds that wasn't .net, .com or .edu. The management team at RIM wanted a .jobs domain for their career website. They didn't buy "Blackberry dot jobs" they bought... the other one. The company I worked for provided career website software. The meeting where we tried to explain why RIM and .jobs was a bad idea was a classic.
  - northerdome 5y ago
    The bubbles are such a stupid status symbol. I hate the conspiracy theory that Apple did it intentionally to make iPhone users hate Android. The original iPhone had all green bubbles. The blue was only to differentiate.
    - 5y ago
slfnflctd 5y ago
Like many others, I switched from iOS to Android during a time when it (edit: this transition process) was most fraught with very unexpected failure modes. I remember being absolutely incredulous that anyone thought this experience reflected positively on Apple in any way-- it seemed incompetent at best, and had a strong stink of maliciousness to boot. I've always seen this as major bungle on their part, and it's one of many reasons I will never go back to their not-so-safe walled garden by choice.
- ibero 5y ago
  i honestly don’t remember what period of time you are referring to. could you elaborate on examples from the period of time iOS was “fraught with very unexpected failure modes?” edit: i just saw your edit to specify iMessage the app.
  - slfnflctd 5y ago
    I'm referring to iMessage specifically causing tons of unnecessary problems when switching from an iPhone to an Android phone. This was over 5 years ago so I have no idea what's fixed or isn't now, but I do still occasionally have problems when an iPhone user tries to message me as part of a group. These were all intermittent: Messages were lost or delayed for very long periods (going both ways), groups were completely broken, I couldn't tell who was messaging me because they were assigned some random source number (which I think also happened both ways), and images were compressed to illegibility. Some people I seemingly just couldn't text with at all. Here is just one small thread of thousands about it: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6750172 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6750172 [Not the best example, but I'm having trouble tracking down the posts I remember browsing back when I made the switch.] It was a complete mess, experienced by many users, and it was entirely Apple's fault.
    - neetdeth 5y ago
      Terrible, considering how text-centric social relationships have become. Reply delays on the order of hours are considered to send a strong signal. "Double texting" is a faux pas. It pains me to think how many friendships and romantic relationships might have been crushed by this bug. Neither party will ever know why.
throwastrike 5y ago
Eddy Cue still has a job at Apple.
decafninja 5y ago
I feel like I'm the only iPhone user that barely makes use of iMessage. All my chat communications is done via Google Hangouts (or whatever they call it these days), WhatsApp, or Kakao (I'm Korean). I think I have exactly one friend who I use iMessage with. Then again, half my friends are Android users, so...
- dav43 5y ago
  Likewise. Almost all my circles (90%) are iPhone based in Australia and Singapore. All WhatsApp, Signal.
  - sjg007 5y ago
    imessage should still work?
  - girvo 5y ago
    Curious. 95% of my circle are Australian, 80% of them use iPhones, and absolutely all of us use iMessage for nearly all text communication. Signal is used for the iPhone to Android communication sometimes, but honestly it’s mostly just SMS.
    - aryonoco 5y ago
      Fascinating. Most of my circles are Australian, the majority have iPhones, and yet I have never seen anyone mention iMessage. Everyone I know uses Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, with Telegram and Signal being very distant third and fourths. We must have very different circles!
- rodiger 5y ago
  In the US market it's much more dominant.
  - ImprovedSilence 5y ago
    Yeah. Im us based, and have two different friend groups that i text with daily. One group all has iphones and we use imessage. The other group recently landed in signal, but has been all over the place over the years, from email, to g chat, to hangouts, then tried whats app, then back to hangouts....
mcphage 5y ago
> The line of questioning is likely to play a significant role in Epic’s antitrust lawsuit, which argues that iOS app store exclusivity represents an illegal use of market power. Epic has made clear in previous filings that it plans to make iMessage exclusivity part of that argument, citing a 2016 email from Phil Schiller that argues iMessage expansion “will hurt us more than help us.” This seems weirdly irrelevant. If Epic is arguing that not allowing other app stores onto iPhones is hurting consumers, I don't understand the relevance of Apple software on non-Apple phones. I mean, say Epic wins their case, and so Apple needs to support side-loading. The court still can't force Apple to port iMessage to other devices.
codq 5y ago
Not only did Apple miss an opportunity to own global messaging, Google could have done the same if they had designed Allo with SMS fallback similar to iMessage. I have no idea what they were thinking with Allo, but they blew one of the easiest layups I’ve ever seen.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  They were far too late with Allo. The time to get it right was when Whatsapp came around. I like iMessage because it sends full quality media, but WhatsApp fills all the other gaps.
- criddell 5y ago
  I don't understand how Google wasn't able to figure out messaging. That has to be an embarrassment inside Google.
  - slig 5y ago
    For whom? They don't seem to care about anything anymore.
- SirSourdough 5y ago
  Maybe they missed a chance to own global messaging, though I’m not sure that’s true given the number of competing messaging platforms, but iMessage being a walled garden has sold a shitload of devices for Apple and served as a major way of locking people into their ecosystem. It’s a major differentiator from Android/PC products, and it’s something I’ve heard mentioned a lot when people are choosing between Android and iOS or between PC laptop vs MacBook. I think people are underestimating the value that Apple has derived in terms of device sales from not expanding iMessage to other platforms, and device sales are worth a lot of money compared to new messaging-only users.
- themacguffinman 5y ago
  Because of antitrust concerns. It amuses me every time this suggestion resurfaces here because this community is most familiar with anti-Google pressure when it tries to use its market share like this.
dawnerd 5y ago
I still want a windows client, or even a web version.
asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
It would be a fantastic outcome of this case if the use of closed standards and lack of integration APIs in a high-market-share product gave rise to a presumption of monopolistic practices. That is obviously what drives the lack of integration points with iMessage and other messaging services, but right now there is no consequence. If it were codified, even in a court precedent, it might be enough to get these systems to start playing nicely again. Remember the days when you could write a client that would connect to most online chat services? I want those days back. (To be clear, I guess this is wishful thinking. But I would be happy if it came to pass.) Even better would be a requirement to provide interoperability APIs at a legislative level, but I guess that will be a long time coming.
donarb 5y ago
I find it ironic in a lawsuit over Apple's supposed dominance, that Epic is claiming that executives shot down a plan that as Cue puts it "that iMessage should expand to Android to cement Apple’s hold on messaging apps".
- temp667 5y ago
  The truth is at the time iMessage would have DOMINATED. End to end encryption. Proper MMS. Etc.
imwillofficial 5y ago
For those saying Apple missed the boat on owning global messaging, I ask you: Who says Apple wanted to own global messaging back then?
tootie 5y ago
The instant messaging market is such an utter failure of competitive market economics. There hasn't been a single worthwhile innovation in like 25 years yet there is intense competition over who owns the proprietary protocols. Text vs data is also an entirely contrived competition.
- krrrh 5y ago
  End to end encryption was a huge innovation first widespread with iMessage, then Signal, and even WhatsApp and eventually (optionally) on FB messenger and Telegram. Now it's table stakes.
FraaJad 5y ago
WhatsApp happened and no one cares about iMessage outside US. -- sent from my iPhone
jgalt212 5y ago
so do Brian Acton and Jan Koum send Craig Federighi the world's largest fruit basket every Christmas?
emsy 5y ago
The reason for not bringing iMessage to Android was because parents could just buy cheap Android handsets for their kids. First of all, why not create a product for that niche (nevermind, we're talking about Apple). But what actually bothers me is the weak mindset. I remember when Apple didn't have such concerns because they were certain that they have the best product and people would buy for that reason. This is going on across the board at Apple it'll eventually lead to its IBMification.
- cududa 5y ago
  I’m not sure your assessment is right. They let iPods run on windows and made a janky version of iTunes for windows so it was operable, but I don’t think they ever treated iTunes for Windows as a priority. So, sure they knew iPod was best in class, and people bought the product for use with either platform. But where’s the iMessage analogy? It’s not like all of Android would get better because of iMessage, they couldn’t actually sell anything based on an imesssge port, so where’s there incentive? Where’s the example of them absconding on a principle of “best product wins” when they aren’t selling a product associated with the cross platform access?
  - emsy 5y ago
    Having iOS as a first class citizen and accepting the fact that Android users exist and your paying customers don't have to bother with the fragmented messenger landscape. All while creating the de-facto standard for smartphone messaging (that is now Whatsapp).
  - null0pointer 5y ago
    The distinction here is that the iPod/iPhone is the product, while iMessage is merely a feature. By creating iTunes for Windows they were expanding the potential customer base for iPods. By supporting iMessage on Android they would not be expanding the potential customer base for iPhone. If anything they would be shrinking it if they think iMessage is a compelling enough feature for people to switch from Android to iMessage.
js2 5y ago
> I am concerned [that] iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove an obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones. We're an iPhone family, but damn is that lame. How about: make the best product. Don't coerce people into buying an iPhone. It drives me crazy how fractured messaging has become. Here's a recent example. My non-technical aunt tried to send a group iMessage to my wife and me. For me, she used an email address tied to my iMessage account. But for my wife, she used her Google Voice #. Now what you need to understand is that iMessage allows you to associate one or more email addresses with your account, but only a single phone #, which has to be your carrier-assigned #. So now she's trying to send an iMessage to my email address (which would have shown up in blue) and my wife's Google Voice # (which would have shown up in green). Well, here's what apparently happened. iMessage handed this off as an MMS to Verizon. Verizon's MMS gateway sent me the message via email, as a text attachment. My wife got the message in the Google Voice app on her phone. What an f'ing mess. I've turned off "Send as SMS" and "MMS Messaging" on my iPhone so I don't make this same stupid mistake. I'd use WhatsApp for everything, but, Facebook. (I tried Signal. I found it to be pretty sub-par for everyday messaging.)
- jbigelow76 5y ago
  We're an iPhone family, but damn is that lame. How about: make the best product. Don't coerce people into buying an iPhone. But iMessage isn't the product, it's a feature of the product. They think by not letting those features be available on other platforms they are creating the best product. You can't make the best product while simultaneously commoditizing your differentiators.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
    I think engendering network effects intentionally is pretty monopolistic. You can't just say, "Hey, but we're not making money from it directly" and get away with that.
  - tw04 5y ago
    They are repeating RIM's mistakes. It fascinates me they haven't actually jumped on the services train, they just started charging a monthly fee for the walled garden while still focusing on selling product and called it a services play.
krrrh 5y ago
> ‘Do we want to lose one of the most important apps in a mobile environment to Google?’ Little did Cue know how determined Google was to fumble messaging over the next decade.
- MomoXenosaga 5y ago
  And WhatsApp was a start-up of less than 50 people that took over communication of entire nations in a matter of months. Who saw that coming? Biggest WTF since Napster.
  - krrrh 5y ago
    It has to be the highest acquisition-dollar / employee of all time. I doubt anything even comes close. And isn’t it true that they were profitable on their $1 per year subscription scheme? I’d love to read a book about how it all came together. Especially something that dives into the speculation I’ve had that their relationships and zero-rating contracts with telcos in developing countries and how that could be leveraged into internet.org and establishing FB in emerging markets was a bigger driver for getting the deal done than the idea of owning IM. Does anyone know if there are any interviews with the team that negotiated the zero-rating deals because seems like excellent execution before almost anyone stateside realized what the play was.
    - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
      Ah yes, when HN decided that poor people in India shouldn't have any internet, because Facebook was providing it. To be fair though, the zero rating/internet.org stuff does appear to have made a massive difference to internet availability in developing countries, and it juiced FB's user growth numbers, as it was intended to do.
      - krrrh 5y ago
        It happened to coincide with hyperbolic campaigns around net neutrality stateside and a lot of that language got overextended to really different situations. I spent a month in Myanmar in late 2016 and different providers had different zero rating on different services. The one I went with offered generous prepaid data plans and no phone service or SMS at all, just unlimited use of Line. I was tickled by this but there were a couple of old Israeli guys in the shop where we got our SIM cards getting massively frustrated that no one could explain how many “minutes” of calling they got on the various plans. None of the staff knew what they were asking. It was just a market at a very different level of maturity, more advanced in some ways, and weirdly pragmatic in others.
beowulfey 5y ago
More relevant to the article—does anyone know what Epic plans to argue from this finding? Honestly, I could interpret not bringing iMessage to Android as being decidely anti-monopolistic; they actively tried to avoid capturing the entire market. I’m sure that is not what this evidence is intended to show though.
- cududa 5y ago
  What benefit would it give Apple to have all of Android users on iMessage? It’s not like they inject ads into your messaging streams/ they left money on the table to benefit another product? To me, forcing them to make an Android version of iMessage would be pretty anti-American. Domestically they have 20-30% market share, and there’s 0 revenue to gain from an Android version except the tenuous concept that maybe they could use it to upsell someone to iOS? Idk, I agree with you here. Doesn’t seem clear to me why they should be obligated or compelled to ship iMessage for Android. Sure, Apple Music, because there’s a fee attached to it, but do you think Android people would pay a few bucks a month for Android? Could they upsell it to another product like cloud storage? Would they a) want the scrutiny that comes with and iCloud upsell b) security risk from enabling iCloud on an unmanaged platform
  - AgentOrange1234 5y ago
    Even without direct monetization, there could be advantages for Apple? - It’d be compelling for a lot of Android users and would probably be widely installed. This would give Apple a strong foothold onto Android devices. They could perhaps build on that for their services. - For iOS users, this might make features like Apple Pay and sending songs more universal/reliable, which might provide more of a moat against Venmo, Android Pay, Spotify, etc. It’d also give a better privacy/security story if your messages aren’t converted to SMS. - If it was sufficiently popular, it could provide Apple with a credible retaliatory move in case Google yanked something important from iOS. - It would weaken the value proposition for important competitors like Facebook. Why let scary FB messenger on your phone if you can talk to everyone over iMessage? I know nothing and this is just spitballing. Maybe nothing here outweighs keeping it exclusive to iOS, but Apple getting some of their software used far and wide seems like it could have real upside.
Geee 5y ago
I think they could differentiate with privacy. Privacy is the ultimate silver bullet that could kill Android, because the Google's business model is built around lack of privacy. If iMessage could elevate privacy awareness and expectations, then it's possible that people would want to switch to iPhone.

125 points by embit 5y ago

They would have captured 100% of the messaging market. Reminds me of '90s *Nix companies with sales bros wanting to sling around overpriced hardware, preventing expansion of the company in other fronts.

vmception 5y ago
Agreed. They could probably monetize that better than hardware sales too, most likely via Apple Wallet payments and data. And the whole blue/green bubble pretentiousness would have never happened, which is funny because so many Android users still have no idea that's even happening to them or just assume they don't need to care about anybody that cares about that. (protip: its affecting your life and relationships)
- musingsole 5y ago
  I quite literally don't need to care about the blue bubble nonsense. It's a great flag for a person I can happily ignore.
  - orangepanda 5y ago
    For 1:1 messages it doesnt matter, but breaks group chats when a green bubble is added
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - kop316 5y ago
      uhh...no it doesn't? I have a lot of group chats as the only Android (soon to be Pinephone) user. Group Chats work fine.
      - prepend 5y ago
        And you likely miss a ton of group chats where there are no android (or Pinephone) users because you’ve been excluded because group chats don’t work fine.
        kop316 5y ago
        ....what? I am honestly having trouble parsing your meaning. My family mostly has iPhones, and we have several group chats with me in it on Group MMS. They work fine.
        ncw96 5y ago
        There are some features for group messaging on iMessage that aren’t available in Group MMS. If you add a non-iMessage user to your group, the group downgrades to using Group MMS, which does still work for basic messaging, but the group loses all of its iMessage-exclusive features.
        rblatz 5y ago
        I bet they also have side groups without you in it for when they want to share videos/photos or not deal with MMS jank. Nothing personal, we had to do the same thing to my brother and his fiance. Group MMS is busted it has inconsistent delivery, videos and images are compressed to the point of being basically worthless. Sometimes I'll get 3 of 4 people's messages leaving me with a partial conversation, then hours later I'll get the 4th person's messages. Sometimes they never come through. Sometimes I just don't get images, sometimes my wife and I will get different parts of the conversation and can piece it together. And the thing that causes all that friction is including an Android user in the group text. It's entirely not your fault, but also it's very natural for people to want to exclude Android users when the majority of the group uses iPhone.
        kop316 5y ago
        I'm really not sure how to respond to this, because you are assuming a lot of unheatlhy family dynamics there. I will say would hope if you value you relationship with your brother and his fiance, that you actually told him you do that and offered a comprimise on how to chat.
  - oneplane 5y ago
    I suppose you are one of the special few in that case. In other social groups people tend to gravitate towards a common messaging infrastructure, only sharing the absolute essentials when reminded of those that are not part of that shared system. This means that while you might be part of the group while physically present, you are not a part of the group outside of that. For billions of people around the world that is a problem (not the tech, but the isolation), and as such, that is where a good deal of focus goes towards. This isn't about selecting your friends or social groups based on tech, but about groups of people dynamically interacting. Replace the applied construct with something else and it still applies. (you don't like smoke signals because big smoke is evil to you, so you use carrier hawks, but al your friends still use smoke signals and can't be bothered to learn how to maintain a hawk)
    - musingsole 5y ago
      Eh, if you aren't able to stay connected to a group despite not using that group's chosen technology, you're not that critical to the group. I'm not advocating to hold your participation hostage, but someone organizing a group to use exclusionary practices despite knowing specific members can't or won't participate is a classic bullying tactic. Family members employ it often.
      - oneplane 5y ago
        Eh, a social group isn't a business gathering nor is it a calculated construct. We're talking about people following their natural attraction. People don't consciously 'organise' a group with some 'group manager' and a nice hierarchy, technology choice panels, and acquisition procedures. There isn't some grand evil plan where the 'group CEO' selects the technology that everyone now has to use. This is just users using an end-user service on their end-user device that doesn't cause them friction and makes them happy. People don't think "I want to send an instant message to my group-colleagues on their mobile OS on their mobile hardware over their WWAN link to setup a meeting in our shared calendar for a ninety minute gathering for a consumption of nutrients". They generally think: "I could go for a bite, I'll let my friends know so we could go together". Everything that makes that harder just gets thrown out.
  - afavour 5y ago
    I have a family, small children, relatives. Grandparents loves to see videos of their grandchildren. Sharing a video via group MMS is fraught with problems, it often doesn't work, or the resolution is garbage. iMessage works every time. I'm not dismissing your experience but the green vs blue bubbles do make a big difference for many of us.
    - jonp888 5y ago
      There are many popular messaging applications(Signal/Telegram/WhatsApp) that are cross platform and handle multimedia content well. This is what is used outside of the US.
      - afavour 5y ago
        I'm very aware of that. Convincing an entire extended family to switch app is not simple. Making sure they are all set up with an alternative messaging app is not simple. Getting them to remember to use it with your specific chat while they use the default app for other conversations is not simple. Using an iPhone is simple.
      - rrrazdan 5y ago
        They don't. Whatsapp degrades image/video quality massively. Just a choice they made given that a lot of their customers are bandwidth constrained. If I have to send a photo that I took with my high quality phone camera, I prefer to use iMessage.
      - vegardx 5y ago
        There are, but... Incoming rant: The one big thing about iMessage is that it never really changes. And it cannot be hijacked by some other application like on Android. For better or worse, and for basic services like text messages I'm erring on the side of better. I have no idea how many times I had to go fix messaging issues when my grandparents were using Android. Facebook tried to take over all messaging. Then it was Google, with whatever iteration of failed messaging application they were pushing out. Or when they had phones that actually received updates it would suddenly drastically change the user interface. We're having weekly video calls on FaceTime, and the superior sound quality of a FaceTime Audio has made it possible to even have a phone call with my hard of hearing grandpa. They don't even know they're using it. I send them high resolution pictures and videos of my hikes, that they can enjoy on their iPhone or iPad, whenever they want. Pictures and videos stay there without them having to do a ton of complicated tasks in a forever changing user interface, like Snap and the likes. The Apple Watches lets them know when someone is calling, and it gives us peace of mind knowing that they always have it with them. Everything uses a format they're used to from long before smart phones was a thing: Phone numbers. My grandmother is writing her life story on her now 7 years old MacBook Air. All their devices are backed up to my iCloud-family subscription. We've started using AirPods with Live Listen to include my grandpa in our conversation when I'm visiting them. If you haven't tried this, you should. It's mind boggling good. The amount of time spent fixing things for them have gone from an almost weekly thing to non-existing. Being seniors they also have a lot of time on their hands, and Apple-partnered stores, at least around here, provide excellent support for anyone that owns an Apple device, regardless of where it was bought. All their devices are updated almost effortlessly: They get a notification about a pending update that tells them exactly when the device will be updated and what they need to do. The one big wish I have would be to postpone major updates for a couple of months. The recent trend of Apple radically changing the user experience is not a welcoming trend. There's a lot of things I've really started to hate with Apple. And to be honest, at this point the things I just listed are more or less the only things holding me back. But the things mentioned in this post is such a huge quality of life improvements for all of us, almost like a cliché of Apple advertising. It's almost embarrassing.
  - vmception 5y ago
    "Does the person appear disconnected from family, friends, community organizations, or houses of worship?" https://www.dhs.gov/blue-campaign/indicators-human-trafficking https://www.dhs.gov/blue-campaign/indicators-human-trafficki...
    - musingsole 5y ago
      The weirdest thing is how gleeful you are in supporting socially exclusionary practices.
  - patja 5y ago
    I feel exactly the same. But it was a bit infuriating to realize how huge an impact it was having on my kids who were being socially excluded for the sin of Android. Many children have ipads and hand me down iphones with no SIM just for iMessage, which they all just refer to as texting.
- ForHackernews 5y ago
  > (protip: its affecting your life and relationships) Haha, what? Anyway, joke's on them, I use Signal.
  - sodality2 5y ago
    Group MMS is terrible (group chats in general) and you can't really expect a group of people to all download and install a new app because one person has it. In all likelihood, you will simply be excluded or if it's important, you will be forced to use something like facebook messenger, google hangouts, instagram, etc which is worse than SMS.
    - musingsole 5y ago
      That logic would've applied to imessenger when it first appeared on the scene. Yet it is possible for challengers to displace the previous method despite not (yet) having the requisite network effects. To now argue that nothing can or should supplant it is just Applecronyism.
      - sodality2 5y ago
        Sure, I agree, but that's not the majority of the population...
    - kop316 5y ago
      I'm curious, why do you say it is terrible?
      - sodality2 5y ago
        It becomes terribly low-res. The MMS media limit means each video, if longer than a few seconds, has its bitrate crippled to fit in the limit. Photos too have their resolution lowered, less so than videos but if you send a bunch at once it gets worse.
        kop316 5y ago
- llampx 5y ago
  The bubble is a US thing primarily. Not because Americans are uniquely prone to it, but because iPhones are not as common outside of the US. But don't worry non-Americans, people are judging you on the basis of how you dress, eat, walk and talk and deciding silently whether to let you in their social circle or not.
  - vmception 5y ago
    Yes and WhatsApp is not as popular in the US, with messaging being very fragmented between a variety of other Facebook products.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      WhatsApp was a game changer for people that had international contacts. Before WhatsApp, all the mobile networks (at least in the US) charged exorbitant amounts of money for international SMS and MMS. Then, WhatsApp came and it was free and cross platform, compressed images and video to send them quick with decent quality, and free of spam. Absolutely perfect execution, in my opinion. If it was not owned by Facebook, I’d probably pay a considerable amount for it if it promised security and privacy.
      - sumedh 5y ago
        > Absolutely perfect execution, in my opinion. There were no usernames with watsapp, its just your phone number, its so easy that even my mom can use it.
      - patja 5y ago
        All it asks is to hand over all your private contacts. For me that is a ridiculously high price.
      - ChrisArchitect 5y ago
        they owe a huge part of success intially to tricking people into what you describe -- that it's a replacement/better than SMS -- that it's "free". When it was simply that ppl couldn't tell difference between SMS network and Internet. And using phone numbers as accounts got a ton of people in non-American areas to use it (also north american texting rates crazy cheap unlike alot of the whatsapp-popular countries). Ridiculous. When all it is is another internet messaging app.
- madars 5y ago
  Sure, not using iMessage means missing out on certain social interactions but so does not using Facebook, for example. Life can't be played optimally.
- rovek 5y ago
  > And the whole blue/green bubble pretentiousness Honestly, reading the rest of the comments in this thread to this effect, it's terrifying that the runaway success of a single company can so degrade the fabric of personal relationships this way. The only people I've met who use iMessage have been Americans and the Americans I've met that live in the UK use WhatsApp or Messenger as their primary local comms, though frequently iMessage with friends in the US. I wonder why it is that iMessage hasn't enjoyed the same dominance here, even when the iPhone has. (45% iPhone in the US vs 40% in the UK)
  - monic 5y ago
    iMessage only makes sense on the iPhone with its full suite of Apple solutions. I don’t know why Google split up their video and then their chat into multiple directions but on Apple these exist as a workflow of solutions. Thus they are vulnerable to a do it all app like WhatsApp. IMO just exporting iMessage wouldn’t have been enough, they would’ve needed to combine FaceTime too.
    - jonny_eh 5y ago
      They promised FaceTime would be an open standard when it was first announced.
  - snowwrestler 5y ago
    The blue/green thing matters mostly to young folks, who are constantly on the lookout for signals of social distinctions. If it wasn’t chat bubbles, it would be something else. This isn’t derogatory; it’s literally how the human brain develops. Everyone goes through this phase. It’s not something that Apple created.
- lemonade5117 5y ago
  Doesn't the green bubble mean that it's sent over SMS? I'm pretty sure the reason it exists isn't because of some "pretentiousness"
  - criddell 5y ago
    Yes. And messages sent over SMS are not private. It's a useful thing for Apple to indicate.
- aryonoco 5y ago
  I'm in Australia, and here iPhones have about 50% of the smartphone market, with the other half being Android of course. I obviously know many iPhone users, including my wife and many close friends. I know of no one who uses iMessage. Here everyone uses Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp (and to a lesser extent Telegram and Signal). Is this iMessage fascinating a US thing? Why?
  - tobobo 5y ago
    In the US almost everyone uses SMS. iMessage uses the same app as SMS, changing the message type based on whether the recipient can accept iMessages. So, most iPhone-to-iPhone communication ends up being SMS because we don’t have to change what we’re used to.
    - prepend 5y ago
      s/being SMS/being iMessage/
  - HWR_14 5y ago
    iMessage in the US took over before WhatsApp or Messenger landed. So it's still going strong based on that (although I wouldn't want to switch to a FB product, so I may be biased.) But SMSs are free and therefore the number of people who use SMS (or RCS, whatever it's followup is), is really high.
    - asiachick 5y ago
      SMS is not free while traveling abroad. I know most people int he USA don't travel abroad but I do and is one reason I detest SMS. Further it's tied to my phone number, something I'd prefer not to give out.
      - HWR_14 5y ago
        If you don't like SMS requiring people to know your phone number, wait until you hear how Signal and WhatsApp work. iMessage also works abroad (in fact, I tend to use iMessage when abroad because it appears to US based iPhone customers identical to domestic texts.)
- monic 5y ago
  The blue green bubble is no more pretentious than letting people know if your messages are encrypted. It’d would’ve been inflammatory but accurate and informative to put an insecure padlock for unencrypted messages which may be read by your carrier.
- MomoXenosaga 5y ago
  Anyone who has the audacity to send me an SMS in the year of our Lord 2021 has my full and undivided negative attention. WhatsApp or go home.
- exabrial 5y ago
  Agree. One only has to look at the success of WeChat in China to see how this would play out.
- bscphil 5y ago
  > so many Android users still have no idea that's even happening to them or just assume they don't need to care about anybody that cares about that. (protip: its affecting your life and relationships) To be as blunt as I know how to be: good. I really hope that anyone inclined to treat people that way goes all the way and cuts me out of their life completely. I don't need or want friends like that, and I've had no trouble making friends (including iPhone users) who aren't so absurdly shallow as to treat people differently based on the color of their message in a fucking texting app. In other words, I really do hope you're right about this and it's affecting my life and relationships, because the only way it could possibly affect them is positively by cutting assholes out of my life.
afavour 5y ago
Depends on location, IMO. I was an Android user for years (since the Nexus One!) and the vast majority of my contacts were on iOS. My lack of iMessage was a constant frustration and I would have signed up in an instant. But I'm in the US, which has a disproportionately high amount of iOS users. Across the rest of the world iMessage would be competing with WhatsApp and its existing network (something the e-mails in the article note) and I think it would have been an uphill struggle.
- dan-robertson 5y ago
  Strongly agree. The US is weird in two ways: 1. iOS being uncommonly popular (in other words: the US is weirdly rich compared to even most developed countries) 2. People texting a lot (maybe other countries’ carriers used to just make texting too expensive?) Outside the US, people more commonly use messaging apps, and there is less peer pressure to be on iMessage as it is less likely for someone (in a certain social class…) to have a big majority of iOS-using peers. I had never even heard the term ‘green-texter’ until I went to the US
  - TMWNN 5y ago
    >2. People texting a lot (maybe other countries’ carriers used to just make texting too expensive?) Yes. US mobile plans gave enormous buckets (thousands) of SMS messages a month to mobile users 10-15 years ago, so there was little incentive to move to other mobile messaging systems. Conversely, the lack of such generous SMS allotments in most non-US countries drove widespread adoption of WhatsApp/Facebook Messenger/etc.
  - kiadimoondi 5y ago
    Adding on to what others have said, it's also that some non-US countries have much better internet infrastructure than telecom (which might've affected pricing, can't say for sure), so people flocked to internet-only messaging apps to avoid their telecom's faulty SMS/call handling.
draw_down 5y ago
Gee, that sounds an awful lot like a monopoly to me. Not sure why we as consumers would want that. Not sure why as a business they would want to take away a major selling point for their actual product, which is not a free messaging service.
mcphage 5y ago
> They would have captured 100% of the messaging market I'm not sure that would have helped Apple in anti-trust battles.
Longhanks 5y ago
No. In 2013, WhatsApp was already the de facto standard messenger in Europe. See https://web.archive.org/web/20140412064444/http://blog.whatsapp.com/index.php/2013/12/400-million-stories https://web.archive.org/web/20140412064444/http://blog.whats... Is this the typical american point of view where the US == the world?
- imwillofficial 5y ago
  I don’t know why you’re taking this needlessly snide tone. It seems obvious that GP thinks that iMessage would have dominated, even WhatsApp in Europe.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
r00fus 5y ago
> They would have captured 100% of the messaging market. Isn't that against their DNA? Apple doesn't like to capture market share - they instead go for high profit share regardless of marketshare. High profit share but median market share helps to avoid antitrust regulatory action.
pwthornton 5y ago
I don't know. Android is not exactly a place with a lot of paid software. No way Apple would make it free for Android and ad supported. Maybe they could have come up with some kind of iCloud Android bundle, and maybe it would have done well, but I am not convinced there is a massive market for a paid consumer messaging service.
- cglong 5y ago
  OP doesn't sound like they were arguing that iMessage should be a paid service, just that Apple could've captured most of the market.
- RandallBrown 5y ago
  I think making iMessage free on Android and then using it as a tool to migrate people from Android to iPhone would more than pay for itself.
  - bsaul 5y ago
    i think making it free for android would have certainly made it easier for people to try android for their next device, and thus the net balance isn't really clear..

alberth 5y ago

Reminds me of BBM (blackberry messenger). Only available on their hardware.

opencl 5y ago
They did eventually release it for Android and iOS, but only after they had declined into almost complete irrelevance.
kevincox 5y ago
I mean the logic is obvious. If you are popular enough you want to keep the platform exclusive. If you aren't then it makes sense to go multi-platform. BlackBerry thought their platform was strong enough and BBM would pull everyone else in. They were of course wrong. It seems like Apple is strong enough to keep iMessage useful even if it is platform limited, and surely some people are buying iPhones for the status-symbol of Green Bubbles (or Blue, I can't remember I don't use iMessage). Of course every platform wants to think they are strong enough to pull this trick, admitting otherwise is very difficult. Of course by the time it is obvious that you aren't strong enough it is probably too late.
- indymike 5y ago
  Funny Blackberry story. The .jobs top level domain was launched around the time RIM was really struggling. .jobs was one of the first gtlds that wasn't .net, .com or .edu. The management team at RIM wanted a .jobs domain for their career website. They didn't buy "Blackberry dot jobs" they bought... the other one. The company I worked for provided career website software. The meeting where we tried to explain why RIM and .jobs was a bad idea was a classic.
- northerdome 5y ago
  The bubbles are such a stupid status symbol. I hate the conspiracy theory that Apple did it intentionally to make iPhone users hate Android. The original iPhone had all green bubbles. The blue was only to differentiate.
  - 5y ago

slfnflctd 5y ago

Like many others, I switched from iOS to Android during a time when it (edit: this transition process) was most fraught with very unexpected failure modes. I remember being absolutely incredulous that anyone thought this experience reflected positively on Apple in any way-- it seemed incompetent at best, and had a strong stink of maliciousness to boot. I've always seen this as major bungle on their part, and it's one of many reasons I will never go back to their not-so-safe walled garden by choice.

ibero 5y ago
i honestly don’t remember what period of time you are referring to. could you elaborate on examples from the period of time iOS was “fraught with very unexpected failure modes?” edit: i just saw your edit to specify iMessage the app.
- slfnflctd 5y ago
  I'm referring to iMessage specifically causing tons of unnecessary problems when switching from an iPhone to an Android phone. This was over 5 years ago so I have no idea what's fixed or isn't now, but I do still occasionally have problems when an iPhone user tries to message me as part of a group. These were all intermittent: Messages were lost or delayed for very long periods (going both ways), groups were completely broken, I couldn't tell who was messaging me because they were assigned some random source number (which I think also happened both ways), and images were compressed to illegibility. Some people I seemingly just couldn't text with at all. Here is just one small thread of thousands about it: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6750172 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6750172 [Not the best example, but I'm having trouble tracking down the posts I remember browsing back when I made the switch.] It was a complete mess, experienced by many users, and it was entirely Apple's fault.
  - neetdeth 5y ago
    Terrible, considering how text-centric social relationships have become. Reply delays on the order of hours are considered to send a strong signal. "Double texting" is a faux pas. It pains me to think how many friendships and romantic relationships might have been crushed by this bug. Neither party will ever know why.

throwastrike 5y ago

Eddy Cue still has a job at Apple.

decafninja 5y ago

I feel like I'm the only iPhone user that barely makes use of iMessage. All my chat communications is done via Google Hangouts (or whatever they call it these days), WhatsApp, or Kakao (I'm Korean). I think I have exactly one friend who I use iMessage with. Then again, half my friends are Android users, so...

dav43 5y ago
Likewise. Almost all my circles (90%) are iPhone based in Australia and Singapore. All WhatsApp, Signal.
- sjg007 5y ago
  imessage should still work?
- girvo 5y ago
  Curious. 95% of my circle are Australian, 80% of them use iPhones, and absolutely all of us use iMessage for nearly all text communication. Signal is used for the iPhone to Android communication sometimes, but honestly it’s mostly just SMS.
  - aryonoco 5y ago
    Fascinating. Most of my circles are Australian, the majority have iPhones, and yet I have never seen anyone mention iMessage. Everyone I know uses Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, with Telegram and Signal being very distant third and fourths. We must have very different circles!
rodiger 5y ago
In the US market it's much more dominant.
- ImprovedSilence 5y ago
  Yeah. Im us based, and have two different friend groups that i text with daily. One group all has iphones and we use imessage. The other group recently landed in signal, but has been all over the place over the years, from email, to g chat, to hangouts, then tried whats app, then back to hangouts....

mcphage 5y ago

> The line of questioning is likely to play a significant role in Epic’s antitrust lawsuit, which argues that iOS app store exclusivity represents an illegal use of market power. Epic has made clear in previous filings that it plans to make iMessage exclusivity part of that argument, citing a 2016 email from Phil Schiller that argues iMessage expansion “will hurt us more than help us.” This seems weirdly irrelevant. If Epic is arguing that not allowing other app stores onto iPhones is hurting consumers, I don't understand the relevance of Apple software on non-Apple phones. I mean, say Epic wins their case, and so Apple needs to support side-loading. The court still can't force Apple to port iMessage to other devices.

codq 5y ago

Not only did Apple miss an opportunity to own global messaging, Google could have done the same if they had designed Allo with SMS fallback similar to iMessage. I have no idea what they were thinking with Allo, but they blew one of the easiest layups I’ve ever seen.

lotsofpulp 5y ago
They were far too late with Allo. The time to get it right was when Whatsapp came around. I like iMessage because it sends full quality media, but WhatsApp fills all the other gaps.
criddell 5y ago
I don't understand how Google wasn't able to figure out messaging. That has to be an embarrassment inside Google.
- slig 5y ago
  For whom? They don't seem to care about anything anymore.
SirSourdough 5y ago
Maybe they missed a chance to own global messaging, though I’m not sure that’s true given the number of competing messaging platforms, but iMessage being a walled garden has sold a shitload of devices for Apple and served as a major way of locking people into their ecosystem. It’s a major differentiator from Android/PC products, and it’s something I’ve heard mentioned a lot when people are choosing between Android and iOS or between PC laptop vs MacBook. I think people are underestimating the value that Apple has derived in terms of device sales from not expanding iMessage to other platforms, and device sales are worth a lot of money compared to new messaging-only users.
themacguffinman 5y ago
Because of antitrust concerns. It amuses me every time this suggestion resurfaces here because this community is most familiar with anti-Google pressure when it tries to use its market share like this.

dawnerd 5y ago

I still want a windows client, or even a web version.

asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago

It would be a fantastic outcome of this case if the use of closed standards and lack of integration APIs in a high-market-share product gave rise to a presumption of monopolistic practices. That is obviously what drives the lack of integration points with iMessage and other messaging services, but right now there is no consequence. If it were codified, even in a court precedent, it might be enough to get these systems to start playing nicely again. Remember the days when you could write a client that would connect to most online chat services? I want those days back. (To be clear, I guess this is wishful thinking. But I would be happy if it came to pass.) Even better would be a requirement to provide interoperability APIs at a legislative level, but I guess that will be a long time coming.

donarb 5y ago

I find it ironic in a lawsuit over Apple's supposed dominance, that Epic is claiming that executives shot down a plan that as Cue puts it "that iMessage should expand to Android to cement Apple’s hold on messaging apps".

temp667 5y ago
The truth is at the time iMessage would have DOMINATED. End to end encryption. Proper MMS. Etc.

imwillofficial 5y ago

For those saying Apple missed the boat on owning global messaging, I ask you: Who says Apple wanted to own global messaging back then?

tootie 5y ago

The instant messaging market is such an utter failure of competitive market economics. There hasn't been a single worthwhile innovation in like 25 years yet there is intense competition over who owns the proprietary protocols. Text vs data is also an entirely contrived competition.

krrrh 5y ago
End to end encryption was a huge innovation first widespread with iMessage, then Signal, and even WhatsApp and eventually (optionally) on FB messenger and Telegram. Now it's table stakes.

FraaJad 5y ago

WhatsApp happened and no one cares about iMessage outside US. -- sent from my iPhone

jgalt212 5y ago

so do Brian Acton and Jan Koum send Craig Federighi the world's largest fruit basket every Christmas?

emsy 5y ago

The reason for not bringing iMessage to Android was because parents could just buy cheap Android handsets for their kids. First of all, why not create a product for that niche (nevermind, we're talking about Apple). But what actually bothers me is the weak mindset. I remember when Apple didn't have such concerns because they were certain that they have the best product and people would buy for that reason. This is going on across the board at Apple it'll eventually lead to its IBMification.

cududa 5y ago
I’m not sure your assessment is right. They let iPods run on windows and made a janky version of iTunes for windows so it was operable, but I don’t think they ever treated iTunes for Windows as a priority. So, sure they knew iPod was best in class, and people bought the product for use with either platform. But where’s the iMessage analogy? It’s not like all of Android would get better because of iMessage, they couldn’t actually sell anything based on an imesssge port, so where’s there incentive? Where’s the example of them absconding on a principle of “best product wins” when they aren’t selling a product associated with the cross platform access?
- emsy 5y ago
  Having iOS as a first class citizen and accepting the fact that Android users exist and your paying customers don't have to bother with the fragmented messenger landscape. All while creating the de-facto standard for smartphone messaging (that is now Whatsapp).
- null0pointer 5y ago
  The distinction here is that the iPod/iPhone is the product, while iMessage is merely a feature. By creating iTunes for Windows they were expanding the potential customer base for iPods. By supporting iMessage on Android they would not be expanding the potential customer base for iPhone. If anything they would be shrinking it if they think iMessage is a compelling enough feature for people to switch from Android to iMessage.

js2 5y ago

> I am concerned [that] iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove an obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones. We're an iPhone family, but damn is that lame. How about: make the best product. Don't coerce people into buying an iPhone. It drives me crazy how fractured messaging has become. Here's a recent example. My non-technical aunt tried to send a group iMessage to my wife and me. For me, she used an email address tied to my iMessage account. But for my wife, she used her Google Voice #. Now what you need to understand is that iMessage allows you to associate one or more email addresses with your account, but only a single phone #, which has to be your carrier-assigned #. So now she's trying to send an iMessage to my email address (which would have shown up in blue) and my wife's Google Voice # (which would have shown up in green). Well, here's what apparently happened. iMessage handed this off as an MMS to Verizon. Verizon's MMS gateway sent me the message via email, as a text attachment. My wife got the message in the Google Voice app on her phone. What an f'ing mess. I've turned off "Send as SMS" and "MMS Messaging" on my iPhone so I don't make this same stupid mistake. I'd use WhatsApp for everything, but, Facebook. (I tried Signal. I found it to be pretty sub-par for everyday messaging.)

jbigelow76 5y ago
We're an iPhone family, but damn is that lame. How about: make the best product. Don't coerce people into buying an iPhone. But iMessage isn't the product, it's a feature of the product. They think by not letting those features be available on other platforms they are creating the best product. You can't make the best product while simultaneously commoditizing your differentiators.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
  I think engendering network effects intentionally is pretty monopolistic. You can't just say, "Hey, but we're not making money from it directly" and get away with that.
- tw04 5y ago
  They are repeating RIM's mistakes. It fascinates me they haven't actually jumped on the services train, they just started charging a monthly fee for the walled garden while still focusing on selling product and called it a services play.

krrrh 5y ago

> ‘Do we want to lose one of the most important apps in a mobile environment to Google?’ Little did Cue know how determined Google was to fumble messaging over the next decade.

MomoXenosaga 5y ago
And WhatsApp was a start-up of less than 50 people that took over communication of entire nations in a matter of months. Who saw that coming? Biggest WTF since Napster.
- krrrh 5y ago
  It has to be the highest acquisition-dollar / employee of all time. I doubt anything even comes close. And isn’t it true that they were profitable on their $1 per year subscription scheme? I’d love to read a book about how it all came together. Especially something that dives into the speculation I’ve had that their relationships and zero-rating contracts with telcos in developing countries and how that could be leveraged into internet.org and establishing FB in emerging markets was a bigger driver for getting the deal done than the idea of owning IM. Does anyone know if there are any interviews with the team that negotiated the zero-rating deals because seems like excellent execution before almost anyone stateside realized what the play was.
  - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
    Ah yes, when HN decided that poor people in India shouldn't have any internet, because Facebook was providing it. To be fair though, the zero rating/internet.org stuff does appear to have made a massive difference to internet availability in developing countries, and it juiced FB's user growth numbers, as it was intended to do.
    - krrrh 5y ago
      It happened to coincide with hyperbolic campaigns around net neutrality stateside and a lot of that language got overextended to really different situations. I spent a month in Myanmar in late 2016 and different providers had different zero rating on different services. The one I went with offered generous prepaid data plans and no phone service or SMS at all, just unlimited use of Line. I was tickled by this but there were a couple of old Israeli guys in the shop where we got our SIM cards getting massively frustrated that no one could explain how many “minutes” of calling they got on the various plans. None of the staff knew what they were asking. It was just a market at a very different level of maturity, more advanced in some ways, and weirdly pragmatic in others.

beowulfey 5y ago

More relevant to the article—does anyone know what Epic plans to argue from this finding? Honestly, I could interpret not bringing iMessage to Android as being decidely anti-monopolistic; they actively tried to avoid capturing the entire market. I’m sure that is not what this evidence is intended to show though.

cududa 5y ago
What benefit would it give Apple to have all of Android users on iMessage? It’s not like they inject ads into your messaging streams/ they left money on the table to benefit another product? To me, forcing them to make an Android version of iMessage would be pretty anti-American. Domestically they have 20-30% market share, and there’s 0 revenue to gain from an Android version except the tenuous concept that maybe they could use it to upsell someone to iOS? Idk, I agree with you here. Doesn’t seem clear to me why they should be obligated or compelled to ship iMessage for Android. Sure, Apple Music, because there’s a fee attached to it, but do you think Android people would pay a few bucks a month for Android? Could they upsell it to another product like cloud storage? Would they a) want the scrutiny that comes with and iCloud upsell b) security risk from enabling iCloud on an unmanaged platform
- AgentOrange1234 5y ago
  Even without direct monetization, there could be advantages for Apple? - It’d be compelling for a lot of Android users and would probably be widely installed. This would give Apple a strong foothold onto Android devices. They could perhaps build on that for their services. - For iOS users, this might make features like Apple Pay and sending songs more universal/reliable, which might provide more of a moat against Venmo, Android Pay, Spotify, etc. It’d also give a better privacy/security story if your messages aren’t converted to SMS. - If it was sufficiently popular, it could provide Apple with a credible retaliatory move in case Google yanked something important from iOS. - It would weaken the value proposition for important competitors like Facebook. Why let scary FB messenger on your phone if you can talk to everyone over iMessage? I know nothing and this is just spitballing. Maybe nothing here outweighs keeping it exclusive to iOS, but Apple getting some of their software used far and wide seems like it could have real upside.

Geee 5y ago

I think they could differentiate with privacy. Privacy is the ultimate silver bullet that could kill Android, because the Google's business model is built around lack of privacy. If iMessage could elevate privacy awareness and expectations, then it's possible that people would want to switch to iPhone.