4 ms·

> I'd silence the conversation, except that iMessage won't let you have two identical groups with exactly the same members. So both humorous and serious stuff g

> I'd silence the conversation, except that iMessage won't let you have two identical groups with exactly the same members. So both humorous and serious stuff goes into the same group chat, and it's often very time-sensitive if serious Really? That's insane, so that means that 3rd party messaging apps literally have better UX than first party ones, as I have lots of groups with the same members for different things.

TheDong 2y ago
You'd expect an app, like Whatsapp or Discord or Signal, which focuses primarily on messaging, to be able to devote more attention to it than apple, which is really just a hardware company that reluctantly makes just enough software to charge 30% of all the good app's profits, and sell their hardware. iMessage just not supporting android/windows/linux devices already makes it drastically worse than any other popular chat app.
- jandrewrogers 2y ago
  You’ve pretty much indirectly nailed the issue: on iOS, iMessage is much more than just a “chat app”. It has an unrivaled feature set on iOS that isn’t replicable on other chat apps. The discourse that reduces it to a “chat app” is critically missing this point. This wouldn’t mean much if iOS was a small percentage of phones. In regions where it is a majority of phones people use those additional features. In places like the US where most people are using iOS, most people don’t even realize those features don’t exist or are semi-broken on other chat apps because they don’t use them. For average people that have been using iMessage for a long time with other iMessage users, using those other chat apps feels like a downgrade.
  - TheDong 2y ago
    What features? The only two features I can think of that iMessage has which discord/whatsapp/etc don't are: 1. Automatically can flip to "do not disturb" mode when my phone is in sleep mode, and display that notice to my companion. Other chat apps require manually configuring that I think. I also suspect apple doesn't provide an API to make this easily possible for other apps. 2. iMessage makes it easy to identify the poors, the android users, and ignore them. If I exchange numbers on a dating app and get a green bubble, I can know to immediately ghost them. Are those the features you were thinking about, or something else?
    - zacwest 2y ago
      Knowing focus status and being told live when it changes are public API. I think other apps just choose not to do it. Sample project: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/usernotifications/handling-communication-notifications-and-focus-status-updates https://developer.apple.com/documentation/usernotifications/...
    - devilbunny 2y ago
      You don't work with non-techie adults, do you? They use iMessage with their family and friends. They use it at work too. Some of their friends, and maybe some of their family, work at the same place. I can try to convince 11 other people who are my business partners to switch to, say, Signal. A special app used only for our group communications. Or I can buy an iPhone. I chose the latter. It's not my choice. I'm making the best of it that I can. I wish it were not so, but it is.
      - TheDong 2y ago
        All the non-tech people in every non-US country have whatsapp/telegram/wechat/line/kakao installed (depending on the country), and it seems to work fine. It's just the US that has picked a universal messenger that doesn't work on android, every other country, the vast majority of the planet, defaults to a cross-platform phone messenger app. In short, consider moving to europe.
        sgt 2y ago
        Not every non-US country. Most people in Norway have iPhones, so iMessage is heavily used. They also use Facebook messenger a lot for some bizarre reason.
    - rkangel 2y ago
      > iMessage makes it easy to identify the poors, the android users, and ignore them. I hope this is sarcasm, and you're not actually that narrow minded. It is an interesting complete marketing victory in the US by Apple though, that there is a widespread perception that you would only have an Android if you couldn't afford an iPhone. I've had an iPhone for work, it's fine. I much prefer Android and I'll stick to it, and the reasons for that have nothing to do with money. I'm glad I don't love in the US where that would apparently make me a social pariah.
blerb795 2y ago
I don't believe this is true, but you do have to give one of the iMessage groups a name to make it independent from another group. If you imagine that primary key for a group is its name, and the default name for a group is its participants, this does kind of make sense.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
  I have a number of iMessage groups with the same participants, and different names and logos.
lxgr 2y ago
Absolutely. Apple Messages is way too minimal, for both iMessage and SMS. As another example, it makes it almost impossible to manage multiple numbers for a given contact (e.g. to explicitly text somebody’s work phone), and the sender side is very confusing as well with dual-SIM. Apple’s implementation freely merges threads that I’m trying hard to keep separate and then still falls over with tons of delivery errors in complex situations (usually after swapping SIMs). It all works reasonably well if you have a single long-lived mobile number and all your contacts have the same, and are using iMessage (or now RCS), since that’s presumably the reality for most Apple engineers. Anything slightly more unusual and the thing falls apart completely and makes me wish for a Nokia 3310 (or convince my contact to switch to something more reasonable for messaging).

TheDong 2y ago

You'd expect an app, like Whatsapp or Discord or Signal, which focuses primarily on messaging, to be able to devote more attention to it than apple, which is really just a hardware company that reluctantly makes just enough software to charge 30% of all the good app's profits, and sell their hardware. iMessage just not supporting android/windows/linux devices already makes it drastically worse than any other popular chat app.

jandrewrogers 2y ago
You’ve pretty much indirectly nailed the issue: on iOS, iMessage is much more than just a “chat app”. It has an unrivaled feature set on iOS that isn’t replicable on other chat apps. The discourse that reduces it to a “chat app” is critically missing this point. This wouldn’t mean much if iOS was a small percentage of phones. In regions where it is a majority of phones people use those additional features. In places like the US where most people are using iOS, most people don’t even realize those features don’t exist or are semi-broken on other chat apps because they don’t use them. For average people that have been using iMessage for a long time with other iMessage users, using those other chat apps feels like a downgrade.
- TheDong 2y ago
  What features? The only two features I can think of that iMessage has which discord/whatsapp/etc don't are: 1. Automatically can flip to "do not disturb" mode when my phone is in sleep mode, and display that notice to my companion. Other chat apps require manually configuring that I think. I also suspect apple doesn't provide an API to make this easily possible for other apps. 2. iMessage makes it easy to identify the poors, the android users, and ignore them. If I exchange numbers on a dating app and get a green bubble, I can know to immediately ghost them. Are those the features you were thinking about, or something else?
  - zacwest 2y ago
    Knowing focus status and being told live when it changes are public API. I think other apps just choose not to do it. Sample project: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/usernotifications/handling-communication-notifications-and-focus-status-updates https://developer.apple.com/documentation/usernotifications/...
  - devilbunny 2y ago
    You don't work with non-techie adults, do you? They use iMessage with their family and friends. They use it at work too. Some of their friends, and maybe some of their family, work at the same place. I can try to convince 11 other people who are my business partners to switch to, say, Signal. A special app used only for our group communications. Or I can buy an iPhone. I chose the latter. It's not my choice. I'm making the best of it that I can. I wish it were not so, but it is.
    - TheDong 2y ago
      All the non-tech people in every non-US country have whatsapp/telegram/wechat/line/kakao installed (depending on the country), and it seems to work fine. It's just the US that has picked a universal messenger that doesn't work on android, every other country, the vast majority of the planet, defaults to a cross-platform phone messenger app. In short, consider moving to europe.
      - sgt 2y ago
        Not every non-US country. Most people in Norway have iPhones, so iMessage is heavily used. They also use Facebook messenger a lot for some bizarre reason.
  - rkangel 2y ago
    > iMessage makes it easy to identify the poors, the android users, and ignore them. I hope this is sarcasm, and you're not actually that narrow minded. It is an interesting complete marketing victory in the US by Apple though, that there is a widespread perception that you would only have an Android if you couldn't afford an iPhone. I've had an iPhone for work, it's fine. I much prefer Android and I'll stick to it, and the reasons for that have nothing to do with money. I'm glad I don't love in the US where that would apparently make me a social pariah.

blerb795 2y ago

I don't believe this is true, but you do have to give one of the iMessage groups a name to make it independent from another group. If you imagine that primary key for a group is its name, and the default name for a group is its participants, this does kind of make sense.

ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
I have a number of iMessage groups with the same participants, and different names and logos.

lxgr 2y ago

Absolutely. Apple Messages is way too minimal, for both iMessage and SMS. As another example, it makes it almost impossible to manage multiple numbers for a given contact (e.g. to explicitly text somebody’s work phone), and the sender side is very confusing as well with dual-SIM. Apple’s implementation freely merges threads that I’m trying hard to keep separate and then still falls over with tons of delivery errors in complex situations (usually after swapping SIMs). It all works reasonably well if you have a single long-lived mobile number and all your contacts have the same, and are using iMessage (or now RCS), since that’s presumably the reality for most Apple engineers. Anything slightly more unusual and the thing falls apart completely and makes me wish for a Nokia 3310 (or convince my contact to switch to something more reasonable for messaging).