5 ms·

In my view, none of the mobile OS manufacturers have a good handle on messaging. I don't like Hangouts, I didn't like iMessage. WhatsApp is OK but no one I know

In my view, none of the mobile OS manufacturers have a good handle on messaging. I don't like Hangouts, I didn't like iMessage. WhatsApp is OK but no one I know uses it. When I was a kid and spent a lot of time planted in front of my computer IM'ing with friends locally and around the world, I loved messaging! There were a few great general IM apps that would allow me to connect to multiple services all under a unified interface. Some friends on MSN? Some friends on AIM? Not a problem, just add those accounts to my preferences. I could see when people were online, the messaging seemed reliable and consistent (for the most part), I was able to see when/if things were delivered, I could see when people were typing a message to me. 15 years later and I feel like people have shifted a lot of their lives to mobile but the solutions we have to work with to communicate are half of what they used to be. Are my friends online? Who knows. Can I see any kind of status if they're an iPhone user? Definitely not. Did the message I just sent actually get delivered? I hope so! Oh, let me launch Skype for two minutes so I can send a message to one of the two friends I have on that platform.

feifan 13y ago
Re some of your points in the last paragraph: * I feel like the concept of "being online" is a bit redundant. For iMessages/Hangouts when it works, messages are sent to mobile devices, which may be "available" even when the recipient isn't online and "on" the service at the moment. Also, Google Hangouts chat still supports Jabber, and does support online statuses :) * iMessages shows delivery receipts, and opt-in read receipts. Not certain about the Hangouts app (on iOS), but it looks like there are three pulsating dots as the message is "sending" and the timestamp appears when the message is "sent". * A good chat client goes a long way. My needs are probably different than yours, but using Messages on OS X works great for me. Integrates with iMessages, Google Hangouts chat, and FB chat. All I need!
- brandon272 13y ago
  My point was that Google Hangouts, iMessage, etc. can do some or all of those things, but only on their own silo'ed platform. I'm a Google Hangouts user so I have no good way of communicating with my iOS friends unless they download extra software onto their phones and we communicate using a third party app. I don't want to use five apps to cover my bases. I wouldn't even mind having to have a Google Hangouts, iMessage, Jabber, etc. account and be able to add ALL of those accounts to a single IM app so that I can communicate with all of those people in a consistent way.
  - feifan 13y ago
    Ah, gotcha. Unified app on mobile would be awesome — looks like iMessages is the main obstacle. But some work has been done to try to reverse-engineer the protocol
- Domenic_S 13y ago
  > opt-in read receipts Has this changed? When iMessage came out, read receipts were opt-out.
k-mcgrady 13y ago
I disagree with a lot of this. iMessage always works very well for me and I love that it's integrated with SMS so cleanly. It also provides read receipts so I know if a message has been received. I don't use WhatsApp but a competitor of its called Viber which also does calls and it works well and includes delivered and seen receipts. It also tells me if the user is online which is very useful. Facebook messenger also works great imo and is one of my most used communication methods. 10 years ago I was also using IM a lot. I'd come home from school every day and use it until I went to bed. MSN was the Facebook of the day. Fortunately everyone I knew used MSN (it was ubiquitous with IM here). I used Adium on Linux and thought it was a nice client but I think today we're in a much better position than before. Fragmentation seems to be much worse today but handling that is as simple as installing an app for the service a specific friend uses. The fact we have push notifications means I don't need to check in with 10 apps to see if I got a message - I'm alerted when a message is received and who it's from and in what app I can view it. It would be nice to use one app but I don't think the fragmentation is too big of a user experience problem. Personally I wish everyone would just use SMS! Most plans for smartphones come with unlimited SMS nowadays. I hate having to send my communications through so many companies with questionable privacy practices. The only place SMS is problematic is when messaging abroad but I doubt that's a major concern for most people (and they can use one of the plethora of other methods for messaging abroad anyway).
- jodrellblank 13y ago
  The only place SMS is problematic is when messaging abroad Or when you don't want to give people your phone number. When you don't have a phone number (data only cellular or WiFi only tablet). When you don't want your messaging ID tied to a number owned by a phone company that you can't control and instead want it tied to your own domain name / email. When you want to be able to send as different IDs (personal, work, consulting). When you want some way to send pictures, formatted text, transfer files. When you want to send/receive messages on your desktop, or tablet as well. Either switching between devices or using multiple devices at the same time. When you want to send/receive more than a few characters in one message. When you want to integrate into another service, e.g. an IRC bridge, because it's not just data there's no open API to link to. And even if your plan has unlimited SMS the days when you could email -> sms freely are pretty much gone. (And if you don't have unlimited SMS). SMS is terrible, the worst possible implementation of sending text between people. The only good point to it is that every phone can do it - and that doesn't even apply now in the days of iPod touches and smaller tablets that are basically smartphones /without the phone/.
prehnnews 13y ago
Yet another mobile app problem that was handled much by WebOS :/
shmerl 13y ago
XMPP is here for a long time already. It's not ideal but it works. Yet, all those networks don't rush to become compatible and federated. Shame on them.
- rogerbinns 13y ago
  I disabled the Hangouts app on all my mobile devices and use Xabber (Android) instead which works fine talking to google. On the desktop I use pidgin. Both are using XMPP behind the scenes.
  - shmerl 13y ago
    Google still didn't kill Talk which is XMPP conformant and even federated. But their Hangouts protocol is different and their Hangouts client doesn't use conformant XMPP. And since many users automatically got switched to it, they became cut off from their non Google XMPP contacts.
  - caoilte 13y ago
    Xabber doesn't do push notifications so it eats battery. It's basically over for XMPP, but Hangouts was a still born PoS.
    - shmerl 13y ago
      XMPP has XEP-0273 http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0273.html http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0273.html Nothing is over for XMPP until a better open alternative comes out. If Google see their Hangouts as a way forward, let them open the protocol and pull it through IETF to make it a standard. Oh, they are too selfish to do it? So they can get lost then, it's not an XMPP replacement. No one else is eager to do anything like that as well, so XMPP remains the only candidate at present.
camus2 13y ago
Well it's because vendor lock in. Vendor X dont want you to access his messaging app from another client V, and instead of using P2P , Vendor Y uses a centralized server, with the a protocol not supported by any other vendor. But vendor U swears he supports open techs !!!
josteink 13y ago
In my view, none of the mobile OS manufacturers have a good handle on messaging. I don't see why this should be tied to the mobile OS platform. That just makes no sense at all. Should I only be able to communicate with people who use the same type of mobile OS as me? What sort of pre-internet madness is this? Right now, at least for Android, I find facebook (yes, facebook!) to have the best mobile IM client. Light, clean, to the point with some nice UI details and options. And it also has all my contacts. And it is cross platform. And accessible from the web. And standards-based (I can still XMPP in to facebook IM and do everything the web-based client lets me do). Yes. Despite facebook being creepy, it's still miles better than super-creepy Google. After all, it's just one website and unlike Google you know when you interact with it.

feifan 13y ago

Re some of your points in the last paragraph: * I feel like the concept of "being online" is a bit redundant. For iMessages/Hangouts when it works, messages are sent to mobile devices, which may be "available" even when the recipient isn't online and "on" the service at the moment. Also, Google Hangouts chat still supports Jabber, and does support online statuses :) * iMessages shows delivery receipts, and opt-in read receipts. Not certain about the Hangouts app (on iOS), but it looks like there are three pulsating dots as the message is "sending" and the timestamp appears when the message is "sent". * A good chat client goes a long way. My needs are probably different than yours, but using Messages on OS X works great for me. Integrates with iMessages, Google Hangouts chat, and FB chat. All I need!

brandon272 13y ago
My point was that Google Hangouts, iMessage, etc. can do some or all of those things, but only on their own silo'ed platform. I'm a Google Hangouts user so I have no good way of communicating with my iOS friends unless they download extra software onto their phones and we communicate using a third party app. I don't want to use five apps to cover my bases. I wouldn't even mind having to have a Google Hangouts, iMessage, Jabber, etc. account and be able to add ALL of those accounts to a single IM app so that I can communicate with all of those people in a consistent way.
- feifan 13y ago
  Ah, gotcha. Unified app on mobile would be awesome — looks like iMessages is the main obstacle. But some work has been done to try to reverse-engineer the protocol
Domenic_S 13y ago
> opt-in read receipts Has this changed? When iMessage came out, read receipts were opt-out.

k-mcgrady 13y ago

I disagree with a lot of this. iMessage always works very well for me and I love that it's integrated with SMS so cleanly. It also provides read receipts so I know if a message has been received. I don't use WhatsApp but a competitor of its called Viber which also does calls and it works well and includes delivered and seen receipts. It also tells me if the user is online which is very useful. Facebook messenger also works great imo and is one of my most used communication methods. 10 years ago I was also using IM a lot. I'd come home from school every day and use it until I went to bed. MSN was the Facebook of the day. Fortunately everyone I knew used MSN (it was ubiquitous with IM here). I used Adium on Linux and thought it was a nice client but I think today we're in a much better position than before. Fragmentation seems to be much worse today but handling that is as simple as installing an app for the service a specific friend uses. The fact we have push notifications means I don't need to check in with 10 apps to see if I got a message - I'm alerted when a message is received and who it's from and in what app I can view it. It would be nice to use one app but I don't think the fragmentation is too big of a user experience problem. Personally I wish everyone would just use SMS! Most plans for smartphones come with unlimited SMS nowadays. I hate having to send my communications through so many companies with questionable privacy practices. The only place SMS is problematic is when messaging abroad but I doubt that's a major concern for most people (and they can use one of the plethora of other methods for messaging abroad anyway).

jodrellblank 13y ago
The only place SMS is problematic is when messaging abroad Or when you don't want to give people your phone number. When you don't have a phone number (data only cellular or WiFi only tablet). When you don't want your messaging ID tied to a number owned by a phone company that you can't control and instead want it tied to your own domain name / email. When you want to be able to send as different IDs (personal, work, consulting). When you want some way to send pictures, formatted text, transfer files. When you want to send/receive messages on your desktop, or tablet as well. Either switching between devices or using multiple devices at the same time. When you want to send/receive more than a few characters in one message. When you want to integrate into another service, e.g. an IRC bridge, because it's not just data there's no open API to link to. And even if your plan has unlimited SMS the days when you could email -> sms freely are pretty much gone. (And if you don't have unlimited SMS). SMS is terrible, the worst possible implementation of sending text between people. The only good point to it is that every phone can do it - and that doesn't even apply now in the days of iPod touches and smaller tablets that are basically smartphones /without the phone/.

prehnnews 13y ago

Yet another mobile app problem that was handled much by WebOS :/

shmerl 13y ago

XMPP is here for a long time already. It's not ideal but it works. Yet, all those networks don't rush to become compatible and federated. Shame on them.

rogerbinns 13y ago
I disabled the Hangouts app on all my mobile devices and use Xabber (Android) instead which works fine talking to google. On the desktop I use pidgin. Both are using XMPP behind the scenes.
- shmerl 13y ago
  Google still didn't kill Talk which is XMPP conformant and even federated. But their Hangouts protocol is different and their Hangouts client doesn't use conformant XMPP. And since many users automatically got switched to it, they became cut off from their non Google XMPP contacts.
- caoilte 13y ago
  Xabber doesn't do push notifications so it eats battery. It's basically over for XMPP, but Hangouts was a still born PoS.
  - shmerl 13y ago
    XMPP has XEP-0273 http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0273.html http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0273.html Nothing is over for XMPP until a better open alternative comes out. If Google see their Hangouts as a way forward, let them open the protocol and pull it through IETF to make it a standard. Oh, they are too selfish to do it? So they can get lost then, it's not an XMPP replacement. No one else is eager to do anything like that as well, so XMPP remains the only candidate at present.

camus2 13y ago

Well it's because vendor lock in. Vendor X dont want you to access his messaging app from another client V, and instead of using P2P , Vendor Y uses a centralized server, with the a protocol not supported by any other vendor. But vendor U swears he supports open techs !!!

josteink 13y ago

In my view, none of the mobile OS manufacturers have a good handle on messaging. I don't see why this should be tied to the mobile OS platform. That just makes no sense at all. Should I only be able to communicate with people who use the same type of mobile OS as me? What sort of pre-internet madness is this? Right now, at least for Android, I find facebook (yes, facebook!) to have the best mobile IM client. Light, clean, to the point with some nice UI details and options. And it also has all my contacts. And it is cross platform. And accessible from the web. And standards-based (I can still XMPP in to facebook IM and do everything the web-based client lets me do). Yes. Despite facebook being creepy, it's still miles better than super-creepy Google. After all, it's just one website and unlike Google you know when you interact with it.