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I feel that's not right either. Apple did not physically build the phone network and nobody is piggybacking on their network, Apple isn't hosting anyone's photo
by sottol 3y ago
I feel that's not right either. Apple did not physically build the phone network and nobody is piggybacking on their network, Apple isn't hosting anyone's photos or videos afaict and the user pays for bandwidth, they maybe pay for notification relay to their own users.
It's more like phone manufacturer X that accesses Ma Bell's network creates phone with slightly better call quality that only works with other X phones and is worse with anyone else's phones. And they start doing that once they have >50% market share.
- jonhohle 3y agoWhat type of infrastructure and operations do you think is necessary to handle 8.4B messages per day. So far, the cost of those systems and teams has come from hardware sales. The benefit is that it is effectively a paid for service and doesn't need external support from advertisers or by selling user data.
- Miner49er 3y agoA couple hundred servers, and like 5 engineers.
- jonhohle 3y agoMinimally that’s a few million dollars per year for KTLO. At least a few million more for ongoing development. Why should it be free for everyone?
- freedomben 3y agoIt really depends on what stack you pick and what kind of engineers you have. What's App famously used Erlang (an excellent choice for this) and was able to scale to astronomical levels with a fairly small engineering team and hundreds of instances.
- nicce 3y agoTraffic goes to Apple’s servers. Servers handle routing and storing. iMessage will deliver and store the message to server, and then to receiver when it is online. It is major cost when there are millions of users on, top of notifications. User pays for ISP, only up to the closest link.
- GeekyBear 3y agoApple did build out the iMessage service and pays the bills for the servers it runs on. Aaron Swartz was hounded to death by the Feds for unauthorized access to a website and charged with a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act He wasn't even trying to turn a profit.