Eddy Cue wanted to bring iMessage to Android in 2013
theverge.com
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We're an iPhone family, but damn is that lame. How about: make the best product. Don't coerce people into buying an iPhone.
It drives me crazy how fractured messaging has become. Here's a recent example. My non-technical aunt tried to send a group iMessage to my wife and me. For me, she used an email address tied to my iMessage account. But for my wife, she used her Google Voice #. Now what you need to understand is that iMessage allows you to associate one or more email addresses with your account, but only a single phone #, which has to be your carrier-assigned #.
So now she's trying to send an iMessage to my email address (which would have shown up in blue) and my wife's Google Voice # (which would have shown up in green).
Well, here's what apparently happened. iMessage handed this off as an MMS to Verizon. Verizon's MMS gateway sent me the message via email, as a text attachment. My wife got the message in the Google Voice app on her phone.
What an f'ing mess.
I've turned off "Send as SMS" and "MMS Messaging" on my iPhone so I don't make this same stupid mistake.
I'd use WhatsApp for everything, but, Facebook. (I tried Signal. I found it to be pretty sub-par for everyday messaging.)
But iMessage isn't the product, it's a feature of the product. They think by not letting those features be available on other platforms they are creating the best product. You can't make the best product while simultaneously commoditizing your differentiators.
And it represents 20% of Apple's revenue so pretty sure this "they haven't actually jumped on the services train" comment is just a little off.
Nobody in our household is watching it; it has no app for Android TV.
Worst cast make people pay for some apple services to get iMessage if you really want to. They really are repeating RIM's mistake here.
iMessage would be trusted, largely spam free, etc.
My wife is now on Google Duo because it IS cross platform. WhatsApp and Telegram as well. These messaging networks are natural monopolies. So now I am on Duo etc. I just wish her parents could have installed iMessage on their phones - then apple could have charged us all $5/month for some type of family (10 person) plan.
No, they don't think that. Their refusal to extend iMessage to Android, to not even provide an iMessage API that would allow Google or third-parties to extend iMessage to other platforms has nothing to do with creating the best product. It's coercion, just as I quoted Federighi writing.
Just above that line he wrote "to get users to switch social networks we’d need more than a marginally better app."
Well then, make it insanely better. I happen to disagree with him though. I think he sold Apple short. I think even a marginally better messaging app would be sufficient.
Ultimately what I would like of Apple is for them to provide the best experience on their own devices, but also to provide interoperability with their services for third parties to extend to non-Apple devices.
BTW, it's interesting to see that they are extending to non-Apple hardware with AppleTV+. They've even paid Roku recently to get an AppleTV+ button on the Roku remote.
The only reason I consider getting an iPhone is for iMessage. I would gladly pay a monthly fee so I could use the phone I want AND communicate freely with the people in my social circles.
$10/month and you get your iMessage on Android.
How do they make money doing this?
I would be willing to pay $10 if the solution wasn't so hacky... Maintaining a system solely to run unsupported software (in a way that I would have to imagine is against ToS somewhere) is just too risky to handle a critical piece of my communication. I can't drop a message - especially if my excuse for dropping messages is "the laptop in the corner of my closet had to install a security update and restarted on me"
I believe you can have multiple phone numbers associated with your iCloud account if they are a physical number. This is assuming you have a phone that's capable of dual-sim or if you have a second iPhone linked to your iCloud account. The latter is what I do when to make myself available when traveling abroad.
I think this is what we all wish for but business is warfare and corporations will do whatever it takes to "capture" the market.
Edit: honestly the challenge is getting other people to install it
This alone is the reason why I personally would not freely choose Signal, and only use it because some of my friends insist :-\
The Signal servers rate limit you severely, causing it to take tens of minutes (or sometimes half an hour) to catch up to where your friends are at. Brief losses of connectivity are near-unrecoverable without closing the app on either my laptop or Pinebook, and worst yet the read/unread status of reactions to your messages is not synced across to your phone.
Signal also just killed custom emojis for reactions to messages, by refusing to display them. Now my message history shows I have reactions on a message I sent, but I can't even see the darn reaction.
Large rooms (50+ members) in Signal will get your client rate limited quickly, preventing you from interacting with anyone on Signal in a timely fashion.
Element/Matrix comparatively just works across my laptops, desktop, tablet (somewhere Signal refuses to work) and phone. It uses a nearly identical tech stack for the client (Electron with SQLite) but it never seems to need to sync messages from the server, lag behind, fail to connect to the server or fail to send messages. This is with me being in a ton of active rooms on Mozilla's Matrix, bridged rooms with IRC and Discord, and my friends shitposting at incredible rates.
The chat ecosystem is moving, Signal seems to have veered off course :C
I definitely see that those issues would be irritating! I've never heard of Matrix, I'll give it a look - thanks!
For me it's a little annoying, but I find it an acceptable tradeoff. However I could easily see how for many people this would be a dealbreaker.
Element/Matrix might be of more interest, it syncs history instantly, has good room support (unlike Signal), bridges in Discord and IRC quite well, and has a ton of interesting native rooms from Mozilla Matrix, Pine64, Gitter and such
The biggest reason is larger user base. But here are two things I do in WhatsApp that I can't do in Signal:
- Share live location. If I need to meet up with somebody, or let someone know how far away I am and when I'm arriving, I use share live location. "Share for 1 hour." In Signal you can share your location at a moment in time but it doesn't update.
- Broadcast messages ("mass text" basically). In WhatsApp I can send a message to a list of people without the people on the list seeing each other (to them it looks like I messaged them 1:1). In Signal I would have to use a group and all the members would see each other.
And now to add:
- Message history across apps. When I install the signal desktop app, it doesn't pull the message history with it.
It still baffles me why US has always had the different default IM compared to rest of the world. When the world moved from ICQ to MSN, they are still with AIM. When the world went with WhatsApp, no one in US knew WhatsApp until Facebook announced their $16B acquisition.
And what's worst is Apple didn't even care to improve iMessage.
(To be clear, I guess this is wishful thinking. But I would be happy if it came to pass.)
Even better would be a requirement to provide interoperability APIs at a legislative level, but I guess that will be a long time coming.
I've always seen this as major bungle on their part, and it's one of many reasons I will never go back to their not-so-safe walled garden by choice.
edit: i just saw your edit to specify iMessage the app.
These were all intermittent: Messages were lost or delayed for very long periods (going both ways), groups were completely broken, I couldn't tell who was messaging me because they were assigned some random source number (which I think also happened both ways), and images were compressed to illegibility.
Some people I seemingly just couldn't text with at all.
Here is just one small thread of thousands about it: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6750172 [Not the best example, but I'm having trouble tracking down the posts I remember browsing back when I made the switch.]
It was a complete mess, experienced by many users, and it was entirely Apple's fault.
It pains me to think how many friendships and romantic relationships might have been crushed by this bug. Neither party will ever know why.
I really don't understand why you think it's relevant today.
Which is exactly what should have happened.
Examples from personal anecdotes include:
- My first Macbook pro several years ago was the cheapest one at the time, and basically got stuck in a boot loop when I opted out of creating an apple ID on setup. Needed to boot into safe mode and factory reset it to start again.
- Setting up an iPad (in the last year) for a first time iOS user, required two 2FA challenges and needed the apple ID password ended no fewer than 7 times in the first 5 minutes of operation. The App Store didn't work for a few minutes for reasons unknown, and then with no changes, started working. (I'm guessing the creation of a new apple ID takes a few minutes to propagate to the app store or something?)
I'm sure everything goes smoothly when you just log in with an apple account and import all of your existing settings from iCloud etc, but if you're jumping in for the first time and press the wrong buttons it's rough!
Little did Cue know how determined Google was to fumble messaging over the next decade.
I’d love to read a book about how it all came together. Especially something that dives into the speculation I’ve had that their relationships and zero-rating contracts with telcos in developing countries and how that could be leveraged into internet.org and establishing FB in emerging markets was a bigger driver for getting the deal done than the idea of owning IM. Does anyone know if there are any interviews with the team that negotiated the zero-rating deals because seems like excellent execution before almost anyone stateside realized what the play was.
To be fair though, the zero rating/internet.org stuff does appear to have made a massive difference to internet availability in developing countries, and it juiced FB's user growth numbers, as it was intended to do.
But where’s the iMessage analogy? It’s not like all of Android would get better because of iMessage, they couldn’t actually sell anything based on an imesssge port, so where’s there incentive? Where’s the example of them absconding on a principle of “best product wins” when they aren’t selling a product associated with the cross platform access?
By creating iTunes for Windows they were expanding the potential customer base for iPods. By supporting iMessage on Android they would not be expanding the potential customer base for iPhone. If anything they would be shrinking it if they think iMessage is a compelling enough feature for people to switch from Android to iMessage.
I have no idea what they were thinking with Allo, but they blew one of the easiest layups I’ve ever seen.
I like iMessage because it sends full quality media, but WhatsApp fills all the other gaps.
I think people are underestimating the value that Apple has derived in terms of device sales from not expanding iMessage to other platforms, and device sales are worth a lot of money compared to new messaging-only users.
RCS is the evolution of SMS, is standardized and should be what the industry uses. Carriers mostly adopted it I think, but as expected, the situation is a mess. Bell, for example, went with Samsung for their RCS infrastructure and for some reasons, they don't allow sending RCS messages to other carriers.
Google decided to bypass carriers entirely, but you have to use the Google Messages app to use RCS. So if you use another texting app, it won't work.
Again, the whole thing is a mess.
Reminds me of '90s *Nix companies with sales bros wanting to sling around overpriced hardware, preventing expansion of the company in other fronts.
And the whole blue/green bubble pretentiousness would have never happened, which is funny because so many Android users still have no idea that's even happening to them or just assume they don't need to care about anybody that cares about that. (protip: its affecting your life and relationships)
I have a lot of group chats as the only Android (soon to be Pinephone) user. Group Chats work fine.
My family mostly has iPhones, and we have several group chats with me in it on Group MMS. They work fine.
It downgrades to standard MMS which doesn't have all of the features, AND delivery is hit or miss.
With iMessage I can be fairly sure that all messages will arrive, with MMS groups... it's a shit show. There's been plenty of times where someone whose a green bubble will receive only part of the group messages, or none of them whereas the rest of us do. It all depends on the carrier.
And the thing that causes all that friction is including an Android user in the group text. It's entirely not your fault, but also it's very natural for people to want to exclude Android users when the majority of the group uses iPhone.
I will say would hope if you value you relationship with your brother and his fiance, that you actually told him you do that and offered a comprimise on how to chat.
This isn’t to mean you have poor relationships. It’s just extremely likely as it happens in every other group.
I have friends and family who I don’t include in group chats because we’re using iOS features. It’s nothing significant so I don’t tell them about it.
I also have group chats with them. An example is there’s a family group chat about a planned vacation, everyone is on it. It’s pretty important.
I have numerous other group chats with hiking photos and kid photos that don’t include them because they can’t do moment shares and all the stuff that my family members send out from their iPhone.
I don’t think this means we have a bad relationship. I also don’t text my elderly family members who don’t have mobiles, I call them.
It’s just a function of using convenient tools and what’s available.
Similarly I have friends and business groups that only communicate through discord or whatsapp or viber, etc. I would never feel bad because a subset of my friends started a chat on Facebook and didn’t include me. I don’t use that app.
But I also don’t believe that I’m in all group chats with all people I think are important.
We are fairly good at using the main chat for important things. But again delivery is spotty.
Switching to another messaging infrastructure for the 10 of us is going to be a nonstarter.
This means that while you might be part of the group while physically present, you are not a part of the group outside of that. For billions of people around the world that is a problem (not the tech, but the isolation), and as such, that is where a good deal of focus goes towards.
This isn't about selecting your friends or social groups based on tech, but about groups of people dynamically interacting. Replace the applied construct with something else and it still applies. (you don't like smoke signals because big smoke is evil to you, so you use carrier hawks, but al your friends still use smoke signals and can't be bothered to learn how to maintain a hawk)
People don't consciously 'organise' a group with some 'group manager' and a nice hierarchy, technology choice panels, and acquisition procedures. There isn't some grand evil plan where the 'group CEO' selects the technology that everyone now has to use. This is just users using an end-user service on their end-user device that doesn't cause them friction and makes them happy.
People don't think "I want to send an instant message to my group-colleagues on their mobile OS on their mobile hardware over their WWAN link to setup a meeting in our shared calendar for a ninety minute gathering for a consumption of nutrients". They generally think: "I could go for a bite, I'll let my friends know so we could go together". Everything that makes that harder just gets thrown out.
Convincing an entire extended family to switch app is not simple. Making sure they are all set up with an alternative messaging app is not simple. Getting them to remember to use it with your specific chat while they use the default app for other conversations is not simple. Using an iPhone is simple.
The one big thing about iMessage is that it never really changes. And it cannot be hijacked by some other application like on Android. For better or worse, and for basic services like text messages I'm erring on the side of better. I have no idea how many times I had to go fix messaging issues when my grandparents were using Android. Facebook tried to take over all messaging. Then it was Google, with whatever iteration of failed messaging application they were pushing out. Or when they had phones that actually received updates it would suddenly drastically change the user interface.
We're having weekly video calls on FaceTime, and the superior sound quality of a FaceTime Audio has made it possible to even have a phone call with my hard of hearing grandpa. They don't even know they're using it. I send them high resolution pictures and videos of my hikes, that they can enjoy on their iPhone or iPad, whenever they want. Pictures and videos stay there without them having to do a ton of complicated tasks in a forever changing user interface, like Snap and the likes. The Apple Watches lets them know when someone is calling, and it gives us peace of mind knowing that they always have it with them. Everything uses a format they're used to from long before smart phones was a thing: Phone numbers. My grandmother is writing her life story on her now 7 years old MacBook Air. All their devices are backed up to my iCloud-family subscription. We've started using AirPods with Live Listen to include my grandpa in our conversation when I'm visiting them. If you haven't tried this, you should. It's mind boggling good.
The amount of time spent fixing things for them have gone from an almost weekly thing to non-existing. Being seniors they also have a lot of time on their hands, and Apple-partnered stores, at least around here, provide excellent support for anyone that owns an Apple device, regardless of where it was bought. All their devices are updated almost effortlessly: They get a notification about a pending update that tells them exactly when the device will be updated and what they need to do. The one big wish I have would be to postpone major updates for a couple of months. The recent trend of Apple radically changing the user experience is not a welcoming trend.
There's a lot of things I've really started to hate with Apple. And to be honest, at this point the things I just listed are more or less the only things holding me back. But the things mentioned in this post is such a huge quality of life improvements for all of us, almost like a cliché of Apple advertising. It's almost embarrassing.
Three years ago she got an iPad and it’s zero support calls with way more communication.
So while I suppose it is possible to have a non-horrible text experience on Android, I’ve only succeeded on iOS.
The actual color of the messages really isn't the problem.
It's not even Apple's fault, but rather AT&T's confusing and expensive billing options. I could also upgrade to an unlimited messaging plan, but 90% of the billing cycles I'd be overpaying.
Switched to T-Mobile that same week.
FYI, this is carrier related. Many carriers have a hard limit on how big attachments are, and will silently reject them if you go over that limit.
What the limit is varies based on the carrier, but it seems that a "safe" limit is ~1.1 MB (This is the hard limit that Android enforces for the largest MMS attachment it allows). T-Mobile seems to allow higher (I think I got up to 10 MB?), but I do not know what would happen if you sent an MMS to another carrier that is that big (they probably silenty drop it).
So you have two options: either reduce how big it is (which Android Messaging silently does), or flat our reject it. So the video is problem is silently reencoded to accomedate the 1.1 MB limit.
Why doesn't this happen on iMessage? Probably because you can set your MMSC (the Server that sends/recieves MMS) to Apple's MMSC, so you can standardise how big it is.
Because iMessage is not MMS - it uses a custom protocol and works completely independently from the carriers.
I just know that if you have an iPhone, you have to set your MMSC to Apple's servers versus the carrier's servers.
I don't believe this is true. To the best of my knowledge (and a quick Google) Apple has no MMSC servers. I've certainly never input any.
SMS and MMS sent on iOS use the same servers an Android phone would. But when the target phone number is detected as being iMessage capable that whole system is ignored and iMessage is used instead.
There is no technical relationship between SMS and imessage, but to the user it's the same interface
https://www.dhs.gov/blue-campaign/indicators-human-trafficki...
But it was a bit infuriating to realize how huge an impact it was having on my kids who were being socially excluded for the sin of Android. Many children have ipads and hand me down iphones with no SIM just for iMessage, which they all just refer to as texting.
Haha, what?
Anyway, joke's on them, I use Signal.
To now argue that nothing can or should supplant it is just Applecronyism.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26970035
TL;DR: This is carrier related.
Android phones do support RCS. Apple will not implement it. Apple will only support the bare minimum of SMS/MMS and then people wonder why it doesn't work well.
Carriers have worked to improve messaging. And Apple won't work with them, preferring to make "green bubble" a horrible experience. People should be outraged that Apple is able to e2e encrypt their chats but refuses to implement the standards.
Unfortunately, if the carriers impose the same attachment limit, it really won't help. The limit on MMS is largely artificial (considering the phone and the MMSC talk HTTP...sending an MMS is literally an HTTP POST).
RCS is its own technology. If everyone in a chat uses RCS, SMS and MMS are not used at all. It is like iMessage - but based on an open standard
The reason there is an attachment limit is because the carriers enforce it in the first place. It isn't a limitation of the MMS standard.
As such, what would stop carriers from enforcing the exact same limitations on RCS?
If carriers were good at messaging systems, SMS wouldn't be so unreliable and expensive. MMS would have worked well. But sure, maybe their new system works? Except, for the most part it's only rolling out widely because Google decided to be the default RCS server, so it's yet another Google messaging service; 9th time is the charm.
Google deployed e2e in rcs at the end of last year... But does that mean it works everywhere? I'm guessing probably not.
There isn't really a demand for carriers to increase the limits.
But don't worry non-Americans, people are judging you on the basis of how you dress, eat, walk and talk and deciding silently whether to let you in their social circle or not.
Then, WhatsApp came and it was free and cross platform, compressed images and video to send them quick with decent quality, and free of spam. Absolutely perfect execution, in my opinion. If it was not owned by Facebook, I’d probably pay a considerable amount for it if it promised security and privacy.
There were no usernames with watsapp, its just your phone number, its so easy that even my mom can use it.
Honestly, reading the rest of the comments in this thread to this effect, it's terrifying that the runaway success of a single company can so degrade the fabric of personal relationships this way.
The only people I've met who use iMessage have been Americans and the Americans I've met that live in the UK use WhatsApp or Messenger as their primary local comms, though frequently iMessage with friends in the US. I wonder why it is that iMessage hasn't enjoyed the same dominance here, even when the iPhone has. (45% iPhone in the US vs 40% in the UK)
Thus they are vulnerable to a do it all app like WhatsApp. IMO just exporting iMessage wouldn’t have been enough, they would’ve needed to combine FaceTime too.
This isn’t derogatory; it’s literally how the human brain develops. Everyone goes through this phase. It’s not something that Apple created.
I obviously know many iPhone users, including my wife and many close friends. I know of no one who uses iMessage. Here everyone uses Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp (and to a lesser extent Telegram and Signal).
Is this iMessage fascinating a US thing? Why?
iMessage also works abroad (in fact, I tend to use iMessage when abroad because it appears to US based iPhone customers identical to domestic texts.)
Everyone I know with an iPhone chooses iMessages for texts and group chats first, and only reverts to WhatsApp when someone on Android has to be involved.
It’d would’ve been inflammatory but accurate and informative to put an insecure padlock for unencrypted messages which may be read by your carrier.
To be as blunt as I know how to be: good. I really hope that anyone inclined to treat people that way goes all the way and cuts me out of their life completely. I don't need or want friends like that, and I've had no trouble making friends (including iPhone users) who aren't so absurdly shallow as to treat people differently based on the color of their message in a fucking texting app.
In other words, I really do hope you're right about this and it's affecting my life and relationships, because the only way it could possibly affect them is positively by cutting assholes out of my life.
But I'm in the US, which has a disproportionately high amount of iOS users. Across the rest of the world iMessage would be competing with WhatsApp and its existing network (something the e-mails in the article note) and I think it would have been an uphill struggle.
1. iOS being uncommonly popular (in other words: the US is weirdly rich compared to even most developed countries)
2. People texting a lot (maybe other countries’ carriers used to just make texting too expensive?)
Outside the US, people more commonly use messaging apps, and there is less peer pressure to be on iMessage as it is less likely for someone (in a certain social class…) to have a big majority of iOS-using peers. I had never even heard the term ‘green-texter’ until I went to the US
Yes. US mobile plans gave enormous buckets (thousands) of SMS messages a month to mobile users 10-15 years ago, so there was little incentive to move to other mobile messaging systems.
Conversely, the lack of such generous SMS allotments in most non-US countries drove widespread adoption of WhatsApp/Facebook Messenger/etc.
I'm not sure that would have helped Apple in anti-trust battles.
Is this the typical american point of view where the US == the world?
Isn't that against their DNA? Apple doesn't like to capture market share - they instead go for high profit share regardless of marketshare.
High profit share but median market share helps to avoid antitrust regulatory action.
End to end encryption. Proper MMS. Etc.
To me, forcing them to make an Android version of iMessage would be pretty anti-American. Domestically they have 20-30% market share, and there’s 0 revenue to gain from an Android version except the tenuous concept that maybe they could use it to upsell someone to iOS? Idk, I agree with you here. Doesn’t seem clear to me why they should be obligated or compelled to ship iMessage for Android.
Sure, Apple Music, because there’s a fee attached to it, but do you think Android people would pay a few bucks a month for Android? Could they upsell it to another product like cloud storage? Would they a) want the scrutiny that comes with and iCloud upsell b) security risk from enabling iCloud on an unmanaged platform
- It’d be compelling for a lot of Android users and would probably be widely installed. This would give Apple a strong foothold onto Android devices. They could perhaps build on that for their services.
- For iOS users, this might make features like Apple Pay and sending songs more universal/reliable, which might provide more of a moat against Venmo, Android Pay, Spotify, etc. It’d also give a better privacy/security story if your messages aren’t converted to SMS.
- If it was sufficiently popular, it could provide Apple with a credible retaliatory move in case Google yanked something important from iOS.
- It would weaken the value proposition for important competitors like Facebook. Why let scary FB messenger on your phone if you can talk to everyone over iMessage?
I know nothing and this is just spitballing. Maybe nothing here outweighs keeping it exclusive to iOS, but Apple getting some of their software used far and wide seems like it could have real upside.
BlackBerry thought their platform was strong enough and BBM would pull everyone else in. They were of course wrong.
It seems like Apple is strong enough to keep iMessage useful even if it is platform limited, and surely some people are buying iPhones for the status-symbol of Green Bubbles (or Blue, I can't remember I don't use iMessage).
Of course every platform wants to think they are strong enough to pull this trick, admitting otherwise is very difficult. Of course by the time it is obvious that you aren't strong enough it is probably too late.
I hate the conspiracy theory that Apple did it intentionally to make iPhone users hate Android. The original iPhone had all green bubbles. The blue was only to differentiate.
Who says Apple wanted to own global messaging back then?
Then again, half my friends are Android users, so...
Signal is used for the iPhone to Android communication sometimes, but honestly it’s mostly just SMS.
We must have very different circles!
Here in NYC, I can count the number of Android users I've met in one hand... but I know that tons of people have Android phones. Most chatting happens on iMessage and maybe Instagram chat (people seem to exchange IG usernames rather than phone numbers nowadays).
I've never seen or heard of people exchanging IG information - is that really a thing? Maybe I'm getting old.
A lot of Gen Z (18-23) are not using their Instagram accounts, or they have so many instagram accounts that they don't check and it is a high probability that you receive their "thirst trap" account where they just collect followers to look at their body and ignore. Not necessarily to consciously ignore, but just never check the messages at all because their personal instagram with their group conversations are elsewhere.
This is a really relevant factoid against the background of the debate over Signal requiring a phone number to communicate with people. It seems the next generation is likely to look elsewhere if that continues.
That's the reason. Same reason my friend group is all on WhatsApp. If we all had iPhones, we'd just use iMessage.
This seems weirdly irrelevant. If Epic is arguing that not allowing other app stores onto iPhones is hurting consumers, I don't understand the relevance of Apple software on non-Apple phones. I mean, say Epic wins their case, and so Apple needs to support side-loading. The court still can't force Apple to port iMessage to other devices.
-- sent from my iPhone