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Apple's only slightly worse than all the others in that they severely limit what you can use iMessage on, but I'll always be a lot more pissed at them because t

Apple's only slightly worse than all the others in that they severely limit what you can use iMessage on, but I'll always be a lot more pissed at them because they kicked off this whole mess. I really miss the days of when I could load all my accounts into Pidgin (Gaim!) and have almost everything centralized. Now I have a teams window (which doesn't bother me too much since it's a work app), a tab for slack, a tab for the umpteenth iteration of whatever Google has decided to call their chat platform, a tab to get SMS messages through google messenger (a welcome change), a window for signal on the desktop, and tabs for Facebook and LinkedIn (both or which I try to never visit, but would like to know if someone contacts my on, and I refuse to load on my phone). I just realized I've apparently abandoned my ICQ/AIM accounts to the past. That's the desktop. I have almost all those as separate apps on my phone, with separate ways to use them, separate notification preferences, etc. The instant messaging ecosystem has gone to complete shit, and I doubt anyone that used it seriously before this happened will disagree. And what we got in exchange for every company walling off their own IM system? Honestly, I'm not sure anything that couldn't be recreated fairly easily in a client with a couple months work if someone had extended their protocol to do more.

mxuribe 5y ago
> ...I really miss the days of when I could load all my accounts into Pidgin (Gaim!) and have almost everything centralized... Me too! I'm very much hoping that matrix - the protocol - continues its steady climb (both popularity and adoption), because that is what i see as the future for that kind of experience where if not everything at least lots/most of my comms interactions will be managed on my side by a single "interface". I'm an admitted fanboy of the matrix protocol (as well as matrix apps like Element, FluffyChat, Quaternion, etc.)...so maybe i'm biased, but have you tried playing around with matrix, and its associated apps, to see if it gets you closer to that older Pidgin/Gaim/Adium-like experience? (I'm not affiliated with the matrix org. nor any app/client builder, as noted i'm just a fanboy.)
- kbenson 5y ago
  I haven't, but I have seen discussions of it here. I'm not sure how it could make the situation any better really unless it can actually interoperate with closed protocols (how?) or actually takes over a significant enough portion of the market that people choose to use it in lieu of hangouts or iMessage or facebook, etc, and there are lots of incentives those use to make that unlikely. In any other case, it's just the XKCD standards meme[1] all over again, in that it might be better in many ways, but I doubt it will actually help market fragmentation. 1: https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/ which actually specifically mentions instant messaging.
  - mxuribe 5y ago
    You are not wrong that any new entrant might be introducing yet another standard like the referenced xkcd comic...but I have faith that this protocol will be the one that sticks. Time will tell of course. As far as interacting with closed protocols, yes, matrix most definitely accomodates those scenarios using something called "bridges/"bridging" (via a few methods such as puppeting etc.). You should review the following page for more info (yes, there are lots of bridges though quality differs among them): https://matrix.org/bridges/ https://matrix.org/bridges/

mxuribe 5y ago

> ...I really miss the days of when I could load all my accounts into Pidgin (Gaim!) and have almost everything centralized... Me too! I'm very much hoping that matrix - the protocol - continues its steady climb (both popularity and adoption), because that is what i see as the future for that kind of experience where if not everything at least lots/most of my comms interactions will be managed on my side by a single "interface". I'm an admitted fanboy of the matrix protocol (as well as matrix apps like Element, FluffyChat, Quaternion, etc.)...so maybe i'm biased, but have you tried playing around with matrix, and its associated apps, to see if it gets you closer to that older Pidgin/Gaim/Adium-like experience? (I'm not affiliated with the matrix org. nor any app/client builder, as noted i'm just a fanboy.)

kbenson 5y ago
I haven't, but I have seen discussions of it here. I'm not sure how it could make the situation any better really unless it can actually interoperate with closed protocols (how?) or actually takes over a significant enough portion of the market that people choose to use it in lieu of hangouts or iMessage or facebook, etc, and there are lots of incentives those use to make that unlikely. In any other case, it's just the XKCD standards meme[1] all over again, in that it might be better in many ways, but I doubt it will actually help market fragmentation. 1: https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/ which actually specifically mentions instant messaging.
- mxuribe 5y ago
  You are not wrong that any new entrant might be introducing yet another standard like the referenced xkcd comic...but I have faith that this protocol will be the one that sticks. Time will tell of course. As far as interacting with closed protocols, yes, matrix most definitely accomodates those scenarios using something called "bridges/"bridging" (via a few methods such as puppeting etc.). You should review the following page for more info (yes, there are lots of bridges though quality differs among them): https://matrix.org/bridges/ https://matrix.org/bridges/