Apple's iMessage lock-in and the effect it has on teens in the USA is disgusting. I think it's worse and deserves more attention than all of Apple's other atrocities combined; sadly, it won't get it, because it doesn't cause x rich people to lose money. Nobody loses money on iMessage except the parents (likely low-income) which are forced to buy an iPhone because their teens were left out of groups with friends and essentially excluded from socialization in school. This even comes down to bullying and exclusion over something as simple as a "green bubble" or a "blue bubble" just like bullying for having a more affordable brand of shoes. The effects are especially clear in rural places where standard SMS is far less reliable than Wi-Fi-based messaging. Nearly every peer I've asked has stated they know for a fact they would be plum left out of groups if they were to buy a phone without built-in iMessage. Props to Apple for developing the iMessage technology and making it accessible in the ways they already have, but very shameful and evil of them to pit iPhone users against non-iPhone users with something vital to humans like communication just so they can sell more iPhones. They've found a fantastically profitable way to abuse psychology in teens, as if it wasn't already bad enough that they're considered a designer brand. I'm honestly shocked that no one seems to care about this, and I haven't heard much protest other than from the many parents who were forced into buying an iPhone. Just buy an iPhone, problem solved. Just stay in debt to a major mobile carrier. Just keep upgrading. Just stay locked in. I would say the forced iMessage segregation alone is responsible for much of Apple's growth in the USA, and it's disturbing that it's allowed to continue without much protest from anyone.
> something as simple as a "green bubble" or a "blue bubble" just like bullying for having a more affordable brand of shoes
This meme that it's "just about the color of the bubble" has got to die.
Messaging over SMS is way worse in every way. Group messaging breaks inconsistently in ten different ways, you have issues with attachments, you miss a bunch of other features, etc.
When you text in groups as much as teens do, these things matter. Not being able to use half the features you regularly use because one person in the group chat is Android is going to be legitimately frustrating.
What's interesting, however, is why the US population has settled on iMessage for premium messaging features, instead of WhatsApp like so many other countries.
Why would I download another app? iMessage is baked in. Heck I can send reactions to my friends messages with their android phones now. That’s as much as I care about as an adult.
That’s not a mystery. iPhone market share is highest in the US.
You can’t use iMessage if most other people you are interacting with are using WhatsApp.
There is a real need for better messaging than SMS and MMS. In particular easy sharing of photos and videos is the crucial and central feature. Easy group messaging is probably another important aspect.
So both WhatsApp and iMessage provide these valuable features, however the best messaging service is of no use if you can’t communicate with the people you want to communicate with.
Because of the Android and iOS duopoly I would typically expect the cross platform solution to win out for such a use case, even if it is a bit more inconvenient.
What iMessage has going for it is that it has a relatively transparent fallback mode – I think that made it even possible for it to compete.
However, the US is still the clear aberration here, not the rest of the world. It seems to just have worked out there in a way where the critical mass of iOS was there to make this happen and last (at least for a bit).
Still, I can’t see the big crime Apple supposedly committed here. Their approach of building on top of SMS is completely valid and makes tons of sense.
> Right, I'm that way too. But the rest of the world basically chose to download another app instead.
> So that's what I wonder about -- why did the US not bother, but the rest of the world did? What was different about the US?
Not sure about the rest of the world, but India specifically, has more whatsapp users because we have more Android users. iPhone is considered more of a luxury here, even now and with millions using android devices, ios users do end up downloading a common app that everyone has. Also helped by the fact that there's no standardisation of message apps in android, though Google messages is trying RCS, more than half the phones don't ship with Google messages, even the close to stock ones like OnePlus have their own implementation, so a third party became standard for even android to android communication.
I think you have to switch your assumptions around. The cross platform solution of a communicator should be considered more likely to win out in a competitive duopoly.
That’s easy. SMS cost money in Europe so as soon as an alternative emerged people switched to messengers. In the US unlimited texts were included in cell packages way earlier so people were ok with using them and iMessage worked as a logical extension.
Thank you, couldn’t have put it better myself. It’s obvious the parent comment has been left out of group chats...
When you add 1 phone number to a groupchat and now you can’t:
Name the group
Kick someone out
Mute the group at night
Send attachments at not potato resolution
OP didn't comment on that it's "just" about the color of the message bubbles. The color actually does matter to teens as it's seen as a status symbol, that's a non-practical reason to hate or bully someone about. And because iMessage is sort of seem as a de-facto chat app, it truly does create unequal situations.
Think about it like this. You're low/middle class but your kid goes to a school where almost literally everyone else comes from a millionaire family. All the other kids play golf or some other expensive hobby. You're either forced to start paying for that as well or risk the fact that your kid will most likely be left out and ostracized by the rest.
If you _chose_ to send your kid to that school and it had nothing to do with education standards or prestige of being at a "better" school, then you effectively chose to bear the extra costs associated with it, but if your kid just goes to that school because it's their only real option, would you think it fair?
Yeah, because whatsapp is any better? I prefer the kids sharing their nudes over iMessage then whatsapp ( which is facebook, for the parents that dont know yet )
Let's see... you're proposing that a company should just hand out their competitive advantage just because some parents are unable to curb their consumerism / keeping up with the Jonesses an dealing with "psychology in teens"?
Nobody forces you to use iMessage. Use Snap, Whatsapp, Telegram, FB messenger, whatever. You don't need to be upgrading with every cycle (or even every other cycle) either. I am on my 4th smartphone since 2008, replacing a battery is cheaper that replacing phones. And if your teen insists on the latest&greatest instead, that should be your problem, not Apple's.
Without their walled garden Apple is nothing but a commodity hardware maker and those do not survive for long on this side of the Pacific.
>Nobody forces you to use iMessage. Use Snap, Whatsapp, Telegram, FB messenger, whatever.
This isn't a case of fair play among competitors. iMessage, unlike the other options here, is baked-into the iOS SMS client, and it's not obvious to a non-technical use how to opt-out of using iMessage services. It's akin to if Android, as a default, inspected your contacts list and hijacked outgoing SMS messages for delivery via Hangouts.
Apple isn't a commodity hardware maker, as the software isn't sufficiently distinctive vs Android. Their hardware is what makes them so hot.
Also, integrating SMS with online messaging and giving people free chatting are Very Standard terms of competition for the hot and overcrowded chat app market, and it's precisely this which has gotten some people so bothered.
More to the point, Apple is not responsible for the visibly poisonous affects of classism on children, and Apple is not morally culpable merely because they indicated to you what's free and what's not. The families whose children are hurting each other should gather as a community, look each other in the eye and ask what's happening.
Nike also serves as a symbol of class — should we blame Nike when kids laugh at no-brand shoes?
The opposite is true. In rural places, you often only have Wi-Fi by way of AT&T DSL or WildBlue/HughesNet satellite broadband. Your iMessage messages always deliver instantly. Meanwhile, the SS7 SMS messages always fail to send, because you have 0 bars of cellular service. Even in cases where there is cellular service, iMessage and other IP-based messaging is far more reliable.
iMessage is years behind any of those other chat clients. It’s their competitive advantage and yet it’s atrocious. There’s still no unsend feature ffs.
Someone just needs to meme us teenagers to switch to a better chat client.
I still use iMessage if someone send it to me, but I’m glad to have switched to other chat clients because I have far more affinity toward my friends than I do this half-forgotten messaging service.
They hosted, vetted, distributed public, provided support and developer services including a single easy to use and safe purchase system that built that market over a decade. They have been so successful that iOS developers make nine times as Android developers per device solid.
Walmart build, vetted, distributed and provided support to Procter & Gamble products over many decades. But saying that Walmart is paying to Procter & Gamble would be also gross mischaracterization.
Appstore model is as old as civilization - middle man reselling stuff. Some middle mans are more effective than others, and true, Apple is one of them. But that doesn't change characterization of the relationship. They don't pay developers for their service, they resell their stuff, while keeping hefty profit margins.
Grocery stores were an enormous business before Walmart, it just made them more efficient. And it opened doors for lots of smaller products to reach far more customers.
The entire mobile app market was not even one hundredth the size of the App Store before it was created.
The walled garden Apple created made safest and easiest app purchase environment ever, which is why it attracts the highest spending by app customers and highest spending app customers.
If Apple had taken the Google play route that $35B a year would be closer to $4B a year.
Why is this always added as if it's relevant? If I'm selling an app on both stores I care about how much money I can make in total, how many Android phones have been sold globally is just trivia.
Because it directly reflects how successful the walled garden Apple has built is for developers. It’s attracted great customers, and made them feel very safe and comfortable with purchasing apps.
If you don’t like the ratio, just say App Store sales are 50% higher than Android.
That $35B didn’t exist until Apple created the iPhone and built its walled garden.
"Pandering to Apple" on the matter of whether your messaging is free and colored blue or green? As opposed to the fundamental moral question of how families and children treat each other in poisonous, classist ways?
Next we'll say that accepting Nike's swoosh is pandering to Nike, and look at all the poisonous affects Nike's swoosh is having on kids with no-brand shoes.
Not much else? Other than consistently building some of the best consumer tech products in history that are widely used and loved as evidenced by this thread?
We shouldn't. Buying Apple products is not mandatory.
Also, apologies for getting a bit political, but I came from a country that got screwed up for 100 years because a small group of people who loved "corporation making a few people wealthy beyond all imagination" language got into power in 1917, so I'm quite sensitive to it, so what if instead we say:
"a group of 47,000 Americans who make anyone a little bit wealthier if they buy a bit of AAPL"?
Regulating monopolies is not full communism. One of the problems with soviet immigrants like yourself is the tendency to have extremist radical capitalist views, the most famous example being Ayn Rand. But history has shown extreme unregulated capitalism doesn't work either, the best system is a well regulated capitalism with democratic oversight of the regulators.
> more attention than all of Apple's other atrocities combined;
In 2010 the've introduced FaceTime (revolutionary back then, especially on poor connections) and wanted to make it open, open standard etc. But they got half a billion lawsuit from a patent troll over P2P patent infringement.
In 2011 they've introduced iMessage that also relies heavily on p2p too.
It is 2020 and they are still fighting this troll in court over facetime 2010.
search: apple vs VirnetX
Knowing that, I just don't see this as clear cut as you on Apple being sneaky on teen psychology
Apple has changed the design of FaceTime in response to the case. Why are they not opening it up now?
> Apple decided to redesign how it did FaceTime on a technical level as a way to bypass the patents (in essence, it stopped using an IP address as final authorization when creating a VPN between two devices and instead uses a push token, certificate and session token).
In continental Europe youngsters all use Snapchat or WhatsApp or Facebook messenger or Telegram for group chat, all cross platform.
iMessage is never the default one because that would exclude lots who don't have iphones even though Apple's products are a status symbol amongst school children.
TL;DR: you can't make fun of your colleagues who can't afford iphones if you're unable to chat with them ;)
Maybe because SMS became very popular in the US, and iMessage originally was just an extension of SMS from a UX perspective, 2 years after iPhone launched. It added functionality and fixed issues with SMS (multi-part messages, images, etc). This led to the dislike of "green bubbles" because it meant you were forcing a degraded experience on the other person. That started a positive feedback loop for iMessage.
My understanding is SMS never got anywhere as popular in the EU.
On the contrary, SMS was insanely popular in Europe before the smartphone revolution and before data plans were cheap just that people didn't want to lock themselves in with Apple's proprietary iMessage otherwise they couldn't talk to others who don't have iphones.
Anyway, UK was/is a lot more aligned to the fads in the US than in continental Europe to which I was referring to since the UK is no longer in Europe ;) j.k.
Because it's just there on devices they have. It is the default for tweens and teens who just got an iPhone handed down from a parent, and it works on day one. Regionality happened with IM clients back in the day as well - some areas favored AIM, some Yahoo, some MSN. Why did that happen? It just does.
I think it is because US was the first to get "free" sms long ago. And in the rest of the world chat apps (viber, whatsapp, telegram, messenger etc.) where a way to get free messaging.
iPhones are popular, so old models are cheap. I've bought recently an unlocked iphone 7 for family member, it costs me $140. Device is fast and performance is more than enough for everyday tasks.
Still updating? Remember me any Android phone with 5 years support?
> Just buy an iPhone, problem solved. Just stay in debt to a major mobile carrier. Just keep upgrading. Just stay locked in.
Price comparison isn't so critical. Are you really need the latest pro model? Google privacy sucks 'cause ads pump - the main reason why I use iPhone and recommend it.
Another way still exists - play with Hackintosh & AirMessage.
The fastest smartphone on the planet, the iPhone SE2, is only $399 new in US. Can’t South Africans get someone to buy them in the US and ship it to SA stead of buying four year old iPhones?
Maybe this is just a US centric issue? I have an iPhone for years, a lot of people I know too, yet I never saw anyone using iMessage, nor I personally use it. Everyone I know is using either Facebook Messenger, Line, Whatsapp, Telegram or a combination of both. SMS are dead, and are too costly to be used internationally to begin with. Apple could remove iMessage that are not SMS related (useful once a while to get a confirmation code) and most of the world wouldn’t even notice.
Absolutely. The "white earphone cord" thing was cool when iPods first came out (as an Apple brand PR thing) but iMessage is not cool because it has direct negative consequences, especially among less kind social circles.
But I have also found this true working with clients. They'd be like "you don't have an iphone?" and I'd have to show them my beautiful purple Xperia 1 to demonstrate why, but that should be redundant.
But what I have also found is Android's negelgence. The standard Messages for Web was broken for myself, and is broken for many people (will keep disconnecting from phone). They seem to have introduced new "chat features" but they had yet to show up.
Worse yet, my international Xperia wouldn't send group MMS properly with the standard Messaging app. But it would work on other apps.
That is why I would highly recommend the Pulse app. It has dual sim support as well as a snappy web interface. It really should be the standard.
I find joy in customizing my phone and figuring these things out, but the defaults need to be more sensible for android users. Nothing could be worse than cheaper phones subsidized by bloatware (ux wise).
I feel the same way about Magic: The Gathering cards. We need to really band together and protest this company's dominance over our youth.
They (or their parents) are being forced to spend large sums of money just to be locked into this card ecosystem, so that they can play with their friends. The company designs these cards with certain appealing colors and characters, and charges a hefty premium for them.
And anyone who can't afford to buy the cards (or is threatened with copyright violations if they make their own) is left out of that community.
And every year I'm forced to buy a new set of cards just to keep up with friends. Clearly they've engineered some addictive property into these cards to produce that very effect.
---
Is this similar enough? Or maybe it's the NFL or NBA or Nike shoes, or little league hockey, that we should cut/paste in there?
Are you kidding me? Everyone plays magic online now. Nobody plays in person except for casual (usually elder dragon) and tournaments.
You can print proxies but better yet you can use a program like magic workstation to play any cards for free if you don't post the official wizards one. As long as they don't look like real MTG cards it's ok usually.
Most people offline carry more than one deck too. I don't see any of your issues as a real problem at least in my life its always been fine.
I think you are right, consumer companies make a lot of money off of teens' status anxiety across the board. The problem goes a lot deeper than any one product
I don't think I've come across any problem originating in someone's fundamental psychology and desires, where someone exploited it, and an externally imposed requirement to take away that particular exploiter simply solved the problem.
I'm not sure where you live, but you've described something that I think has solved several such issues. Here are a few things that are illegal in my country to market in commercials: gambling, politics, medicaments, toys for children. Would that apply to what you are thinking?
Aren't you being slightly disingenuous with that argument?
I was trying to contribute to the discussion by suggesting possible consideration that might help you reflect on your position, and not to be a contrearian, as your snide remark about internet access might suggest.
In any case, you presented hard problems with no easy solutions. Solutions will always be stochastic, and "to some extent" with any attempt at remedying this stuff.
For example children don't frequently watch commercials directed at them on TV. If you consider that to be a psychological effect with some kind of remedy through regulation, then hey, there you go. An example for you.
If you create a product that adversely effects a population based on their innate behavior, you have a cruel product. If you care about that population, you'd solve issues with the product. Unless of course you have other motives.
If you create a gun and people keep shooting themselves, you add safety features if you care about people not dying. If you build a car and people keep crashing and dying in them you add seatbelts. If you create a lock-in that causes bullying and teenagers having a hard time fitting in, then maybe there is something you can do if you care about them?
That teenagers (and even younger ones) practically require phones these days to survive socially is not Apple's fault. That's a civilization level fuckup.
It is absolutely a deliberate decision by Apple to pressure people to use iPhones and to pressure people not to convert to using Android. Hopefully this will be one of the items on Congress' agenda as they disempower 'big tech'.
> “When I asked a senior Apple executive why iMessage wasn’t being expanded to other platforms, he gave two answers,” reports Mossberg. “First, he said, Apple considers its own user base of 1 billion active devices to provide a large enough data set for any possible AI learning the company is working on. And, second, having a superior messaging platform that only worked on Apple devices would help sales of those devices — the company’s classic (and successful) rationale for years.”
Platform feuds are totally irrelevant compared to the overall forcing children to own a smartphone. In fact, Android and Google has probably made the situation much worse by driving the prices down.
Apple made a successful product (arguably part of the most successful non-consumable product in human history!) that lots of people use, and prevent the competition from interoperation.
People don’t protest because that once was (still is?) the career goal of most people in business. This website is also an adjunct of a Silicon Valley incubator whose members dream of building something with this level of influence.
This does need more attention, I have teenagers and can confirm this is what happens. The Blue vs Green bubble is a huge stigma.
Another thing I've noticed is that delivery of SMS to iPhones is very unreliable. I'm not sure why that is but I'll send SMS messages to our family group chat from my Android Device and my partner's phone will ding almost immediately but it can be up to 24 hours before my teen gets the message on an iPhone X.
If you think it needs "more attention", you need to state what "attention" you think is needed.
Do you think Apple should just ditch the radically superior iMessage protocol and force everyone to go back to 30-year-old SMS, which was developed in the mid-1980s? That's not going to happen.
> If you think it needs "more attention", you need to state what "attention" you think is needed.
No, no I don't.
> Do you think Apple should just ditch the radically superior iMessage protocol and force everyone to go back to 30-year-old SMS, which was developed in the mid-1980s? That's not going to happen.
Did my post in any way suggest that?
Apple's iMessage platform lock-in and degraded experience when communicating with non-iMessage users has real world social impact not just on children. Awareness ofnthis fact needs to be raised.
It's obvious why Apple does it, iMessage brings people to the platform and locks them in for fear of social exclusion. This has monetary benefits for Apple in other areas such as hardware sales, iap, and the App store.
If Apple offered RCS Messaging support in iMessage, and the green bubbles only indicated unencrypted communication, many of the social maladies of iMessage would go away and so would the motivation to adopt Apple's platform because people largely don't give a shot about e2e encryption.
For something you can use for hours every day for the next half decade, that’s only about $8 a month. Each of my phones costs $480 a year just for service.
You can thank VirnetX and its patent-troll CEO Kendall Larsen for this. Apple's still fighting them in court over Facetime and iMessage is covered by patents VirnetX claims to own. Apple could not open up iMessage even if it wanted to.
That seems like a weak excuse. Why would patent trolls affect ability to open a standard but not affect ability to ship and profit from software using that standard for a decade?
Apple is known for many things, and they make pretty damn good products, but open standards isn't one of the things they're known for.
It surely is Apples fault they can’t say ‘no’ to their children! Everyone knows kids can’t survive without an iPhone, Nike shoes and designer clothes so these should be subsidized.
I set up a VM and had this whole stack working about a year ago. While it was fun to get up and running, it proved to me enough of a nuisance that a few months later I bought my first iPhone. Happy to answer questions about my experience. I applaud the author for the work and found it to be a really neat hack.
Getting the VM up and running was a bit of work. Without getting into it much, the VM needed to be convinced it was a real machine with a real serial number, etc. took a it but I got that sorted out.
I needed that working so I could create an real iCloud account that would allow me to use iMessage first on the VM and then again on the android app. Before Apple let’s you use iMessage you need to convince them you bought Apple hardware.
The VM constantly wanted to restart for updates, which I was scared to do because of the tenuous nature of the VM I had set up. I ended up having to re-do the Vm 3-4 times because I would inadvertently break something with a small tweak.
Th VM wanted to be rather directly exposed to the outside world. Of course there were ways to try and make things more secure, but I didn’t really try.
I would have to sync messages from the VM to my phone if for some reason the VM went down because of a restart or power outage. The VM was running on a Windows 10 box, and windows likes to update and restart whenever it feels like it.
I had to use the AirMessage app, which of course makes sense, but the texts didn’t integrate with a native android message platform. Again this makes sense, it was just a little annoying sometimes.
People had to know to iMessage me with the email address I had connected to iCloud. I couldn’t connect my phone number. So everyone who wanted to iMessage me needed to both know and use the email address instead of my number. I’ve had this number for about 20 years, and trying to sort that out with everyone seemed like more trouble than it was worth.
There iMessage features that I remember not working, all the “likes” and whatnot on a message. Sending pictures was pretty slow and painful, and didn’t always work.
There are probably a few more things I’m forgetting. I really want to convey again, I applaud the author for what they’ve accomplished and I think it’s really neat. Perhaps some/all of these pain points are resolved. I tried to give feedback in the private reddit when that was a thing because I really wanted this to be my way to iMessage on an android.
The serial, how did you get it working? I tried generating a few of them and they never worked. I got one from my MacBook to put on another computer, it worked for a while but one day clover (osx bootloader for non Mac hardware) updated and it stopped working. I am not sure if the serial had an issue or something, did you have a similar issue? I ran it on bare metal and my use was different (just to have my messages and iPhone synced) so it worked ok for me until i updated it and stopped using osx.
There was quite a bit I had to do with generating the right set of serial number + I think two other numbers that escape me, using I believe clover. I also had to do a good bit of hand modification of the vmx file leveraging the generated numbers. It took a good bit of googling. I wish I remembered the details better.
I ended up leveraging snapshots after a few flubs. A lot of the tinkering was with the vmx file and I remember at least once doing something incorrect and bricking the VM, because I didn’t remember what had changed. I was using VMware.
AirMessage leverages the power of your Mac computer in order to route messages to and from Apple's iMessage servers. The server is to be installed on a computer at home, and will pass messages to and from your smartphone to allow the usage of iMessage and other installed services.
This is a significant trade-off, of course, but it is also the only secure way to use iMessage on Android as I understand it. Otherwise, you would have to trust a third party with your Apple ID credentials and iMessage signing key.
Plus, you can always run a Hackintosh or use macOS in a VM, although that can be a lot of work depending on your computer hardware.
IIRC, it’s more than just an API, Apple has implemented device specific signing that isn’t possible to replicate in this way, as far as I can recall. I don’t know the full details but I know this is part of the reason nobody has really even attempted to fly under the radar this way. It’s part of what’s downloaded on fresh installs of the operating system (hence why it sometimes works in a VM, though I’ve heard with each release iMessage is harder to get working in a VM)
Yes, but you could emulate that too. If a Hackintosh can validate itself as an authentic Apple computer, an app that replicates all the same calls to Apple's servers that that Hackintosh makes should be able to do just as well.
I suppose it’s certainly possible. But a Hackintosh operates at a very low level, making macOS believe it is running on supported hardware. It doesn’t need to know how the OS authenticates itself to iMessage. My suspicion is that disassembling that whole process would take a lot of work (and be very brittle, because Apple would probably deliberately break it)
It presumably also integrates into the OS at a deep level: the system that pushes messages to the computer is not iMessage specific, it’s OS-level. So you’d need to reverse engineer that, too.
iMessage needs to support older versions of macOS and iOS, so I suspect someone who cracks however identityservicesd works will have the ability to make this work "permanently".
"Otherwise, you would have to trust a third party with your Apple ID credentials and iMessage signing key."
Is that possible ?
I'd like to be able to send/receive "imessages" (and prompt typing ellipses, etc.) from a twilio number. It's low priority, but an interesting problem ...
Is imessage an open spec somewhere wherein you could use API credentials and interface with it, arbitrarily ?
Both the a hackintosh and VM solutions are very hard if you want full app store & I message support. Getting the OS running is fairly easy, but passing all the security checks is very hard.
It sounds like it's a been a while since you've played around with Hackintosh. I have an AMD/OpenCore system running with full App Store, iMessage, handoff, continuity, etc working flawlessly. Assuming you find a serial number that is not already in use, it should all be functional on first boot.
Yep! There are even tools (mentioned in the OpenCore install guide) that automate finding serial numbers and board IDs and all of the other parameters required for that functionality to work. Even though I couldn't get my graphics card working at first boot on my computer, it still logged me into iMessage automatically.
Not true anymore for "modern" Hackintosh with OpenCore or Clover. Of course you need to set some parameters correctly, but it is way, waaay more easy and stabile than in the old days.
Not really, exploits are very quickly patched up by Apple. You would have to get a used phone that is also not on the latest version of iOS, something that might be harder than you would think.
Unpatchable bootroom bugs are not a dime a dozen–it's unlikely we'll see another one anytime soon. So for newer devices, it's going back to the slow drip of regular iOS exploits that get patched constantly.
Interesting, I didn't know that about the X. Regardless, why would I buy then jailbreak a 2 year old phone when I could just buy the latest Android and sideload and add adblockers without even rooting it?
It's not just the software, I can root and load a custom ROM on Android just as I can jailbreak iOS. The issue is inferior specs on iPhone X vs the latest Android in almost every category for around the same price. No notches and 120hz on the S20 for example, or even cheaper devices.
I'm still not sure why I'd go through all the hassle of iOS when I can clearly do the same in a superior fashion with even non-rooted Android. Is it just that you like iOS more than Android? It seems by your comment history that you're only commenting on Apple-specific threads and topics.
I'm beginning to suspect that you weren't being honest with yourself when you claimed that your issue with iOS was not being able to install anything you like.
Sideloading, the freedom to run Linux directly on the device, much better widgets (I use widgets heavily in my workflow, such as showing my account balances, calendar, todo list, habit tracking, etc) are the freedoms I seek.
I've seen iOS 14, it's still inferior to Android. Widgets in iOS 14 will still have to conform to the size of the home screen apps, which is a 6x4 grid. In Android, you can make them whatever size you want and place them wherever, especially with Nova Launcher or similar.
Side loading, ability to access the underlying file system, have their applications like iMessage work across platforms, have better support for cross-OS applications are a few that come to mind.
Isn't that one of the biggest issues without which any other 'openness' is not worth that much? By having all software distribution going through a single channel which rather arbitrarily gets to choose what is allowed and what is not the system ends up being controlled by that channel.
Default browser and mail reader can be set as of iOS 14. SMS app I don’t get why it is critical to be modifiable to be perfectly honest if the OS ships with a decent one. I get it on Android because the default app is shit.
My biggest problem is that, something like a third party browser can't be more than a re-skin of Safari. Apple's App Store guildelines require something like Firefox for iOS to use WebKit, and doesn't allow add-ons period. In this instance, I would argue the default browser can only be skinned and not changed outright.
It's the same gripe I have with iOS keyboards, unless something has changed there. The feel and layout of every third party keyboard is the same as the default keyboard. During my short period with an iPhone I gave Gboard for iOS a try, tweaking it as much as I could to get a similar experience to what I was used to on Android. In the end it still felt like the system keyboard more than anything.
Yeah I did this with Swiftkey but was quite disappointed. I regularly communicate in four languages and the iOS version only allowed two or three simultaneously so had to constantly switch. On Android I'm running four without issues (might be able to add more, haven't tried).
And the "long-press top row for numbers" option wasn't available so had to switch back and forth between keyboard and "numpad" when typing something like passwords or strings with a lot of numbers.
And the default SMS app being fine? Such an annoyance every time I had to use it. Don't remember specifics (as I was just trying to get away from it ASAP) but there was at least some kind of cringy emoji bar always visible.
Horrible experience all in all and I'm so glad to be back on Android.
> SMS app I don’t get why it is critical to be modifiable to be perfectly honest
It lets any third party messaging system become a viable SMS replacement (like Hangouts and Signal does on Android), by making it seamless to send all messages from one app.
Like iMessage and only iMessage does seamlessly on iOS, because Apple has given it a monopoly on handling SMSes.
You can change the wrapper for Safari, but you can't change the actual browser itself.
For a lot of people, it comes down to being to run uBlock Origin/cosmetic and dynamic ad and content blocking (e.g. not a simple blacklist) and running other extensions and customizations.
Choosing Signal over iMessage. Signal can serve as your primary messaging app, prioritizing the Signal protocol but falling back to SMS as necessary per contact.
Except that it can’t, because iOS won’t route SMS to it.
This isn't a particularly strange situation, lots of folks have Macs and Android phones, especially among the sort of folks who are on HN. Not every product needs to have a total addressable market of billions.
Is that incredibly uncommon in your experience? In my country people still buy Mac computers for the cachet, but many Android brands are considered just as fancy/desirable, so there is a not insignificant number of people who do have Mac computers and Android phones.
Can I assume that this would only work if Android phone & Mac are on the same WiFi/LAN? I cannot imagine the security nightmare to have my phone talking to my Mac (which needs to be switched on 24/7) while I am away from home..
I use iMessage with a Palm companion. Keep a $100 Mac mini under my bed and connected to WiFi.
Tbh, after a year of slowly fiddling with my setup, it is quite inconvenient. It’s so close to being amazing, but there are enough small things that make it annoying.
Surely helping prop up iMessage is a terrible idea? Especially if it still has that "feature" where if you switch from an iPhone to an Android phone the messages aren't sent to your phone for a while?
I think characterizing this as having any effect of “propping up” iMessage is laughable. To call it a “terrible idea” is unfair to the project creators. They’re solving a problem people have, they’re not the cause of it.
> if you switch from an iPhone to an Android phone the messages aren't sent to your phone for a while?
Apple set up a page years ago that lets you manually disable iMessage to avoid this issue.
And yeah, I personally dislike iMessage as a concept. But I use it a lot every day and it’s simply better than SMS. So I don’t blame the creators for doing what they’re doing.
> Apple set up a page years ago that lets you manually disable iMessage to avoid this issue.
Exactly, why is a page needed in the first place? I'd bet more than 99% of users don't even have a clue that exists or even know about the underlying problem.
The page is needed because Apple has no way of knowing whether you have turned your iPhone off for a couple of days or whether you’ve switched away permanently. It isn’t necessary if you do a factory reset of the phone, which also covers a lot of bases.
Because of the way iMessage is designed though, it just happens to benefit them by making any other platform look broken if you don't do these steps. They worked with the mobile companies to get visual voicemail support, why not for this?
How many regular users do neither of these things and just shove their old phone in a drawer or let their kid watch YouTube on it?
Got my entire immediate family on signal - the big feature is the multi device support for a lot of folks on iMessage, using the Signal desktop app seems to be good enough.
I dare say every move Apple makes is to surreptitiously lock in users and create a protected lock-in. They have mastered the approach, perhaps accidentally, by slowly rolling the features over time across their device portfolio to the extent the the masses don't see what's happening.
Google isn't much different. Gmail, YouTube, and Chrome 10yrs ago were obvious venues to extend their advertising channels. Chrome is their nuclear option in case hardware or other legal issues prevent their current ad insertion techniques.
Speaking of, I always wished the Android messaging app could just parse those messages and show the little like icon or whatever on the last matching message I sent.
This was never the original intention. Back in 2010 WWDC, Jobs presented FaceTime/iMessage as a messaging platform for all phones. Unfortunately, patent trolls killed this idea and iMessage became a closed wall for iPhones.
Does this make sense as an explanation really? The patent has nothing to do with the protocol being open/closed, just the technology used. If they had to revert to a different protocol, Apple could opensource that one instead.
As others noted, that was FaceTime and the reason for changing directions was because they lost a lawsuit to a patent troll[0], forcing them to switch from P2P to routing calls through their servers.
iMessage for Android would immediately be abused to spam iMessage users, something that’s nearly impossible to do today. Apple issues server-side hardware bans any time an Apple device sends spam via iMessage, which makes it stunningly expensive to spam iMessage users - but since Android is an ‘open’ platform, no such protections are possible to require or enforce there, as they can simply be rooted around.
I expect Apple would release iMessage for Android in a heartbeat if the effort were invested to make it truly user-proof with crypto-locked bootloaders and proper defenses against rooting. However, that day is not today, and that day seems unlikely to ever occur for the wider Android ecosystem. So iMessage likely won’t either.
(Footnote: This thread and its usual focus on “iMessage should be open to non-Apple hardware” has been repeated on HN many times a year for the past several years. No one has yet offered an alternative solution to “identifiable Apple hardware only, with hardware bans for anyone that spams” that would as effectively protect iMessage against spammer. Especially before the first message is sent, and without heuristic false positives.)
You can already send SMS to iPhones. Why do you think iMessage spam (which can be filtered better than SMS by Apple) would significantly change the experience?
How does WhatsApp deal with spam? It doesn't seem to be much of a problem there, in my experience. If I ever get spam text messages they invariably come via SMS.
Could you provide the rest of your reply? There's multiple possible discussions that could stem from the facts you've presented, but without your conclusion drawn from them it's not clear to me how to proceed. (If you'd rather not, no worries.)
Not really surprising. iMessage has a very strong lock-in effect while iCloud and Apple Music do not. The latter two services can make more service revenue if available on more platforms while iMessage is not adding to that.
> "iMessage has a very strong lock-in effect while iCloud and Apple Music do not."
Does it really, though? I'm an iPhone user but have friends and family who have moved to Android without too much drama. Our chats just moved to other messaging apps with barely a second thought.
If we lived in a world where WhatsApp and other cross-platform messaging apps didn't exist, then there would be a strong lock-in effect. But as it stands the iMessage lock-in is weak, at best.
Really depends on where you are located. In the US the lock-in effect is very strong while in Europe or countries where there's a lot of Telegram/WhatsApp usage it's obviously lower.
It’s managed to lock me in. I’ve been trying to completely move off of the Apple ecosystem for the last year or so. I think for a lot of people (including myself) there’s going to be a few holdouts that only use iMessage and don’t want to switch and I’m not going to stop communicating with people I enjoy interacting with over technology preferences.
It doesn't work when people have email based iMessage accounts. It also doesn't work well for sending larger images/videos, not to mention the other random niceties that come with other modern messaging apps (e.g. read messages, text effects, being seamlessly synced across all devices, etc.)
Years ago, this was actually on the roadmap. Steve Jobs presented iMessage/FaceTime as a cross platform messaging platform. But thanks to patent trolls, this idea never materialized.
Apple Music for Android is not about Android users who want to buy Apple Music. If you have a family with mixed iPhone and Android devices, if you can’t use Apple Music with all of your devices, you will probably use Spotify. I’m sure Apple is glad to take money from Android users who want to buy Apple Music, but there are relatively few people who fall in that category.
iCloud/iTunes is available for Windows because most people who have iPhones (and iPods before) have Windows.
There is no financial reason for Apple to make iMessage for Android.
I'm honestly more surprised that Apple Music is on Android. It actually is the only service they have on the Play Store, other than their transfer app. No Safari, no Apple TV+, no Maps, nothing.
Yeah and the iMessage lock-in seems limited to the US. Most of the world is on WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger instead (or local apps like LINE, WeChat, KakaoTalk)
Most here seems to just think that iMessage is just SMS. They don’t think in terms of protocol, iMessage is on the phone, it sends text messages... it’s SMS.
I think it help that SMS had been basically free even before iMessage arrived, so people never care to look into alternatives to save money.
Don't get why you're being downvoted... telegram was the first thing that came to mind as an alternative/better solution. Cross platform, dead-simple to setup and it just works.
Telegram lacked video calls. However it was recently added and now I feel comfortable recommending it. Most friends who tried sticked to it.
Some highlights are their lightweight, open-source, blazing-fast client (https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop) and compatibility with all major platforms like Android, iOS, Windows, macOS and Linux.
I'd recommend Signal but it's not as user friendly.
I suspect the downvotes are because everyone knows there are alternatives to iMessage out there. It isn’t relevant to this particular topic.
“All you have to do is convert everyone you’ve ever known to use a different app” is... not the proposition some people think it is. Kudos to anyone that’s pulled it off, but I won’t.
For me there's a few reasons, but the chief among them is its positioning of its desktop client as an afterthought. Telegram's clients are first class citizens on every platform they run on, which is rare and hard to let go of once you've experienced it.
Its security is more questionable than Signal's for sure, but it comes so much closer to a cross-platform iMessage than Signal does that for 99% of day to day communications it's hard to care.
It is. I currently can't use WhatsApp because my phone is broken, meanwhile I can happily chat away via Telegram. Same thing when my phone is off. Back when they didn't have WhatsApp Web you couldn't even use it on another device at all, but as slick as the UI it's still not really a proper solution.
Meanwhile Telegram has real FOSS clients for any platform you can imagine (there's a CLI version).
It definitely isn't as user friendly on the desktop. It is basically a chrome sandboxed app, which is far from a native app like Telegram. Additionally, you have to sync your devices. Once they become out of sync, you can no longer decrypt the messages on desktop. If you break/lose your mobile device then the messages are gone forever.
Signal is great for enforcing end-to-end encryption, but doesn't yet have the mechanisms in place to sync across devices automatically to make it user-friendly. Telegram is great for most messaging, and if you want end-to-end, it has that too but is mostly limited to mobile devices.
Would be great for someone to implement GPG on top of their cloud-based messaging though.
> It definitely isn't as user friendly on the desktop. It is basically a chrome sandboxed app, which is far from a native app like Telegram.
What is the problem with that exactly?
I have both. Both look like messengers and do messenging.
> If you break/lose your mobile device then the messages are gone forever.
Where? On Whatsapp? Because on Signal you don't need the device. It can be powered off.
> Signal is great for enforcing end-to-end encryption, but doesn't yet have the mechanisms in place to sync across devices automatically to make it user-friendly.
What are you talking about? I have the same messages on my phone and on my desktop client. I don't need to do anything. Just launch either.
> Telegram is great for most messaging
What is exactly "great" about it compared to the others? You can send the same stuff as you do with Signal.
> , and if you want end-to-end, it has that too but is mostly limited to mobile devices.
> What is the problem with that exactly? I have both. Both look like messengers and do messenging.
Telegram is way snappier and is more peformant all around. Same reason why people complain about Electron all the time.
> Where? On Whatsapp? Because on Signal you don't need the device. It can be powered off.
No, compared to Telegram. Messages you send via Signal on mobile are not available on desktop, and when you sign-in on desktop you need to first link with mobile. When they become out of sync the messages you had previously are no longer available.
> What are you talking about? I have the same messages on my phone and on my desktop client. I don't need to do anything. Just launch either.
Again, as long as your device is linked but if you lose/break your phone then the E2E messages are not longer available on desktop after a period of time.
> What is exactly "great" about it compared to the others? You can send the same stuff as you do with Signal.
Telegram has a lot of great features that are not available on Signal. I suggest you try it out if you haven't already, and if you have then maybe you don't care about those features but it is much more widely used than Signal for that reason.
> , and if you want end-to-end, it has that too but is mostly limited to mobile devices.
That doesn't make it worse per say. The process of linking on desktop for Signal is cumbersome. I don't think Telegram is perfect, which is why I think GPG would be a great solution for encrypted cloud messaging.
> Telegram is way snappier and is more peformant all around. Same reason why people complain about Electron all the time.
I can't replicate that. Telegram uses 20MB more RAM on my W10 computer and takes longer to launch. I see people complain about Electron because it's Electron and it's cool to complain about it.
> No, compared to Telegram. Messages you send via Signal on mobile are not available on desktop, and when you sign-in on desktop you need to first link with mobile. When they become out of sync the messages you had previously are no longer available.
Where do you get all this??
Yes, you have to link the desktop client with Signal. Once. Afterwards never again. Messages you send via Signal ARE AVAILABLE ON DESKTOP. Did you even try it? You can even send messages to yourself. They don't become out of sync. There is everything wrong about this.
> Again, as long as your device is linked but if you lose/break your phone then the E2E messages are not longer available on desktop after a period of time.
If you lose your phone number you lose your Telegram account. Your Telegram account is your phone number.
On Signal, you can use your desktop client as long as nobody else registers with your phone number too because as I've said several times over: the phone is not required.
> Telegram has a lot of great features that are not available on Signal.
I have it.
Why are you unable to name one?
> I suggest you try it out if you haven't already, and if you have then maybe you don't care about those features but it is much more widely used than Signal for that reason.
It's widely used because people use it for porn, piracy and conspiracy bullshit already. All this doesn't make it a better messenger altogether or Signal worse. It's just something a certain group of people like and spread within those groups of people. Just because Signal isn't popular in the porn, piracy or conspiracy scenes, doesn't make it worse.
> The process of linking on desktop for Signal is cumbersome.
Why are you constantly lying?
You scan a QR code. That's all. There is nothing cumbersome about it.
> That doesn't make it worse per say
Of course it's worse. It can't do a thing. So it's worse.
Most likely both, since different social groups in different countries have settled on different messengers. E.g. In Europe/Israel it's Whatsapp, but in eastern Europe and ex-USSR it's Viber (for older people) and Telegram (younger people), almost nobody uses Whatsapp.
Speaking about preferences (and excluding privacy question because I have no expertise there) I would pick Telegram because while on mobile it is essentially the same as Whatsapp, desktop client for Telegram is miles better. Whatsapp client was crashing constantly and regularly, every few days. It's just junk.
There are other issues, like that they don't allow you to install apps outside their Appstore and they require developers pay $99 a year to publish an app. Android allows you to install apps outside of the Google Play Store.
What does iMessage being an Apple only product have to do with not allowing third party stores on iOS? How does that help getting iMessage on Android? Are you suggesting that Apple should be forced to port iMessage to Android devices?
Sounds like a middle man security breach waiting to happen. I am not sure how Apple feels about this. I am not using this until security is guaranteed.
I would care more about how Apple feels about this after it releases an Android app on its own. Being available to more people is more valuable than being secure.
If anyone here is interested in texting from an Android using a Mac app without propping up iMesssage I strongly recommend you look into Google Messages. It works out of the box and is better than most stock messaging apps. I switched over from MightyText a couple years ago and never looked back. https://messages.google.com/
