4 ms·

Stop being anticompetitive and give me access to your infrastructure. I should be able to sell a service running code on your hardware.

iAMkenough 3y ago
I hope cell providers get the option to bundle a secure messaging service that's compatible with all of their customer's devices. Right now a Verizon iPhone customer can't securely send a message to a Verizon Android customer without forcing their customer to download a third-party app and agree to its terms, and the carrier has no recourse to change that on their iOS devices they are selling to their customers. Vaguely reminds me a little bit of the web browser antitrust days. Regulators will catch up soon. At least Apple is planning to adopt RCS finally, even though they missed their chance to be part of the formation of the standard. Edit: Or Apple could release iMessage for Android and for web.
- Khaine 3y ago
  Carriers created RCS which is insecure. I don't think carriers care.
  - iAMkenough 3y ago
    Apple had a chance to participate in the foundation of RCS and passed on it. Now according to their legal counsel they have to adopt it.
- fn-mote 3y ago
  > carrier has no recourse to change that on their iOS devices they are selling to their customers. And thank goodness... I can only imagine the resulting flood: (1) ads in your messaging app; and (2) messages being scanned for targeted advertising (by the "less scrupulous", of course).
  - iAMkenough 3y ago
    If 1 and 2 happen, that might motivate Apple to implement a secure open standard that bypasses the carrier solution to "all of our customers can securely text each other with just their phone number." Apple will call it an innovation and sell the hell out of it.
- junofan 3y ago
  > the carrier has no recourse to change that on their iOS devices they are selling to their customers They can just not sell those devices? I find this argument pretty twisted. It’s also based on a false premise. Verizon is also free to implement whatever they want on top of their @vtext.com endpoint.
  - iAMkenough 3y ago
    If they stopped selling iPhones (lol), what would they do for all of their current iPhone customers? Boot them off until they trade-in for an Android phone? How is the @vtext.com endpoint any more secure than MMS? Default, secure transfer using your carrier phone number through the built-in messaging app on Verizon iOS devices is restricted only to Apple's servers, and the recipients MUST be Apple users.
Banditoz 3y ago
You just described public clouds.
- giantrobot 3y ago
  Yes I did. You'll notice Apple doesn't have any IaaS offerings on their product pages. So they're in no way a public cloud and I wouldn't expect to use any of their services as if they were.
echelon 3y ago
If you service > 50% of Americans and there is only one other vendor, then yes. Exactly this. Especially if your thing is the "everything" thing.
- Analemma_ 3y ago
  Nonsense. Apple does nothing to prevent you from installing WhatsApp, Signal, FB Messenger, or any one of dozens of other messaging services which also don’t allow third-party interop with their protocols! There’s nothing anticompetitive or even out of the ordinary going on here. You can install competitive services on an iPhone at any time.
  - i5-2520M 3y ago
    The power of default apps is significant. Google got slapped for just that in the EU and there is a browser selection screen on setup.
  - happymellon 3y ago
    That's plainly untrue. "The Apple experience" prevents telcos from pre-installing any app.
  - yunohn 3y ago
    You might note that none of those competitors get the native integrations that only iMessage gets. Not even simple things like OTP autofill.
    - Analemma_ 3y ago
      Considering that Apple has opened up third-party apps to do autofill for things like passwords (I autofill password fields from Bitwarden on iOS all the time), this seems a lot less like an advantage they're gating to their app and more like a potential feature they just haven't shipped yet because it has no use case at the moment (since right now nobody sends 2FA codes over any platform other than SMS). If it became widespread to use WhatsApp, Signal etc. for sending 2FA codes, I'm pretty sure Apple would add it. There's not really much other system integration with iMessage either, other than some Siri stuff I doubt sees much use. It's surprisingly disconnected from the rest of the operating system.

iAMkenough 3y ago

I hope cell providers get the option to bundle a secure messaging service that's compatible with all of their customer's devices. Right now a Verizon iPhone customer can't securely send a message to a Verizon Android customer without forcing their customer to download a third-party app and agree to its terms, and the carrier has no recourse to change that on their iOS devices they are selling to their customers. Vaguely reminds me a little bit of the web browser antitrust days. Regulators will catch up soon. At least Apple is planning to adopt RCS finally, even though they missed their chance to be part of the formation of the standard. Edit: Or Apple could release iMessage for Android and for web.

Khaine 3y ago
Carriers created RCS which is insecure. I don't think carriers care.
- iAMkenough 3y ago
  Apple had a chance to participate in the foundation of RCS and passed on it. Now according to their legal counsel they have to adopt it.
fn-mote 3y ago
> carrier has no recourse to change that on their iOS devices they are selling to their customers. And thank goodness... I can only imagine the resulting flood: (1) ads in your messaging app; and (2) messages being scanned for targeted advertising (by the "less scrupulous", of course).
- iAMkenough 3y ago
  If 1 and 2 happen, that might motivate Apple to implement a secure open standard that bypasses the carrier solution to "all of our customers can securely text each other with just their phone number." Apple will call it an innovation and sell the hell out of it.
junofan 3y ago
> the carrier has no recourse to change that on their iOS devices they are selling to their customers They can just not sell those devices? I find this argument pretty twisted. It’s also based on a false premise. Verizon is also free to implement whatever they want on top of their @vtext.com endpoint.
- iAMkenough 3y ago
  If they stopped selling iPhones (lol), what would they do for all of their current iPhone customers? Boot them off until they trade-in for an Android phone? How is the @vtext.com endpoint any more secure than MMS? Default, secure transfer using your carrier phone number through the built-in messaging app on Verizon iOS devices is restricted only to Apple's servers, and the recipients MUST be Apple users.

Banditoz 3y ago

You just described public clouds.

giantrobot 3y ago
Yes I did. You'll notice Apple doesn't have any IaaS offerings on their product pages. So they're in no way a public cloud and I wouldn't expect to use any of their services as if they were.

echelon 3y ago

If you service > 50% of Americans and there is only one other vendor, then yes. Exactly this. Especially if your thing is the "everything" thing.

Analemma_ 3y ago
Nonsense. Apple does nothing to prevent you from installing WhatsApp, Signal, FB Messenger, or any one of dozens of other messaging services which also don’t allow third-party interop with their protocols! There’s nothing anticompetitive or even out of the ordinary going on here. You can install competitive services on an iPhone at any time.
- i5-2520M 3y ago
  The power of default apps is significant. Google got slapped for just that in the EU and there is a browser selection screen on setup.
- happymellon 3y ago
  That's plainly untrue. "The Apple experience" prevents telcos from pre-installing any app.
- yunohn 3y ago
  You might note that none of those competitors get the native integrations that only iMessage gets. Not even simple things like OTP autofill.
  - Analemma_ 3y ago
    Considering that Apple has opened up third-party apps to do autofill for things like passwords (I autofill password fields from Bitwarden on iOS all the time), this seems a lot less like an advantage they're gating to their app and more like a potential feature they just haven't shipped yet because it has no use case at the moment (since right now nobody sends 2FA codes over any platform other than SMS). If it became widespread to use WhatsApp, Signal etc. for sending 2FA codes, I'm pretty sure Apple would add it. There's not really much other system integration with iMessage either, other than some Siri stuff I doubt sees much use. It's surprisingly disconnected from the rest of the operating system.