4 ms·

This is the crux of it. Beeper are not competing with Apple. With Beeper mini, they are piggybacking Apples services without their permission.

by sbuk 3y ago

lstamour 3y ago
It’s not that different from any third-party client though. Remember Trillian? https://web.archive.org/web/20020326174902/http://trillian.cc/ https://web.archive.org/web/20020326174902/http://trillian.c... As they note back in 2002: “ Fixed AOL Connectivity Bug: Yes, again and again and again.” And they write: > Going forward, Cerulean Studios is committed to maintaining interoperability across all major IM networks. We will continue to work hard and pursue the necessary avenues to keep this a reality. We would also like to express our sincere gratitude to all of you out there supporting us! We’ve allowed third-party ecosystems to develop elsewhere before. And it’s been said before that the cost to Apple is minimal if you exclude the lock-in effect. Amortized across a global base, running a chat network is barely $1/year/user for the average case is what I’ve seen before on HN. I’m not saying using a third-party client needs to be completely free - paying Apple in either attention or money makes some sense. But considering that many folks with Android phones might also have Mac laptops or subscribe to Apple Music, it doesn’t seem impossible that Apple could allow for interoperability across devices and clients and that lawmakers could encourage this.
- etchalon 3y ago
  The key phrase in your comment is "Apple could allow". If Apple wants to strike a business deal with Beeper, that's Apple's call. If they don't, they don't.
  - mrgoldenbrown 3y ago
    It's not Apple's call if it violates antitrust laws. Apple has said they don't want to strike deals like this because they want to lockin users.
    - etchalon 3y ago
      There's no violation of antitrust laws here. Apple does not have a monopoly on messaging services and has taken no actions which prevent their competitors from existing or thriving. All competing messaging services are available in the App Store, and internationally, the majority of users chose them over iMessage.
- sbuk 3y ago
  Money paid to Apple isn’t the issue. There have been lots of analogies, and I apologise because I’m going to add to that! Imagine a music festival. The only way to get tickets is to buy direct from the venue. For years, people have been cutting holes in the fence and allowing people through. While the venue would do their best to close the bigger holes, they’d leave smaller gaps and turn a blind eye. One year, someone starts to advertise the hole they’ve made and suggest a fee for the hole. The venue now cracks down on all holes. The hole-maker complains about this, publicly, and urges government to step in. This is, in my opinion, analogous to the Beeper situation. They know what they are doing is wrong, but are playing dumb. Trillian, Pidgin et al. really came about after AIM opened up. Apple actually signed a deal with AOL to allow them to include AIM with iChat.
  - advael 3y ago
    So in this analogy, to be clear, the product that apple is supposedly selling access to here is "Sending secure messages to your friends" When someone exchanges phone numbers with a friend, you might not even know what kind of phone they have. Apple phones will send E2E iMessages by default to other Apple phones, and insecure SMS to non-Apple phones, and just shows this to you as "messages." This service only indicates this difference in connection status through a color change This is a confusing choice, and most users don't even know the technical details, but the end result of it is that they might have extremely mixed information about how secure their text messages are, especially if they don't know in advance what kind of phone the other person has I think we've seen about 15 years of tech companies trying to assert various kinds of control up to and including ownership over people's social graphs in order to lock them in to various services, and that it's clear some regulation is necessary to prevent this kind of play. Your analogy doesn't make sense because what Apple is trying to put a fence around is not something that it should be legal for them to in the first place
    - sbuk 3y ago
      >Your analogy doesn't make sense Happy to accept that criticism, it's fair. I'm sorry for pilling on more poor analogies... > Apple is trying to put a fence around is not something that it should be legal for them to in the first place Why? When iMessage was released, it was done so as covenience feature for Apple users on iOS (so iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch) to communicate with other Apple users. iMessage on OS X came later. From the press release (https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2011/10/04Apple-Launches-iPhone-4S-iOS-5-iCloud/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2011/10/04Apple-Launches-iPho... WWDC announcement https://youtu.be/MvYEc8bFK-o?t=1709 https://youtu.be/MvYEc8bFK-o?t=1709) iPhone 4S comes with iOS 5, the world’s most advanced mobile operating system, which includes over 200 new features including Notification Center, an innovative way to easily view and manage notifications in one place without interruption and iMessage™, a new messaging service that lets you easily send text messages, photos and videos between all iOS 5 users. iOS 5 will also be available as a free software update for iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS customers allowing them to experience these amazing new features. Some have used the emails from the Epic trial discovery to illustrate that Apple whant to keep iMessage as "lock-in" for iPhone. I'd suggest that the very fact that they had the discussion shows that the intention was never to be a multiplatform messaging client. They don't compete in that market. I also see anything inherently wrong with having sticky features which go to differentiating a product to make churning, or steering sales decisions a harder choice. Ultimately, there are choices and kids can have Android handsets and communicate securely and for free with multiple differnt apps. Preventing moving numbers and and therefore blocking the ability to change messaging providers is wrong, and Apple were rightly called out on this and have fixed that. Should a user be able to choose the default messaging app? Yes. I see no rational argument against, except perhaps for security, but that can be dealt with and limiting liability through sensible terms is always an option. I'm on the fence as to whether they should open it up to Android users and provide a client. I certainly don't think they should be forced or coerced, especially given that the market is so competative oustide of the US (the 3rd largest market globally, but dwarfed by the first two [CN, APAC] and only marginably larger than the next two (West Europe, Latin America), RCS fallback will solve most of the issues mentioned elsewhere. The color of bubble is not one, and nor should it be. It's an American cultural phenomena. There absolutely should be an easy way to defferentiate which service a message originates from. Note: green has never ment Android.

This is the crux of it. Beeper are not competing with Apple. With Beeper mini, they are piggybacking Apples services without their permission.

by sbuk 3y ago

This is the crux of it. Beeper are not competing with Apple. With Beeper mini, they are piggybacking Apples services without their permission.

lstamour 3y ago

It’s not that different from any third-party client though. Remember Trillian? https://web.archive.org/web/20020326174902/http://trillian.cc/ https://web.archive.org/web/20020326174902/http://trillian.c... As they note back in 2002: “ Fixed AOL Connectivity Bug: Yes, again and again and again.” And they write: > Going forward, Cerulean Studios is committed to maintaining interoperability across all major IM networks. We will continue to work hard and pursue the necessary avenues to keep this a reality. We would also like to express our sincere gratitude to all of you out there supporting us! We’ve allowed third-party ecosystems to develop elsewhere before. And it’s been said before that the cost to Apple is minimal if you exclude the lock-in effect. Amortized across a global base, running a chat network is barely $1/year/user for the average case is what I’ve seen before on HN. I’m not saying using a third-party client needs to be completely free - paying Apple in either attention or money makes some sense. But considering that many folks with Android phones might also have Mac laptops or subscribe to Apple Music, it doesn’t seem impossible that Apple could allow for interoperability across devices and clients and that lawmakers could encourage this.

etchalon 3y ago
The key phrase in your comment is "Apple could allow". If Apple wants to strike a business deal with Beeper, that's Apple's call. If they don't, they don't.
- mrgoldenbrown 3y ago
  It's not Apple's call if it violates antitrust laws. Apple has said they don't want to strike deals like this because they want to lockin users.
  - etchalon 3y ago
    There's no violation of antitrust laws here. Apple does not have a monopoly on messaging services and has taken no actions which prevent their competitors from existing or thriving. All competing messaging services are available in the App Store, and internationally, the majority of users chose them over iMessage.
sbuk 3y ago
Money paid to Apple isn’t the issue. There have been lots of analogies, and I apologise because I’m going to add to that! Imagine a music festival. The only way to get tickets is to buy direct from the venue. For years, people have been cutting holes in the fence and allowing people through. While the venue would do their best to close the bigger holes, they’d leave smaller gaps and turn a blind eye. One year, someone starts to advertise the hole they’ve made and suggest a fee for the hole. The venue now cracks down on all holes. The hole-maker complains about this, publicly, and urges government to step in. This is, in my opinion, analogous to the Beeper situation. They know what they are doing is wrong, but are playing dumb. Trillian, Pidgin et al. really came about after AIM opened up. Apple actually signed a deal with AOL to allow them to include AIM with iChat.
- advael 3y ago
  So in this analogy, to be clear, the product that apple is supposedly selling access to here is "Sending secure messages to your friends" When someone exchanges phone numbers with a friend, you might not even know what kind of phone they have. Apple phones will send E2E iMessages by default to other Apple phones, and insecure SMS to non-Apple phones, and just shows this to you as "messages." This service only indicates this difference in connection status through a color change This is a confusing choice, and most users don't even know the technical details, but the end result of it is that they might have extremely mixed information about how secure their text messages are, especially if they don't know in advance what kind of phone the other person has I think we've seen about 15 years of tech companies trying to assert various kinds of control up to and including ownership over people's social graphs in order to lock them in to various services, and that it's clear some regulation is necessary to prevent this kind of play. Your analogy doesn't make sense because what Apple is trying to put a fence around is not something that it should be legal for them to in the first place
  - sbuk 3y ago
    >Your analogy doesn't make sense Happy to accept that criticism, it's fair. I'm sorry for pilling on more poor analogies... > Apple is trying to put a fence around is not something that it should be legal for them to in the first place Why? When iMessage was released, it was done so as covenience feature for Apple users on iOS (so iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch) to communicate with other Apple users. iMessage on OS X came later. From the press release (https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2011/10/04Apple-Launches-iPhone-4S-iOS-5-iCloud/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2011/10/04Apple-Launches-iPho... WWDC announcement https://youtu.be/MvYEc8bFK-o?t=1709 https://youtu.be/MvYEc8bFK-o?t=1709) iPhone 4S comes with iOS 5, the world’s most advanced mobile operating system, which includes over 200 new features including Notification Center, an innovative way to easily view and manage notifications in one place without interruption and iMessage™, a new messaging service that lets you easily send text messages, photos and videos between all iOS 5 users. iOS 5 will also be available as a free software update for iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS customers allowing them to experience these amazing new features. Some have used the emails from the Epic trial discovery to illustrate that Apple whant to keep iMessage as "lock-in" for iPhone. I'd suggest that the very fact that they had the discussion shows that the intention was never to be a multiplatform messaging client. They don't compete in that market. I also see anything inherently wrong with having sticky features which go to differentiating a product to make churning, or steering sales decisions a harder choice. Ultimately, there are choices and kids can have Android handsets and communicate securely and for free with multiple differnt apps. Preventing moving numbers and and therefore blocking the ability to change messaging providers is wrong, and Apple were rightly called out on this and have fixed that. Should a user be able to choose the default messaging app? Yes. I see no rational argument against, except perhaps for security, but that can be dealt with and limiting liability through sensible terms is always an option. I'm on the fence as to whether they should open it up to Android users and provide a client. I certainly don't think they should be forced or coerced, especially given that the market is so competative oustide of the US (the 3rd largest market globally, but dwarfed by the first two [CN, APAC] and only marginably larger than the next two (West Europe, Latin America), RCS fallback will solve most of the issues mentioned elsewhere. The color of bubble is not one, and nor should it be. It's an American cultural phenomena. There absolutely should be an easy way to defferentiate which service a message originates from. Note: green has never ment Android.