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> Apple executive Eddy Cue pushed for an Android iMessage app in 2016, but Craig Federighi responded in an internal email that “iMessage on Android would simply

by s1k3s 2y ago

> Apple executive Eddy Cue pushed for an Android iMessage app in 2016, but Craig Federighi responded in an internal email that “iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove an obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones.” This conversation happened 8 years ago and it was about a product released 12 years ago. If anything, this shows how slow regulators are before they take any action and how they are effectively contributing to building the garden walls, through inaction.

aurareturn 2y ago
The truth is, all businesses do what Craig suggested. AirBnB isn't opening up their platform to Expedia. Meta isn't allowing your Instagram data to be accessed by another platform. Your own company isn't voluntarily making it easier for its customers to leave.
- s1k3s 2y ago
  Exactly. It should be expected from any company to do this, which is why I'm blaming the regulatory agencies for being too slow to act.
- talldayo 2y ago
  Well, yes. It's a great reason to not let businesses decide on these things, because their petty interpretation will always override a communal solution. Once you reach Apple's scale, you shouldn't expect to start replacing stuff like SMS with a proprietary alternative and get away with it.
  - hyperbovine 2y ago
    Maybe Apple’s “scale” is because its users do not enjoy being shackled to crappy SMS?
    - talldayo 2y ago
      Maybe so; it doesn't really matter when you're looking at damages. It's Apple's job to solve interoperability with their own platform, and not only have they failed to provide SMS-levels of interop, they actively work against it to promote ulterior products. It's exactly the sort of anticompetitive bundling that harms the market without improving competition. Maybe Ma Bell's success was in-part due to their free long-distance calls. It's kinda moot speculation when you look at their top-down business strategy though.
      - paulmd 2y ago
        Nobody provides SMS levels of interop on unrestricted internet messaging platforms because the experience sucks. Running the IM equivalent of an open SMTP relay is a ghastly experience for users. You literally have to gatekeep because the alternative is going back to circa-2000 levels of spam. Deep down you know exactly what would happen because we’ve all lived it with spam voice calls again recently - we’ve been trying to reach you about your car’s warranty… Destroying a working, positive experience on the apple platform and dragging it down to 2000s level is the explicit goal for a lot of people. The pain is the point - not to bring android up but simply to tear things down and walk away.
        doctorpangloss 2y ago
        > You literally have to gatekeep because the alternative is going back to circa-2000 levels of spam. The vast majority of spam is explicitly permitted by Google. What are you talking about? Do you not use e-mail? They have a Promotions tab, they could make spam - that is, marketing emails - go away in an afternoon, if they wanted to. They just don't, because those same companies are Google Ads customers.
        paulmd 2y ago
        > The vast majority of spam is explicitly permitted by Google. What are you talking about? It is certainly not lmao - try sending mail to google from your own smtp server on your own doma Seeing some spam occasionally doesn’t mean the vast majority isn’t being rej > They have a Promotions tab, they could make spam - that is, marketing emails - go away in an afternoon, if they wanted to. opting into newsletters is explicitly not spam, so either you don’t understand the basics of being on the internet or you’re arguing in bad faith. Which is probably also implied by the “I saw a spam once therefore google runs an open SMTP relay” take honestly. You know that’s not true either. We both know you know. Why are you doing this? again: Google doesn’t provide your desired standard of openness either, in their own oligopolistic fiefs/gatekeeper domains like gmail. And everyone understand why it’s a bad idea. Forced open interop is an unworkable idea and forcing an unworkable idea on iMessage is the whole goal. Flooding iMessage with spam 2000s-style by forcing an “open relay” into the system is the whole point, whether you realize it or not. Just like forcing “choice of browser” was never about giving users freedom either - but about wiping away the last counterbalance against chrome’s dominance/monopoly in the browser market. Hence the flood of shit like web integrity and adtech ever since.
    - pseudalopex 2y ago
      Apple users would be less shackled to crappy SMS if Apple put iMessage on Android.
    - mfuzzey 2y ago
      Why shackled to SMS? I don't have an iPhone don't use iMessager and haven't sent a SMS in the past 10 years. Everything these days is What'sApp / Telegram / Signal
  - sureIy 2y ago
    I’m torn on this. Where does it stop? Must Apple open up every single part of the phone because of their scale? Should it allow access to the raw data of FaceID? Does it have to provide an alternative to OS notifications? Does every single feature have to be cross platform? I’d argue that a much more urgent matter is opening up “accounts” so that they can never lock and delete my online data without recourse. This is way more important than iMessage on Android, to which there are plenty of options already.
  - Jtsummers 2y ago
    Apple didn't replace SMS. It is still there on every iPhone, and they expanded SMS reach for iPhone users who have other devices like iPad and macOs systems. In what universe do you exist where SMS was removed?
    - talldayo 2y ago
      HN tells me that there's only one more step left after embracing and extending. Apple didn't make some mistake putting iMessage and SMS in the same app, they want you reliant on their service so that SMS seems (rightfully) poor by comparison. There would be nothing wrong with that if Apple wasn't equally as miserly with that power as the carriers they want to valiantly protest against. I'm no fan of cell carriers either, but now that we see Apple's end-goal I don't think their cause is righteous at all. In the friendliest of interpretations, they are a competing alternative enabled by disproportionate first-party integration on Apple's behalf. It doesn't take long to extrapolate their motives for deliberately neglecting cross-platform interoperability to bolster their market presence. If it harms the market, prevents fair competition, and doesn't benefit the general public, there is no rational reason to let iMessage persist the way it is today.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - threeseed 2y ago
        Apple never got rid of SMS. And there has been no embrace or extend. All they did was put an optional message service in the same app. One that isn’t even the most popular making it strange to say there is no competition.
        FireBeyond 2y ago
        > All they did was put an optional message service in the same app. They did a bit more than that. There were the glory days that if you ever left the Apple ecosystem, but iMessage ever had an awareness of your number, no other iMessage users could reach you until or unless you did some incantations that Apple didn't make obvious, ideally from an Apple device (that you may not own anymore), to allow your friends to keep sending you even green bubble messages? I know multiple people who had to go to Apple stores to try to do this process.
  - mopenstein 2y ago
    Why let the businesses create anything at all? Why not regulate the creation of everything?
    - talldayo 2y ago
      Better question; why allow them access to the market if their only intention is to abuse it? Apple can create whatever they want, but they're going to get the scrutiny they deserve. iMessage should be an on-ramp to better communications for everyone; instead it's become the flaming symbol of Apple's deliberate negligence. This is absolutely the point regulators should be stepping in and ensuring Apple isn't headed down an anti-consumer pathway that ensures market harm.
  - edanm 2y ago
    If you don't "let business decide on these things", the result isn't better more communal solutions getting made, the result is no solutions getting made because they're not worth making for the business.
    - talldayo 2y ago
      You'd be a lot closer to the truth if Apple didn't spend the last 10 years of their corporate existence resisting message standardization like it was a plague. There were alternatives, even solutions Apple found acceptable, but they refused to adopt them.
- pessimizer 2y ago
  Companies shouldn't be expected to individually make suboptimal decisions in order to preserve the health of the market. They should be regulated by a functioning government.
  - aurareturn 2y ago
    Let's just say that the government decided in the year 2005 that no private company can ship something that will replace SMS as the defacto messaging system because it wants interoperability. We would have never had iMessage, Whatsapp, Messenger, etc. Other countries would have far surpassed us in messaging communication tech. Regulations are a double edged sword.
    - manquer 2y ago
      SMTP, IMAP and POP did not prevent gmail or outlook from launching products 2G/3G/4G/5g did not hinder the mobile industry it only fostered it . Standard payment interface like UPI did not stop apps for payments being built , India didn’t need a Venmo or WeeChat to innovate here before standardization Innovations happen despite or without regulations if there is market demand for it . FRAND patents exist for a reason. I can’t think of any common example where interoperability killed innovation
      - aurareturn 2y ago
        Sure, and SMS is the protocol equivalent. A lot of email protocol communication has been replaced by private, non-open solutions such as Slack, forums, Whatsapp, etc. There should be open and closed protocols. If you want to use an open one, then go ahead, If a closed one works better for you, then go ahead.
      - adolph 2y ago
        > SMTP, IMAP and POP did not prevent gmail or outlook from launching products . . . and likewise did not require regulation for companies to be interested in adopting.
    - layer8 2y ago
- beeboobaa3 2y ago
  This is why executives should be tossed in jail instead of a company being fined.
  - simonh 2y ago
    If they break the law, sure, if they put features in their products that are perfectly legal but that you happen to dislike not so much.
    - Repulsion9513 2y ago
      Option 3: just because it is perfectly legal does not mean it should be. Of course in most cases like this it's actually been illegal for over a century.
- asah 2y ago
  bad example? you can book hotels etc on AirBnB and everybody offers listing services which crosspost across the booking sites. There are few exclusives in the travel industry.
- Repulsion9513 2y ago
  It's almost like having the rental market controlled by Airbnb instead of myriad local hotels is a bad thing (Or to take another example of the operate-blatantly-illegally-until-you-bribe-your-way-to-legalization and loss-lead-til-monopoly industry, it's almost like having the taxi market controlled by Uber and Lyft instead of myriad local cab companies is a bad thing) (Or to bring it back to the point of the thread, it's almost like having the mobile phone app market controlled by Apple and Google is a bad thing)
pmarreck 2y ago
> “iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove an obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones.” This statement says a few extra things that Craig Federighi probably didn't realize he was saying. 1) It suggests that the iPhone wouldn't be able to hold its own in a market where interoperability with Android was easier. That demonstrates a lack of faith in it. 2) I've noticed that any time a corporation starts to clutch its fingers around its flagship product and make it less open, it starts to die. Oh sure, there's an upfront benefit perhaps in sales, but you're literally selling the future of your thing to profit from it today, by doing this.
- rootusrootus 2y ago
  > It suggests that the iPhone wouldn't be able to hold its own in a market where interoperability with Android was easier It is just a statement of the obvious. Price tends to trump every other consideration, unless the difference is pretty big. See also airline ticket pricing and the race to the bottom in comfort & features. If there is no differentiator, a lot of people will just get Android phones because they cost less. They'll put up with quite a lot of abuse as long as they save a few bucks. It'd probably end up like gmail.
  - Wowfunhappy 2y ago
    > It is just a statement of the obvious. Price tends to trump every other consideration, unless the difference is pretty big. But, huge swaths of the public regularly pay much more than the minimum required to have better: • Cars • Clothing • Restaurants • Theater seats These are just the first few that come to mind. Now, is the difference between high- and low-end clothing "pretty big"? I guess it depends on what you mean, but both will fundamentally cover your body. For airlines, people just want to get from point A to point B, and nothing else really matters at the end of the day. Even on higher end airlines, flying is unlikely to be a truly pleasant experience, unless maybe you pay almost an order of magnitude more for first class or something. People just want to get it over with. I mean, I think we're saying the same thing here. But whereas I feel you're framing this as a "bug" in how consumers operate, I think they're behaving quite logically. People will pay more for things they actually care about. When they don't care, they choose the cheapest option.
sonofhans 2y ago
I’m struggling to see what’s wrong with Federighi’s argument. Why should he not want to protect Apple’s position? Apple has no monopoly on mobile messaging or hardware, and they didn’t 8 years ago either, so they can do what they like here. What is Apple supposed to do? Spend time and money on interop to better the lives of Android users? There’s nothing wrong with them doing so if they like, but I fail to see any obligation they have.
- Teever 2y ago
  You're right. They obviously have no motivation to do the correct thing, so the solution is government regulation. We live in a world where every landline telephone can dial another with no trickery or fuckery from your phone manufacturer. That is a good thing. We should extend that functionally to smartphones.
  - CharlesW 2y ago
    > They obviously have no motivation to do the correct thing, so the solution is government regulation. The solution to what? Apple supports SMS/MMS. They've pre-announced (something they rarely do) RCS support. They support VoLTE for HD voice calls. Let's say the federal government eminent-domains iMessage protocols. Then what? Do you really think Apple's just going to carry traffic from untrusted devices, and for free?
  - INGSOCIALITE 2y ago
    what "correct thing"? i can text people who use android phones just fine. TBH this all boils down to the ridiculous blue / green bubble thing. that's the ONLY difference in texting between devices. i honestly have no clue why apple would be regulated in any way over this!
    - stuartd 2y ago
      It's not the only difference, at least where I live - I have to significantly reduce image sizes to send them to Android users..

by s1k3s 2y ago

aurareturn 2y ago

The truth is, all businesses do what Craig suggested. AirBnB isn't opening up their platform to Expedia. Meta isn't allowing your Instagram data to be accessed by another platform. Your own company isn't voluntarily making it easier for its customers to leave.

s1k3s 2y ago
Exactly. It should be expected from any company to do this, which is why I'm blaming the regulatory agencies for being too slow to act.
talldayo 2y ago
Well, yes. It's a great reason to not let businesses decide on these things, because their petty interpretation will always override a communal solution. Once you reach Apple's scale, you shouldn't expect to start replacing stuff like SMS with a proprietary alternative and get away with it.
- hyperbovine 2y ago
  Maybe Apple’s “scale” is because its users do not enjoy being shackled to crappy SMS?
  - talldayo 2y ago
    Maybe so; it doesn't really matter when you're looking at damages. It's Apple's job to solve interoperability with their own platform, and not only have they failed to provide SMS-levels of interop, they actively work against it to promote ulterior products. It's exactly the sort of anticompetitive bundling that harms the market without improving competition. Maybe Ma Bell's success was in-part due to their free long-distance calls. It's kinda moot speculation when you look at their top-down business strategy though.
    - paulmd 2y ago
      Nobody provides SMS levels of interop on unrestricted internet messaging platforms because the experience sucks. Running the IM equivalent of an open SMTP relay is a ghastly experience for users. You literally have to gatekeep because the alternative is going back to circa-2000 levels of spam. Deep down you know exactly what would happen because we’ve all lived it with spam voice calls again recently - we’ve been trying to reach you about your car’s warranty… Destroying a working, positive experience on the apple platform and dragging it down to 2000s level is the explicit goal for a lot of people. The pain is the point - not to bring android up but simply to tear things down and walk away.
      - doctorpangloss 2y ago
        > You literally have to gatekeep because the alternative is going back to circa-2000 levels of spam. The vast majority of spam is explicitly permitted by Google. What are you talking about? Do you not use e-mail? They have a Promotions tab, they could make spam - that is, marketing emails - go away in an afternoon, if they wanted to. They just don't, because those same companies are Google Ads customers.
        paulmd 2y ago
        > The vast majority of spam is explicitly permitted by Google. What are you talking about? It is certainly not lmao - try sending mail to google from your own smtp server on your own doma Seeing some spam occasionally doesn’t mean the vast majority isn’t being rej > They have a Promotions tab, they could make spam - that is, marketing emails - go away in an afternoon, if they wanted to. opting into newsletters is explicitly not spam, so either you don’t understand the basics of being on the internet or you’re arguing in bad faith. Which is probably also implied by the “I saw a spam once therefore google runs an open SMTP relay” take honestly. You know that’s not true either. We both know you know. Why are you doing this? again: Google doesn’t provide your desired standard of openness either, in their own oligopolistic fiefs/gatekeeper domains like gmail. And everyone understand why it’s a bad idea. Forced open interop is an unworkable idea and forcing an unworkable idea on iMessage is the whole goal. Flooding iMessage with spam 2000s-style by forcing an “open relay” into the system is the whole point, whether you realize it or not. Just like forcing “choice of browser” was never about giving users freedom either - but about wiping away the last counterbalance against chrome’s dominance/monopoly in the browser market. Hence the flood of shit like web integrity and adtech ever since.
  - pseudalopex 2y ago
    Apple users would be less shackled to crappy SMS if Apple put iMessage on Android.
  - mfuzzey 2y ago
    Why shackled to SMS? I don't have an iPhone don't use iMessager and haven't sent a SMS in the past 10 years. Everything these days is What'sApp / Telegram / Signal
- sureIy 2y ago
  I’m torn on this. Where does it stop? Must Apple open up every single part of the phone because of their scale? Should it allow access to the raw data of FaceID? Does it have to provide an alternative to OS notifications? Does every single feature have to be cross platform? I’d argue that a much more urgent matter is opening up “accounts” so that they can never lock and delete my online data without recourse. This is way more important than iMessage on Android, to which there are plenty of options already.
- Jtsummers 2y ago
  Apple didn't replace SMS. It is still there on every iPhone, and they expanded SMS reach for iPhone users who have other devices like iPad and macOs systems. In what universe do you exist where SMS was removed?
  - talldayo 2y ago
    HN tells me that there's only one more step left after embracing and extending. Apple didn't make some mistake putting iMessage and SMS in the same app, they want you reliant on their service so that SMS seems (rightfully) poor by comparison. There would be nothing wrong with that if Apple wasn't equally as miserly with that power as the carriers they want to valiantly protest against. I'm no fan of cell carriers either, but now that we see Apple's end-goal I don't think their cause is righteous at all. In the friendliest of interpretations, they are a competing alternative enabled by disproportionate first-party integration on Apple's behalf. It doesn't take long to extrapolate their motives for deliberately neglecting cross-platform interoperability to bolster their market presence. If it harms the market, prevents fair competition, and doesn't benefit the general public, there is no rational reason to let iMessage persist the way it is today.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - threeseed 2y ago
      Apple never got rid of SMS. And there has been no embrace or extend. All they did was put an optional message service in the same app. One that isn’t even the most popular making it strange to say there is no competition.
      - FireBeyond 2y ago
        > All they did was put an optional message service in the same app. They did a bit more than that. There were the glory days that if you ever left the Apple ecosystem, but iMessage ever had an awareness of your number, no other iMessage users could reach you until or unless you did some incantations that Apple didn't make obvious, ideally from an Apple device (that you may not own anymore), to allow your friends to keep sending you even green bubble messages? I know multiple people who had to go to Apple stores to try to do this process.
- mopenstein 2y ago
  Why let the businesses create anything at all? Why not regulate the creation of everything?
  - talldayo 2y ago
    Better question; why allow them access to the market if their only intention is to abuse it? Apple can create whatever they want, but they're going to get the scrutiny they deserve. iMessage should be an on-ramp to better communications for everyone; instead it's become the flaming symbol of Apple's deliberate negligence. This is absolutely the point regulators should be stepping in and ensuring Apple isn't headed down an anti-consumer pathway that ensures market harm.
- edanm 2y ago
  If you don't "let business decide on these things", the result isn't better more communal solutions getting made, the result is no solutions getting made because they're not worth making for the business.
  - talldayo 2y ago
    You'd be a lot closer to the truth if Apple didn't spend the last 10 years of their corporate existence resisting message standardization like it was a plague. There were alternatives, even solutions Apple found acceptable, but they refused to adopt them.
pessimizer 2y ago
Companies shouldn't be expected to individually make suboptimal decisions in order to preserve the health of the market. They should be regulated by a functioning government.
- aurareturn 2y ago
  Let's just say that the government decided in the year 2005 that no private company can ship something that will replace SMS as the defacto messaging system because it wants interoperability. We would have never had iMessage, Whatsapp, Messenger, etc. Other countries would have far surpassed us in messaging communication tech. Regulations are a double edged sword.
  - manquer 2y ago
    SMTP, IMAP and POP did not prevent gmail or outlook from launching products 2G/3G/4G/5g did not hinder the mobile industry it only fostered it . Standard payment interface like UPI did not stop apps for payments being built , India didn’t need a Venmo or WeeChat to innovate here before standardization Innovations happen despite or without regulations if there is market demand for it . FRAND patents exist for a reason. I can’t think of any common example where interoperability killed innovation
    - aurareturn 2y ago
      Sure, and SMS is the protocol equivalent. A lot of email protocol communication has been replaced by private, non-open solutions such as Slack, forums, Whatsapp, etc. There should be open and closed protocols. If you want to use an open one, then go ahead, If a closed one works better for you, then go ahead.
    - adolph 2y ago
      > SMTP, IMAP and POP did not prevent gmail or outlook from launching products . . . and likewise did not require regulation for companies to be interested in adopting.
  - layer8 2y ago
beeboobaa3 2y ago
This is why executives should be tossed in jail instead of a company being fined.
- simonh 2y ago
  If they break the law, sure, if they put features in their products that are perfectly legal but that you happen to dislike not so much.
  - Repulsion9513 2y ago
    Option 3: just because it is perfectly legal does not mean it should be. Of course in most cases like this it's actually been illegal for over a century.
asah 2y ago
bad example? you can book hotels etc on AirBnB and everybody offers listing services which crosspost across the booking sites. There are few exclusives in the travel industry.
Repulsion9513 2y ago
It's almost like having the rental market controlled by Airbnb instead of myriad local hotels is a bad thing (Or to take another example of the operate-blatantly-illegally-until-you-bribe-your-way-to-legalization and loss-lead-til-monopoly industry, it's almost like having the taxi market controlled by Uber and Lyft instead of myriad local cab companies is a bad thing) (Or to bring it back to the point of the thread, it's almost like having the mobile phone app market controlled by Apple and Google is a bad thing)

pmarreck 2y ago

> “iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove an obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones.” This statement says a few extra things that Craig Federighi probably didn't realize he was saying. 1) It suggests that the iPhone wouldn't be able to hold its own in a market where interoperability with Android was easier. That demonstrates a lack of faith in it. 2) I've noticed that any time a corporation starts to clutch its fingers around its flagship product and make it less open, it starts to die. Oh sure, there's an upfront benefit perhaps in sales, but you're literally selling the future of your thing to profit from it today, by doing this.

rootusrootus 2y ago
> It suggests that the iPhone wouldn't be able to hold its own in a market where interoperability with Android was easier It is just a statement of the obvious. Price tends to trump every other consideration, unless the difference is pretty big. See also airline ticket pricing and the race to the bottom in comfort & features. If there is no differentiator, a lot of people will just get Android phones because they cost less. They'll put up with quite a lot of abuse as long as they save a few bucks. It'd probably end up like gmail.
- Wowfunhappy 2y ago
  > It is just a statement of the obvious. Price tends to trump every other consideration, unless the difference is pretty big. But, huge swaths of the public regularly pay much more than the minimum required to have better: • Cars • Clothing • Restaurants • Theater seats These are just the first few that come to mind. Now, is the difference between high- and low-end clothing "pretty big"? I guess it depends on what you mean, but both will fundamentally cover your body. For airlines, people just want to get from point A to point B, and nothing else really matters at the end of the day. Even on higher end airlines, flying is unlikely to be a truly pleasant experience, unless maybe you pay almost an order of magnitude more for first class or something. People just want to get it over with. I mean, I think we're saying the same thing here. But whereas I feel you're framing this as a "bug" in how consumers operate, I think they're behaving quite logically. People will pay more for things they actually care about. When they don't care, they choose the cheapest option.

sonofhans 2y ago

I’m struggling to see what’s wrong with Federighi’s argument. Why should he not want to protect Apple’s position? Apple has no monopoly on mobile messaging or hardware, and they didn’t 8 years ago either, so they can do what they like here. What is Apple supposed to do? Spend time and money on interop to better the lives of Android users? There’s nothing wrong with them doing so if they like, but I fail to see any obligation they have.

Teever 2y ago
You're right. They obviously have no motivation to do the correct thing, so the solution is government regulation. We live in a world where every landline telephone can dial another with no trickery or fuckery from your phone manufacturer. That is a good thing. We should extend that functionally to smartphones.
- CharlesW 2y ago
  > They obviously have no motivation to do the correct thing, so the solution is government regulation. The solution to what? Apple supports SMS/MMS. They've pre-announced (something they rarely do) RCS support. They support VoLTE for HD voice calls. Let's say the federal government eminent-domains iMessage protocols. Then what? Do you really think Apple's just going to carry traffic from untrusted devices, and for free?
- INGSOCIALITE 2y ago
  what "correct thing"? i can text people who use android phones just fine. TBH this all boils down to the ridiculous blue / green bubble thing. that's the ONLY difference in texting between devices. i honestly have no clue why apple would be regulated in any way over this!
  - stuartd 2y ago
    It's not the only difference, at least where I live - I have to significantly reduce image sizes to send them to Android users..