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Comment by coldsauce | Hacker News Reader

why hasn't there been anything like this for iMessage? or any 3rd party applications at all, really.

I don't know whether this falls within that, but some people have made iMessage "versions" for Android by using a Mac computer as a bridge.

https://github.com/RomanScott/weMessage

I created a native iMessage app for Windows 10:

https://neosmart.net/blog/2018/imessage-for-windows/

Taking full advantage of UWP features and functionality.

Where is the app itself?

A Signal gateway would be nice but an irc gateway to a e2e secure platform might constitute a reduction of security for all involved parties.

There are jabber and slack gateways.

In practicality,I would like to see a gitter to IRC gateway,because of foss projects usage of both platforms.

Check out matterbridge (https://github.com/42wim/matterbridge) which bridges gitter, irc and much more :-)

Neat,thanks.

Signal Weechat does this iirc, there are a few other alternative clients out there too: https://github.com/thefinn93/signal-weechat

They do exist. Here's one for Discord: https://github.com/reactiflux/discord-irc

There was someone who made something like that, but didn't make it public for fear of getting C&D'd by apple.

because iMessage is closed api by apple. and they likely will prohibit any interference with their api...

WhatsApp is as closed and guarded (even though better documented through reverse engineering).

And this obviously does exist. So that’s not the reason.

This thing here apparently uses WhatsApp web, which might be simpler to use than a full reverse of iMessage and its protocol.

Is iMessage even a thing outside the US? Everybody in Europe uses WA or Messenger, at least

The iPhone has about a 56% market share in the US, compared to a 26% market share in Europe (with the UK being the outsider with 52% market share).

That makes a huge difference: in Europe it's very unlikely that everyone out of any group of friends has an iPhone, making Whatsapp, Telegram etc the goto solutions for group messages.

Apple is also huge in Japan, but I don't know what kind of chat apps are used there.

Line, mostly.

idk, most people I know here in the UK have both iPhones and WhatsApp. Back in Australia, iPhones is fairly pervasive, and so is WhatsApp.

I'm from EU and it is a thing. I use iMessages whenever the other side has an iPhone. In my social circle, it's about two thirds. But it is also true that many people who have an iPhone still use Whatsapp or Messenger as the default communication channel even if the other side has an iPhone as well.

Its certainly not the default in Australia. Only a few people I know have iPhones. SMS is always the default messaging app unless you have added the person on something else which is a bit of a mess between different services.

I‘m from EU and prefer iMessage to anything else.

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