7 ms·

I know it seems absurd, but as an android user I really do get cut out of group message convos due to not being on imessage. I realize many other countries use

by jcomis 3y ago

I know it seems absurd, but as an android user I really do get cut out of group message convos due to not being on imessage. I realize many other countries use whatsapp or whatever, but my social circle in the US explicitly does not and won't. Even my parents have issues and frequently try to send me large videos. I've had to to completely decouple my phone number from my imessage email to be able to chat with people. Frequently things get messed up because iOS will always default to imessage over sms, so if your primary way to talk is via sms, but you do have an imessage and the person has both in your contact card you don't actually get anything on your phone. I can't really see how it isn't anticompetitive.

hangonhn 3y ago
As an iPhone user, I find it super annoying too. I love my iPhone and Apple products in general but it's not fair to expect all my friends to be the same. One of my friends has an iPhone but turned off iMessage out of an abundance of caution. As a consumer, I would really like it if non-iMessage user can get the same experience as all the iMessage users. We know there is a way. The standard wasn't great when it was new but it has matured a lot. I would really like it if Apple supported it. Its behavior seems needlessly antagonistic.
- pmarreck 3y ago
  > One of my friends has an iPhone but turned off iMessage out of an abundance of caution In my experience, iMessages have far greater delivery reliability than SMS text messages. I've actually gotten into inadvertent fights with people over undelivered SMS text messages.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    The issue isn't that Apple should be using SMS in particular -- SMS sucks. But they should either use some standardized protocol, or publish a protocol standard for iMessage. Someone willing to do the work should be capable of producing an interoperable implementation.
    - Jtsummers 3y ago
      You'll get your wish later this year with iOS support for RCS.
      - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        Not exactly. It's a step in the right direction but it's the same problem as iMessage supporting SMS in addition to its own protocol. If the proprietary protocol supports something the open protocol doesn't, or that Apple doesn't implement for the open protocol, a competing implementation can't do it. And if it doesn't do that then why does the proprietary protocol exist? If you're going to make your own protocol, publish a spec.
        junofan 3y ago
        Isn’t iMessage a service, not a protocol? Should I be able to operate a business that sends bulk advertisements to iMessage users?
        AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        > Isn’t iMessage a service, not a protocol? It's a service and a protocol and a client application. But it should be possible for a third party to make an interoperating client application using the same protocol, and then it could connect to any service implementing that protocol. Obviously if you want to be selective in who can use your service then you should create a protocol that supports some kind of federation so that each user's service can forward messages to another service if the two endpoints don't use the same one. Email works like this, for example. > Should I be able to operate a business that sends bulk advertisements to iMessage users? Can you do this now by using a Mac with iMessage?
    - naravara 3y ago
      The touchy part is the end-to-end encryption. The whole point is that Apple is the trusted party there. As an iMessage user I don’t want my messages passing through who knows which other parties’ servers when I send messages to others. The point of the blue bubble is to ensure the encryption is there.
  - crazygringo 3y ago
    > I've actually gotten into inadvertent fights with people over undelivered SMS text messages. Oh, man. Thankfully I haven't had an undelivered text in over a decade. But back in the early-to-mid 2000s, it was maybe a 5% failure rate in the country I was living in then? With no indication. And yes it really did cause arguments with romantic partners. There were times I had to pull out my phone and prove I'd asked/invited/told them whatever. But it's not like that ever really fixes the situation either. But if you asked anyone to confirm they'd gotten your message you seemed paranoid or needy. You just couldn't win. So much friction.
- jorvi 3y ago
  > Its behavior seems needlessly antagonistic. It is just standard fare across the modern bigtech world. Prior to the iPhone / iOS, Apple would have happily built in support for something like Google Cast, because they operated from the idea that their products should be the most useful for their customer. These days it’s all about forcing people into your ecosystem for increased lock-in. Thus, no baked in support for Cast (except in the Apple Music app on Android). As far as Apple is concerned, if you are visiting a friend and want to play some music on his Chromecast, the solution is to buy your friend an Apple TV for AirPlay.
  - pmarreck 3y ago
    > Prior to the iPhone / iOS, Apple would have happily built in support for something like Google Cast I really don't think you can assume this. For example, a long time ago in computer years, Apple rolled out "Yellow Box for Windows" which was a way to get NeXTStep apps running on Windows http://www.shawcomputing.net/resources/apple/os_pictures/ybnt4/ http://www.shawcomputing.net/resources/apple/os_pictures/ybn... as part of Rhapsody Developer Release 2 (this was a prerelease OS X)... and then promptly ditched it. Being able to develop once and then deploy to both OS X and Windows sounds great to developers, but think about this: If you had access to Mac apps from a Windows machine, then why would you buy a Mac, when Apple is competing on quality and not price? It'd be a win for app developers but a big "lose" for Apple. So why would Apple have ever built a way to cast to Google Cast if they already had an AppleTV product that wasn't competing on price with Google Cast? (AppleTV's are great, btw)
    - bloppe 3y ago
      Google can and has done the same thing. They stopped supporting YouTube on FireTV because Amazon refused to sell ChromeCast devices on their website. All these competitors have options to force you to buy their hardware just to use their services and vice versa. Google could start slowly degrading all their services for users without Chromebooks. Microsoft could force you to buy a Windows phone just to use ChatGPT. Clearly, all of this is bad for users across the board. Apple is by far the most aggressive when it comes to this kind of anticompetitive bundling. You can't just say "of course they want to be anticompetitive, that's just business!". You're supposed to not let them pull this shit.
CharlesW 3y ago
> I know it seems absurd, but as an android user I really do get cut out of group message convos due to not being on imessage. I'm a U.S. iPhone user on many "green bubble" (standards-based) group chats, as are my wife and kids. I don't think we're outliers in this respect. If you're getting pushback on this, consider that this may say more about your social circle.
- nvy 3y ago
  >If you're getting pushback on this, consider that this may say more about your social circle. Maybe, just maybe, technology should serve the user by enabling people to socialize with whom they wish, rather than the opposite.
  - pmarreck 3y ago
    The problem is that someone always has to be in charge. If no one is in charge, usually nothing good happens. So for example, we have Ecosystem A and Ecosystem B, each led by a company. Their users (note: NOT those companies) want an enhanced messaging standard between them. Who should be in charge of it? One of those two, or someone else? WHY would either company be incentivized to do so, since it hypothetically facilitates losing users to the other ecosystem? WHY would a third party come up with the best possible standard between these two (as well as maintaining it!) that they wouldn't then be compensated for? So when you say "technology should serve the user", who or what "should" do this, and why "should" they do it? For free? You have to find or build the right incentives if you want something to be. This is the same reason we are still grappling with a single medical records standard/exchange format. No one wants anyone else to be in charge of it, and yet someone must be, otherwise you have dilution of responsibility and perverse incentives.
    - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
      > WHY would a third party come up with the best possible standard between these two (as well as maintaining it!) that they wouldn't then be compensated for? This is the easiest one to solve, because it's not that expensive to make a decent messaging standard (Open Whisper Systems was very small, for example; solitary individuals have done it in other cases). It's not a matter of getting someone to do the work. It's that messaging systems have a network effect, so when one comes as the default on a device with a billion users, it has a big network regardless of whether or not a competing protocol might be just as good. And then they want to lock competitors out of that network effect, which is an antitrust issue, and so here we are.
barbazoo 3y ago
Their message app is kinda weird in that it seems to be impossible to see which number a messages has been sent from. I found myself messaging a person and asking them what their current personal phone number is because it wasn't clear from the app.
- pmarreck 3y ago
  This is because iMessage (somewhat notoriously) allows not just multiple single identifiers (such as a phone number or email address) but multiple identifiers AT ONCE (such as BOTH a phone number AND an email address)... And all of these are treated differently! iMessages from the same person will end up in 3 different conversations based on whether they specified (for that conversation) only their cell number as the recipient identifier, only their email address as the recipient identifier, OR BOTH! Which is of course madness. Which is why I tell everyone within earshot to ONLY check off the cell number identifier (even on their non-cell devices) and uncheck ALL other identifiers, for sanity. (This is under iCloud settings somewhere.) But that explains this. Why is it like this? Well, once upon a time there was the iPod Touch, which had iMessage but didn't have a cell connection or cell radio or cell number (think: kid with an iPod Touch who never had a cell number). Also, Macs have iMessage and don't have those either.
- zimpenfish 3y ago
  > it seems to be impossible to see which number a messages has been sent from If you tap on the contact at the top of a conversation, then on "info", there'll be a "RECENT" tag on the source of the most recent message. (Now, admittedly, this won't help much if they're sending from an Apple ID rather than their phone number but it might work sufficiently for you and your conversations.)
pmarreck 3y ago
> as an android user I really do get cut out of group message convos due to not being on imessage Well, that's the drawback of having an Android I guess, at least in those spaces (I also inhabit one). The evidence of the disjoint relationship between a product space that competes on price and one that competes on quality. /satirical-elitist-shrug-with-smirk But seriously, didn't Google try at least 10 different ways to roll out their own iMessage competitor and SMS eclipser, and failed every time? This is not all Apple's fault, here. > Even my parents have issues and frequently try to send me large videos Yeah, my S.O.'s parents kept trying to send videos from their Androids to our iPhones and they come in as tiny thumbails. I FINALLY got them onto a Whatsapp group text to exchange videos and photos over, although they still miss out on LivePhotos, which is a favorite Apple feature of mine.
Bud 3y ago
It's not anticompetitive because you're misunderstanding what Apple Messages fundamentally is. It's not just a protocol. It's a very expensive service platform that Apple runs as a service to its users. Apple is simply not obligated to let Android users use that platform and derive all its benefits for free. It's not. This isn't anticompetitive; it's an example of Apple being simply better at competing in this particular arena. The fact that your social circle has certain dynamics doesn't change this at all, of course.
- Krasnol 3y ago
  You make it sound as if it's something innovative or special. It is not. The only reason it's causing problems is that it is an intentional tool to drive users as OP into the environment through the external pressure from his peer group. This is a highly anti-social behavior by a company which obviously has to do it because it lacks true innovation or actually good reasons which would draw customers such as OP to their products. It's nothing to defend or be proud of.
  - paulmd 3y ago
    in general, a lot of people get pretty worked up about anything having to do with the fruit company so I find it often helps to just substitute in "discord" and see if the argument sounds hyperbolic. "discord is intentionally causing problems by blocking interoperability with third-party clients and using that to funnel sales via peer-pressure from his peer group" why does discord have to allow third parties to run off their infrastructure and development spends? is discord a gatekeeper in this context? certainly it would hurt me socially to not be able to access the space where all my friends hang out, and they monetize that further by forcing me into shitty pay-by-month upgrades that are only possible via their gatekeeping (otherwise I'd trivially be able to add animated emojis back etc). or how about slack? email is another great example... if you figure out how to spoof some headers and trick gmail into thinking you are another gmail SMTP relay, do you have the right to build a commercial service on the ability to send email through gmail's infrastructure, and gmail is legally prohibited from closing the open relay ever again? And bear in mind that google is DEFINITELY a gatekeeper in all senses of the word - it is very hard to convince gmail and outlook to take your emails from a self-hosted server. XMPP allowed interoperability, but it was never a legal requirement. And if you do create this legal requirement, you turn it into an email-like situation where there are certainly parties who would love to use that relay to worsen your customers' quality-of-life.
godelski 3y ago
> but as an android user I really do get cut out of group message convos due to not being on imessage. I'll second this complaint. Though personally I try to use Signal with my friends and this led to the strategy of "it's like iMessage, but cross platform" for those who aren't security conscious. Sure, not exactly, but close enough. There's a lot I like about Apple, but the closed walls are a major hindrance. I really wish companies would see the value of open source or at least open protocols. I mean hasn't our entire technological framework essentially been built due to source code being available? Certainly we can point to the internet, android, any programming language, linux, and many other common systems that we use daily (knowingly or unknowingly). I mean it's like turning down free work... Why?
- hutzlibu 3y ago
  "I mean it's like turning down free work... Why?" It is currently also creating lots of pressure for people to also buy an IPhone to not be cut out of circles. And once they have an IPhone, they can integrate it better with other Apple devices and once you are inside the walled garden, you will likely stay there, if you can afford it. I don't see Apple opening up on their own anytime soon.
  - godelski 3y ago
    I mean I can understand the argument, but is there any good counterfactual evidence to this? I'd wager the stronger effect be from simple peer pressure and wanting to fit in (don't have strong evidence either, so I'll admit to that). I mean Apple has spent a lot of marketing on aligning their products to social status and let's be real, people do associate Android phones with being cheaper. So I hear the claim, I'm just not ready to buy it without good evidence and more importantly, that this outweighs the benefits of the "free work" (especially given that there are other mechanisms to get said desired outcome).
- sircastor 3y ago
  > I mean it's like turning down free work... Why? When you're in a competitive industry, you want to commodify the spaces where your competitors have an advantage, and keep proprietary the spaces where you have the advantage. A good example is Google's early embrace of XMPP. They made their chat system use the open standard and then when they had a strong base, they started to build proprietary things on top of the standard. Then they were diverged enough and it was their way or the highway. It was a page out of Microsoft's book. I think Google really could have owned modern chat if they'd stayed-the-course with one of the chat systems they announced. Open source is a great philosophy, but whenever you adopt it you're (potentially) funding and doing development work for your competitor. In theory those competitors are going to also contribute, but it's often assumed that competitors are fair players. That you'll both be trying to make the best thing. Your competitor might simply take your work, and undercut you on price. You're left holding the bill for all the work you put in, and they make a profit (Smaller than you would have, but their cost was negliable)
bmitc 3y ago
Yep. We have to use WhatsApp. There's no other choice. Texting between Android and iPhone is completely broken.
- mb64 3y ago
  How so? I have iPhone and have a group text with 3 family members on android and it seems to work fine.
  - bmitc 3y ago
    The above commenter explained how. iPhones will sometimes simply refuse to send an actual text message if the phone number was once associated with an iMessage account. I have deregistered my phone number from iMessage, iCloud, and whatever else, and my parents' iPhones still send me iMessages despite texting my phone number, even replying to a message or geoup that I text messaged from my phone number. Apple has already been sued about this before. That and picture and video sending is horrible, I think because Apple has historically not implemented protocols that Android exposes.
turquoisevar 3y ago
This won’t help you, but might help others in a similar situation: If a sender starts a new conversation based on your name and they happen to have your email stored in your contact card as well, and the email is registered with iMessage, it’ll favor iMessage via email over SMS the first time, unless your number is specifically chosen[0] and then it’ll remember that preference for subsequent times This doesn’t happen when there’s already a conversation going based on your phone number in the contact card, even if that phone number used to be registered with iMessage (in that case it’ll switch to SMS) or if the phone number is typed in manually or the sender searches you with the phone number. You can of course, as recipient, also select with which email addresses and phone numbers would want to be reachable via iMessage. To me this seems like good idea reservation and generally desired behavior because it prioritizes a richer messaging experience over one that is basic and you l, by virtue of enabling receipt of iMessages via email, essentially advertise that you’re able and willing to receive iMessages. 0: https://ibb.co/VV9hvxF https://ibb.co/VV9hvxF
dp-hackernews 3y ago
IIRC the Blackberry Messaging app (BBM) was cross-platform.
figassis 3y ago
To me, the fact that Apple broke SMS by defaulting to iMessage to that contacts not on iMessage that previously had iMessage interactions get messages silently dropped is where the hammer should drop on Apple.

by jcomis 3y ago

hangonhn 3y ago

As an iPhone user, I find it super annoying too. I love my iPhone and Apple products in general but it's not fair to expect all my friends to be the same. One of my friends has an iPhone but turned off iMessage out of an abundance of caution. As a consumer, I would really like it if non-iMessage user can get the same experience as all the iMessage users. We know there is a way. The standard wasn't great when it was new but it has matured a lot. I would really like it if Apple supported it. Its behavior seems needlessly antagonistic.

pmarreck 3y ago
> One of my friends has an iPhone but turned off iMessage out of an abundance of caution In my experience, iMessages have far greater delivery reliability than SMS text messages. I've actually gotten into inadvertent fights with people over undelivered SMS text messages.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  The issue isn't that Apple should be using SMS in particular -- SMS sucks. But they should either use some standardized protocol, or publish a protocol standard for iMessage. Someone willing to do the work should be capable of producing an interoperable implementation.
  - Jtsummers 3y ago
    You'll get your wish later this year with iOS support for RCS.
    - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
      Not exactly. It's a step in the right direction but it's the same problem as iMessage supporting SMS in addition to its own protocol. If the proprietary protocol supports something the open protocol doesn't, or that Apple doesn't implement for the open protocol, a competing implementation can't do it. And if it doesn't do that then why does the proprietary protocol exist? If you're going to make your own protocol, publish a spec.
      - junofan 3y ago
        Isn’t iMessage a service, not a protocol? Should I be able to operate a business that sends bulk advertisements to iMessage users?
        AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        > Isn’t iMessage a service, not a protocol? It's a service and a protocol and a client application. But it should be possible for a third party to make an interoperating client application using the same protocol, and then it could connect to any service implementing that protocol. Obviously if you want to be selective in who can use your service then you should create a protocol that supports some kind of federation so that each user's service can forward messages to another service if the two endpoints don't use the same one. Email works like this, for example. > Should I be able to operate a business that sends bulk advertisements to iMessage users? Can you do this now by using a Mac with iMessage?
  - naravara 3y ago
    The touchy part is the end-to-end encryption. The whole point is that Apple is the trusted party there. As an iMessage user I don’t want my messages passing through who knows which other parties’ servers when I send messages to others. The point of the blue bubble is to ensure the encryption is there.
- crazygringo 3y ago
  > I've actually gotten into inadvertent fights with people over undelivered SMS text messages. Oh, man. Thankfully I haven't had an undelivered text in over a decade. But back in the early-to-mid 2000s, it was maybe a 5% failure rate in the country I was living in then? With no indication. And yes it really did cause arguments with romantic partners. There were times I had to pull out my phone and prove I'd asked/invited/told them whatever. But it's not like that ever really fixes the situation either. But if you asked anyone to confirm they'd gotten your message you seemed paranoid or needy. You just couldn't win. So much friction.
jorvi 3y ago
> Its behavior seems needlessly antagonistic. It is just standard fare across the modern bigtech world. Prior to the iPhone / iOS, Apple would have happily built in support for something like Google Cast, because they operated from the idea that their products should be the most useful for their customer. These days it’s all about forcing people into your ecosystem for increased lock-in. Thus, no baked in support for Cast (except in the Apple Music app on Android). As far as Apple is concerned, if you are visiting a friend and want to play some music on his Chromecast, the solution is to buy your friend an Apple TV for AirPlay.
- pmarreck 3y ago
  > Prior to the iPhone / iOS, Apple would have happily built in support for something like Google Cast I really don't think you can assume this. For example, a long time ago in computer years, Apple rolled out "Yellow Box for Windows" which was a way to get NeXTStep apps running on Windows http://www.shawcomputing.net/resources/apple/os_pictures/ybnt4/ http://www.shawcomputing.net/resources/apple/os_pictures/ybn... as part of Rhapsody Developer Release 2 (this was a prerelease OS X)... and then promptly ditched it. Being able to develop once and then deploy to both OS X and Windows sounds great to developers, but think about this: If you had access to Mac apps from a Windows machine, then why would you buy a Mac, when Apple is competing on quality and not price? It'd be a win for app developers but a big "lose" for Apple. So why would Apple have ever built a way to cast to Google Cast if they already had an AppleTV product that wasn't competing on price with Google Cast? (AppleTV's are great, btw)
  - bloppe 3y ago
    Google can and has done the same thing. They stopped supporting YouTube on FireTV because Amazon refused to sell ChromeCast devices on their website. All these competitors have options to force you to buy their hardware just to use their services and vice versa. Google could start slowly degrading all their services for users without Chromebooks. Microsoft could force you to buy a Windows phone just to use ChatGPT. Clearly, all of this is bad for users across the board. Apple is by far the most aggressive when it comes to this kind of anticompetitive bundling. You can't just say "of course they want to be anticompetitive, that's just business!". You're supposed to not let them pull this shit.

CharlesW 3y ago

> I know it seems absurd, but as an android user I really do get cut out of group message convos due to not being on imessage. I'm a U.S. iPhone user on many "green bubble" (standards-based) group chats, as are my wife and kids. I don't think we're outliers in this respect. If you're getting pushback on this, consider that this may say more about your social circle.

nvy 3y ago
>If you're getting pushback on this, consider that this may say more about your social circle. Maybe, just maybe, technology should serve the user by enabling people to socialize with whom they wish, rather than the opposite.
- pmarreck 3y ago
  The problem is that someone always has to be in charge. If no one is in charge, usually nothing good happens. So for example, we have Ecosystem A and Ecosystem B, each led by a company. Their users (note: NOT those companies) want an enhanced messaging standard between them. Who should be in charge of it? One of those two, or someone else? WHY would either company be incentivized to do so, since it hypothetically facilitates losing users to the other ecosystem? WHY would a third party come up with the best possible standard between these two (as well as maintaining it!) that they wouldn't then be compensated for? So when you say "technology should serve the user", who or what "should" do this, and why "should" they do it? For free? You have to find or build the right incentives if you want something to be. This is the same reason we are still grappling with a single medical records standard/exchange format. No one wants anyone else to be in charge of it, and yet someone must be, otherwise you have dilution of responsibility and perverse incentives.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    > WHY would a third party come up with the best possible standard between these two (as well as maintaining it!) that they wouldn't then be compensated for? This is the easiest one to solve, because it's not that expensive to make a decent messaging standard (Open Whisper Systems was very small, for example; solitary individuals have done it in other cases). It's not a matter of getting someone to do the work. It's that messaging systems have a network effect, so when one comes as the default on a device with a billion users, it has a big network regardless of whether or not a competing protocol might be just as good. And then they want to lock competitors out of that network effect, which is an antitrust issue, and so here we are.

barbazoo 3y ago

Their message app is kinda weird in that it seems to be impossible to see which number a messages has been sent from. I found myself messaging a person and asking them what their current personal phone number is because it wasn't clear from the app.

pmarreck 3y ago
This is because iMessage (somewhat notoriously) allows not just multiple single identifiers (such as a phone number or email address) but multiple identifiers AT ONCE (such as BOTH a phone number AND an email address)... And all of these are treated differently! iMessages from the same person will end up in 3 different conversations based on whether they specified (for that conversation) only their cell number as the recipient identifier, only their email address as the recipient identifier, OR BOTH! Which is of course madness. Which is why I tell everyone within earshot to ONLY check off the cell number identifier (even on their non-cell devices) and uncheck ALL other identifiers, for sanity. (This is under iCloud settings somewhere.) But that explains this. Why is it like this? Well, once upon a time there was the iPod Touch, which had iMessage but didn't have a cell connection or cell radio or cell number (think: kid with an iPod Touch who never had a cell number). Also, Macs have iMessage and don't have those either.
zimpenfish 3y ago
> it seems to be impossible to see which number a messages has been sent from If you tap on the contact at the top of a conversation, then on "info", there'll be a "RECENT" tag on the source of the most recent message. (Now, admittedly, this won't help much if they're sending from an Apple ID rather than their phone number but it might work sufficiently for you and your conversations.)

pmarreck 3y ago

> as an android user I really do get cut out of group message convos due to not being on imessage Well, that's the drawback of having an Android I guess, at least in those spaces (I also inhabit one). The evidence of the disjoint relationship between a product space that competes on price and one that competes on quality. /satirical-elitist-shrug-with-smirk But seriously, didn't Google try at least 10 different ways to roll out their own iMessage competitor and SMS eclipser, and failed every time? This is not all Apple's fault, here. > Even my parents have issues and frequently try to send me large videos Yeah, my S.O.'s parents kept trying to send videos from their Androids to our iPhones and they come in as tiny thumbails. I FINALLY got them onto a Whatsapp group text to exchange videos and photos over, although they still miss out on LivePhotos, which is a favorite Apple feature of mine.

Bud 3y ago

It's not anticompetitive because you're misunderstanding what Apple Messages fundamentally is. It's not just a protocol. It's a very expensive service platform that Apple runs as a service to its users. Apple is simply not obligated to let Android users use that platform and derive all its benefits for free. It's not. This isn't anticompetitive; it's an example of Apple being simply better at competing in this particular arena. The fact that your social circle has certain dynamics doesn't change this at all, of course.

Krasnol 3y ago
You make it sound as if it's something innovative or special. It is not. The only reason it's causing problems is that it is an intentional tool to drive users as OP into the environment through the external pressure from his peer group. This is a highly anti-social behavior by a company which obviously has to do it because it lacks true innovation or actually good reasons which would draw customers such as OP to their products. It's nothing to defend or be proud of.
- paulmd 3y ago
  in general, a lot of people get pretty worked up about anything having to do with the fruit company so I find it often helps to just substitute in "discord" and see if the argument sounds hyperbolic. "discord is intentionally causing problems by blocking interoperability with third-party clients and using that to funnel sales via peer-pressure from his peer group" why does discord have to allow third parties to run off their infrastructure and development spends? is discord a gatekeeper in this context? certainly it would hurt me socially to not be able to access the space where all my friends hang out, and they monetize that further by forcing me into shitty pay-by-month upgrades that are only possible via their gatekeeping (otherwise I'd trivially be able to add animated emojis back etc). or how about slack? email is another great example... if you figure out how to spoof some headers and trick gmail into thinking you are another gmail SMTP relay, do you have the right to build a commercial service on the ability to send email through gmail's infrastructure, and gmail is legally prohibited from closing the open relay ever again? And bear in mind that google is DEFINITELY a gatekeeper in all senses of the word - it is very hard to convince gmail and outlook to take your emails from a self-hosted server. XMPP allowed interoperability, but it was never a legal requirement. And if you do create this legal requirement, you turn it into an email-like situation where there are certainly parties who would love to use that relay to worsen your customers' quality-of-life.

godelski 3y ago

> but as an android user I really do get cut out of group message convos due to not being on imessage. I'll second this complaint. Though personally I try to use Signal with my friends and this led to the strategy of "it's like iMessage, but cross platform" for those who aren't security conscious. Sure, not exactly, but close enough. There's a lot I like about Apple, but the closed walls are a major hindrance. I really wish companies would see the value of open source or at least open protocols. I mean hasn't our entire technological framework essentially been built due to source code being available? Certainly we can point to the internet, android, any programming language, linux, and many other common systems that we use daily (knowingly or unknowingly). I mean it's like turning down free work... Why?

hutzlibu 3y ago
"I mean it's like turning down free work... Why?" It is currently also creating lots of pressure for people to also buy an IPhone to not be cut out of circles. And once they have an IPhone, they can integrate it better with other Apple devices and once you are inside the walled garden, you will likely stay there, if you can afford it. I don't see Apple opening up on their own anytime soon.
- godelski 3y ago
  I mean I can understand the argument, but is there any good counterfactual evidence to this? I'd wager the stronger effect be from simple peer pressure and wanting to fit in (don't have strong evidence either, so I'll admit to that). I mean Apple has spent a lot of marketing on aligning their products to social status and let's be real, people do associate Android phones with being cheaper. So I hear the claim, I'm just not ready to buy it without good evidence and more importantly, that this outweighs the benefits of the "free work" (especially given that there are other mechanisms to get said desired outcome).
sircastor 3y ago
> I mean it's like turning down free work... Why? When you're in a competitive industry, you want to commodify the spaces where your competitors have an advantage, and keep proprietary the spaces where you have the advantage. A good example is Google's early embrace of XMPP. They made their chat system use the open standard and then when they had a strong base, they started to build proprietary things on top of the standard. Then they were diverged enough and it was their way or the highway. It was a page out of Microsoft's book. I think Google really could have owned modern chat if they'd stayed-the-course with one of the chat systems they announced. Open source is a great philosophy, but whenever you adopt it you're (potentially) funding and doing development work for your competitor. In theory those competitors are going to also contribute, but it's often assumed that competitors are fair players. That you'll both be trying to make the best thing. Your competitor might simply take your work, and undercut you on price. You're left holding the bill for all the work you put in, and they make a profit (Smaller than you would have, but their cost was negliable)

bmitc 3y ago

Yep. We have to use WhatsApp. There's no other choice. Texting between Android and iPhone is completely broken.

mb64 3y ago
How so? I have iPhone and have a group text with 3 family members on android and it seems to work fine.
- bmitc 3y ago
  The above commenter explained how. iPhones will sometimes simply refuse to send an actual text message if the phone number was once associated with an iMessage account. I have deregistered my phone number from iMessage, iCloud, and whatever else, and my parents' iPhones still send me iMessages despite texting my phone number, even replying to a message or geoup that I text messaged from my phone number. Apple has already been sued about this before. That and picture and video sending is horrible, I think because Apple has historically not implemented protocols that Android exposes.

turquoisevar 3y ago

This won’t help you, but might help others in a similar situation: If a sender starts a new conversation based on your name and they happen to have your email stored in your contact card as well, and the email is registered with iMessage, it’ll favor iMessage via email over SMS the first time, unless your number is specifically chosen[0] and then it’ll remember that preference for subsequent times This doesn’t happen when there’s already a conversation going based on your phone number in the contact card, even if that phone number used to be registered with iMessage (in that case it’ll switch to SMS) or if the phone number is typed in manually or the sender searches you with the phone number. You can of course, as recipient, also select with which email addresses and phone numbers would want to be reachable via iMessage. To me this seems like good idea reservation and generally desired behavior because it prioritizes a richer messaging experience over one that is basic and you l, by virtue of enabling receipt of iMessages via email, essentially advertise that you’re able and willing to receive iMessages. 0: https://ibb.co/VV9hvxF https://ibb.co/VV9hvxF

dp-hackernews 3y ago

IIRC the Blackberry Messaging app (BBM) was cross-platform.

figassis 3y ago

To me, the fact that Apple broke SMS by defaulting to iMessage to that contacts not on iMessage that previously had iMessage interactions get messages silently dropped is where the hammer should drop on Apple.