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This is silly, most people have never even heard of Signal or Telegram, and only 25-50% of my contacts have WhatsApp. I could either immediately message anyone

by _yb2s 4y ago

This is silly, most people have never even heard of Signal or Telegram, and only 25-50% of my contacts have WhatsApp. I could either immediately message anyone over fast and reliable SMS, but I should instead ask them to install some app first? Moreover, despite all of the hate, iMessage actually works great. If the other person happens to have an iPhone (as most of my contacts do), they automatically get all these modern features, and if they don't, it seamlessly fails over to SMS and just works without anybody needing to think about it.

ariehkovler 4y ago
> only 25-50% of my contacts have WhatsApp In many countries, EVERYONE has WhatsApp. In Israel it's how your boss, your work team, your kid's daycare, businesses and government offices communicate with you.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  It's not ideal to give Facebook that much control over communications.
  - LordDragonfang 4y ago
    This happened well before Facebook bought them. The solution should have been to not allow the most popular instant messaging platform in the world be bought by a company whose revenue is based on spying on their customers. Unfortunately, the US has had functionally no antitrust action in the past several decades, and what little it has now only exists based on political affiliation.
- Ajedi32 4y ago
  Which is awesome from a purely technical perspective. The downside is it means your country's communications infrastructure is owned and controlled by Facebook. If an open protocol version of WhatsApp existed and was universally supported by the default messaging apps on iOS and Android, I'd be all over that.
  - rglullis 4y ago
    Today you are one of the lucky 10000: - https://matrix.org https://matrix.org - https://jabber.org https://jabber.org
- benjaminwootton 4y ago
  I wonder if this is a US thing as WhatsApp seems to be dominant in Europe and the Middle East, whilst Asia has WeChat and Line.
px43 4y ago
It would have been so easy for Apple to just be cool and follow some open standards rather than building their own proprietary network to drive a wedge in global messaging networks. It seems to me that the only reason SMS is still a thing is Apple pushing iMessage on everyone, and SMS is the only way anyone can talk to someone using iMessage without buying into Apple's silly closed ecosystem. I have Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp, and even Messages with RCS etc on my phone, and the only people I ever talk to over SMS are iPhone users. Even worse, Apple does everything they can to make communications between iPhone and Android users look like shit to drive in some sense of superiority and pressure iPhone users to stay on the platform.
schvenk 4y ago
> Moreover, despite all of the hate, iMessage actually works great. That hasn't been my experience. Often it does. And then sometimes it doesn't. My sense is that when it doesn't, it's because of the interdependence on SMS.

by _yb2s 4y ago

ariehkovler 4y ago

> only 25-50% of my contacts have WhatsApp In many countries, EVERYONE has WhatsApp. In Israel it's how your boss, your work team, your kid's daycare, businesses and government offices communicate with you.

pessimizer 4y ago
It's not ideal to give Facebook that much control over communications.
- LordDragonfang 4y ago
  This happened well before Facebook bought them. The solution should have been to not allow the most popular instant messaging platform in the world be bought by a company whose revenue is based on spying on their customers. Unfortunately, the US has had functionally no antitrust action in the past several decades, and what little it has now only exists based on political affiliation.
Ajedi32 4y ago
Which is awesome from a purely technical perspective. The downside is it means your country's communications infrastructure is owned and controlled by Facebook. If an open protocol version of WhatsApp existed and was universally supported by the default messaging apps on iOS and Android, I'd be all over that.
- rglullis 4y ago
  Today you are one of the lucky 10000: - https://matrix.org https://matrix.org - https://jabber.org https://jabber.org
benjaminwootton 4y ago
I wonder if this is a US thing as WhatsApp seems to be dominant in Europe and the Middle East, whilst Asia has WeChat and Line.

px43 4y ago

It would have been so easy for Apple to just be cool and follow some open standards rather than building their own proprietary network to drive a wedge in global messaging networks. It seems to me that the only reason SMS is still a thing is Apple pushing iMessage on everyone, and SMS is the only way anyone can talk to someone using iMessage without buying into Apple's silly closed ecosystem. I have Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp, and even Messages with RCS etc on my phone, and the only people I ever talk to over SMS are iPhone users. Even worse, Apple does everything they can to make communications between iPhone and Android users look like shit to drive in some sense of superiority and pressure iPhone users to stay on the platform.

schvenk 4y ago

> Moreover, despite all of the hate, iMessage actually works great. That hasn't been my experience. Often it does. And then sometimes it doesn't. My sense is that when it doesn't, it's because of the interdependence on SMS.