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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 al

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.
ewoodrich 3y ago
WhatsApp, Signal and FB Messenger are all available with feature parity on both iOS and Android devices. Beeper is able to sell subscriptions by reverse engineering entirely due to this not being the case with iMessage.
iAMkenough 3y ago
Apple also does nothing to warn you about the insecure nature of sending sensitive messages via the SMS/MMS protocol the default messaging app uses to reach non-Apple hardware. Edit: Vote me down, but that's a fact.

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.

ewoodrich 3y ago

WhatsApp, Signal and FB Messenger are all available with feature parity on both iOS and Android devices. Beeper is able to sell subscriptions by reverse engineering entirely due to this not being the case with iMessage.

iAMkenough 3y ago

Apple also does nothing to warn you about the insecure nature of sending sensitive messages via the SMS/MMS protocol the default messaging app uses to reach non-Apple hardware. Edit: Vote me down, but that's a fact.