4 ms·

It’s not clear that Apple is forcing you to do anything. Much like a tip in a tipping culture, any shame or pressure you feel from a network effect is your own.

It’s not clear that Apple is forcing you to do anything. Much like a tip in a tipping culture, any shame or pressure you feel from a network effect is your own. This would of course be different if Apple prevented you from sending SMS messages via iMessage, or from installing third party messengers. But they don’t do either of these things.

truthspeaker_1 3y ago
[flagged]
close04 3y ago
Interoperability is great though. You can talk with anyone without having to install yet another client or wonder what the other party is using. That’s why SMS is still used despite being godawful. So opening the standard is great. The question is how will it work and how will the other parties guarantee the level of service. How do they deal with spam for example? Do they build their own network or do they use Apple’s? If Apple is forced to open up does it mean they’re forced to give access to any of their infrastructure? Can they charge or will there be a price cap? Who drives the evolution of the standard? The details matter more than the principle in this case because on principle you could just end up giving everyone a crappier service.
- woodruffw 3y ago
  Interoperability is great. But I'm not arguing about technical merits; the observation is solely that Apple isn't actually forcing its users to do anything, in any legal or even coercive moral sense. (Separately: I don't think Apple's concern is about level of service. I think they're -- reasonably -- worried that the security properties of their messaging system are harder to uphold without confidence in their client itself. This is not an unreasonable concern.)
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
nickthegreek 3y ago
You don’t even need to use iMessage. You can fully disable it.
- xg15 3y ago
  How do you receive SMS then?
  - nickthegreek 3y ago
    Through the Messages app.
commoner 3y ago
> This would of course be different if Apple prevented you from sending SMS messages via iMessage, or from installing third party messengers. But they don’t do either of these things. Apple does, in fact, prevent you from installing a third-party messenger on iOS that uses the device's native SMS/MMS capabilities. Apple's own Messages app is the only app that is allowed by Apple to handle SMS/MMS on iOS. The fact that Apple has made iMessage exclusive to Messages, paired with the Messages app's privileged position as the only SMS/MMS client Apple allows on iOS, gives the Messages app and iMessage an unfair advantage over competing messengers and messaging protocols.
- woodruffw 3y ago
  I have Signal and WhatsApp installed on my phone, along with 3 or 4 other apps. The “competing messaging protocols” aspect seems to be doing just fine. I don’t think a competing SMS/MMS application would shift the competitive landscape significantly here. If it was, we’d see Beeper making an SMS app and challenging Apple’s inclusion policies there, not reverse engineering iMessage.
  - commoner 3y ago
    Beeper (Beeper Cloud) already supports SMS/MMS from Android devices, but is unable to do so for SMS/MMS from iOS devices due to Apple's restriction. As a Signal user, you might have remembered when Signal/TextSecure supported SMS/MMS on Android in addition to Signal Protocol messages, which was a big factor in helping Signal onboard new Android users when it had a smaller user base. Signal never had the opportunity to do the same on iOS because Apple only allows its own Messages client to handle on-device SMS/MMS messages, which gave Messages (and iMessage) an unfair advantage over Signal (and the Signal Protocol). Anticompetitive measures like Apple's SMS/MMS client restriction harm the market even when alternatives to Apple's products exist. The entire blue vs. green bubble issue would not be a problem in the first place had iOS users been able to switch to a competing messenger app that supports both SMS/MMS messaging and a newer cross-platform messaging protocol (instead of iMessage).
    - 3y ago
xg15 3y ago
That's not how the network effect works. In that case, who is restricted isn't iPhone users but Android users who want to talk to iPhone users. Because they can't choose whether or not their contacts use an iPhone and communicating between Android and iPhones makes for a degraded experience (that the whole controversy is about), so in effect, Android users will be under pressure to switch to iPhones without them being able to do anything about that.
- woodruffw 3y ago
  I talk with my friends with Androids just fine over Signal, WhatsApp, and several other apps. They haven’t expressed any pressure to switch. But again: a network effect is not evidence of monopolistic or anticompetitive behavior. Twitter has (had?) a network effect, and could not meaningfully be said to have a monopoly over social media.

truthspeaker_1 3y ago

[flagged]

close04 3y ago

Interoperability is great though. You can talk with anyone without having to install yet another client or wonder what the other party is using. That’s why SMS is still used despite being godawful. So opening the standard is great. The question is how will it work and how will the other parties guarantee the level of service. How do they deal with spam for example? Do they build their own network or do they use Apple’s? If Apple is forced to open up does it mean they’re forced to give access to any of their infrastructure? Can they charge or will there be a price cap? Who drives the evolution of the standard? The details matter more than the principle in this case because on principle you could just end up giving everyone a crappier service.

woodruffw 3y ago
Interoperability is great. But I'm not arguing about technical merits; the observation is solely that Apple isn't actually forcing its users to do anything, in any legal or even coercive moral sense. (Separately: I don't think Apple's concern is about level of service. I think they're -- reasonably -- worried that the security properties of their messaging system are harder to uphold without confidence in their client itself. This is not an unreasonable concern.)

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

nickthegreek 3y ago

You don’t even need to use iMessage. You can fully disable it.

xg15 3y ago
How do you receive SMS then?
- nickthegreek 3y ago
  Through the Messages app.

commoner 3y ago

> This would of course be different if Apple prevented you from sending SMS messages via iMessage, or from installing third party messengers. But they don’t do either of these things. Apple does, in fact, prevent you from installing a third-party messenger on iOS that uses the device's native SMS/MMS capabilities. Apple's own Messages app is the only app that is allowed by Apple to handle SMS/MMS on iOS. The fact that Apple has made iMessage exclusive to Messages, paired with the Messages app's privileged position as the only SMS/MMS client Apple allows on iOS, gives the Messages app and iMessage an unfair advantage over competing messengers and messaging protocols.

woodruffw 3y ago
I have Signal and WhatsApp installed on my phone, along with 3 or 4 other apps. The “competing messaging protocols” aspect seems to be doing just fine. I don’t think a competing SMS/MMS application would shift the competitive landscape significantly here. If it was, we’d see Beeper making an SMS app and challenging Apple’s inclusion policies there, not reverse engineering iMessage.
- commoner 3y ago
  Beeper (Beeper Cloud) already supports SMS/MMS from Android devices, but is unable to do so for SMS/MMS from iOS devices due to Apple's restriction. As a Signal user, you might have remembered when Signal/TextSecure supported SMS/MMS on Android in addition to Signal Protocol messages, which was a big factor in helping Signal onboard new Android users when it had a smaller user base. Signal never had the opportunity to do the same on iOS because Apple only allows its own Messages client to handle on-device SMS/MMS messages, which gave Messages (and iMessage) an unfair advantage over Signal (and the Signal Protocol). Anticompetitive measures like Apple's SMS/MMS client restriction harm the market even when alternatives to Apple's products exist. The entire blue vs. green bubble issue would not be a problem in the first place had iOS users been able to switch to a competing messenger app that supports both SMS/MMS messaging and a newer cross-platform messaging protocol (instead of iMessage).
  - 3y ago

xg15 3y ago

That's not how the network effect works. In that case, who is restricted isn't iPhone users but Android users who want to talk to iPhone users. Because they can't choose whether or not their contacts use an iPhone and communicating between Android and iPhones makes for a degraded experience (that the whole controversy is about), so in effect, Android users will be under pressure to switch to iPhones without them being able to do anything about that.

woodruffw 3y ago
I talk with my friends with Androids just fine over Signal, WhatsApp, and several other apps. They haven’t expressed any pressure to switch. But again: a network effect is not evidence of monopolistic or anticompetitive behavior. Twitter has (had?) a network effect, and could not meaningfully be said to have a monopoly over social media.