There needs to be an interoperable, highly functional solution that doesn't depend on wireless carriers.
Apple built a superior service, and the price of using that service is an iPhone. Does it suck for Google and Android users? Yes. Is that the whole point? Yes. Is there anything wrong with that? I don't think so.
I'm an iPhone user, but rarely use iMessage. Most of my instant messaging actually happens on some combination of Google Chat! (or whatever they call it these days), KakaoTalk (I'm Korean) and WhatsApp. Plenty of other alternatives out there too.
I think I have just one friend who I use iMessage with regularly.
Not very clear at all, IMHO. Would you prefer that iMessage conversations didn't "interlink" with SMS recipients? Is that a better outcome?
This is yet another example of the power of the "network affect" and the difficulty of crafting a reasonable regulatory framework.
I'm just pushing back at your assertion about "monopolistic behavior" but not at the general difficulty of regulating these sorts of ecosystems.
Possible non-monopolistic solutions:
- an open standard for phone-number linked messaging.
- Allow any messaging app to assume imessage’s role and send/receive sms messages instead of the imessage app.
- separate imessage and sms into separate apps. As you pointed out, this is probably the worst option since nobody really wants this experience.
As for regulation:
“All general-purpose communications platforms with over 10mil users must allow and enable open access to 3rd party client developers and inter-platform communications gateways” - problem solved
This is frankly delusion.
What is the SLA for a feature? Who decides? How fast can they be deprecated? In the face of security bugs? In the face of active exploitation? Who controls feature additions? What if the operator doesn't want to build the feature? What about abuse? Are they allowed to remove encryption guarantees? Strip e2e encryption?
etc etc etc.
It's nothing like a trivial problem.
We have an example of numerous open-standard communication platforms that existed, and then failed, because they couldn't keep up with competition.
All a "Well, if you get big enough!" law would do is ensure a constant cycle of competitive death.
I think you mean because they couldn’t be monopolized and monetized as effectively as a proprietary solution.
Because you chose to buy their phone. Just buy a non-Apple phone, plenty of them.
You can turn it off at any time. Settings > Messages > iMessage off
How does this “harm users”? If anything it provides a service that most users appreciate heavily: read receipts, typing indicators, flexible group chats. If you want to use SMS, you can. If you want to use WhatsApp, you can. All this talk about Apple having a “monopoly” over its own ecosystem is not only incorrect but just tiresome.
Apple isn’t “guilty” of anything here.
I get those extras you refer to (read receipts etc) only if i have an iphone and so does the other user. Yet with an open standard i could have those with everyone.
Other apps have features imessage does not - yet i can’t intermix whatsapp/snapchat/vibr/telegram etc with my sms messages - apple is holding my sms’ hostage in the imessage app when i might prefer to send sms’ and whatsapp messages from a single app
Apple knows the lock-in increases the value of their devices. That’s harm - my iphone costs more.
You can download and use something else if you don't want to use Apple's Messages app.
You can configure Messages to use only SMS and not do iMessage.
You seem to be saying that Apple should provide a multiprotocol tool that supports a bunch of platforms and allow you to intermingle them, which is a fine thing to want, but if it's not in Apple's interest to build such a thing I don't know how you can describe their choice as "wrong" or "harmful".
No, entitlement is thinking that Apple should be free to break anti-trust law, and engage in illegal anti-competitive practices.
We have these law for a reason, and they can and aught be used against companies that engage in anti-competitive practices.
> but if it's not in Apple's interest to build such a thing I don't know how you can describe their choice as "wrong" or "harmful".
It is wrong and harmful, if it is declared illegally anti-competitive, according to anti-trust law, which they are required to follow.
For a community that's apparently so harsh on big tech monopoly, I'm always surprised by the constant defending of Apple's anti-competitive practices here, even when it's at the expense of other companies. Shows to me that Apple has done a really great job with it's PR, if anything.
Apple has a platform, not a monopoly.
Precisely which antitrust statutes is Apple violating? Please be specific.
Specifically section 17200 which disallows unfair business acts or practices.
And specifically what courts have held that this makes illegal would include business acts that "otherwise significantly threatens or harms competition".
Not sure where you are getting your incorrect definition of the words "control the market".
But based on your other comment, it seems you are also under the very common mistaken idea that a company has to have a "supermajority" of a market for it to fall under anti-trust, or anti-competition law.
Thats not true. Even federally, which is has a much less expansive definition of anti-competitive behavior, than california.
There have been multiple federal judges who have ruled that even a company with less than 50% of the market, could be covered under anti-competition laws.
Its ok though. You probably weren't aware of this, and were just following this very common mistake, about the definition that anti-competition laws use.
Most people don't actually read court cases themselves, and just repeat these common mis-understandings.
Source:
"See Hayden Publ'g Co., Inc. v. Cox Broad. Corp., 730 F.2d 64, 69 n.7 (2d Cir. 1984) ("[A] party may have monopoly power in a particular market, even though its market share is less than 50%."); Broadway Delivery Corp. v. UPS, 651 F.2d 122, 129 (2d Cir. 1981) ("[W]hen the evidence presents a fair jury issue of monopoly power, the jury should not be told that it must find monopoly power lacking below a specified share."); Yoder Bros., Inc. v. Cal.-Fla. Plant Corp., 537 F.2d, 1347, 1367 n.19 (5th Cir. 1976) (rejecting "a rigid rule requiring 50% of the market for a monopolization offense without regard to any other factors")."
Thats the source for federal law, and the common legal opinion is that california law is actually much more broad, and prevents more things.
But if you want a specific example, that used california law, you could just look at the recent Apple case, which did rule that Apple had engaged in some anti-competitive behavior (even though, it didn't rule that way on every single count. It still ruled that way on at least 1 of them).
So a judge, in california, has already ruled that Apple could engage in some illegal anti-competitive behavior, despite not having a "supermajority", even if that court case is going to appeal right now.
Congratulations. You have found, presumably by broad googling, a case that suggests a minority market player can still be found to be misbehaving. Of course, you provide absolutely ZERO context for the citation, which is honestly part for the course here. What was the behavior in question?
For this to be a convincing argument, you're going to have to explain what the judge FOUND in this case, and why that applies to Apple. Or is your point to just say "LOOK! Someone with less than 50% of a market can still engage in illegal restraint of trade!"? If so, sure, granted. But the larger point stands:
In this particular case, there is nothing to suggest that Apple is ANYWHERE NEAR a Sherman Act problem w/r/t iMessage, because:
- You don't have to use iMessage even if you use iOS, because there exist several other competing messaging tools; and - You don't have to use iOS, because there is at least one very significant mobile OS player in the market
Wanting to use iMessage without using iOS is a common desire, but simply wanting a thing doesn't entitle you to it. Apple is not violating your rights by not giving you this.
Great, so I am correct on that, and you repeated an incorrect mis-conception that a supermajority is required. I provided sources, whereas you just asserted that a supermajority is required, without any justification at all, and were actually wrong on that.
You can feel free to do more research if you want. Because I know that you will not be able find conflicting court precedent that says that a super majority is "required". The actual court precedent proves others.
But I will remind you again, that you said this "because to do that you have to have a supermajority market share". And this is wrong, if you intended to say that a supermajority of a market is required for something to break anti-competition or anti-trust laws.
Since I have shown you a definitively wrong statement, I'd reccomend that you use this as a wake up call, that you haven't actually looked into this enough to know what you are talking about.
I can't provide hundreds of hours of teaching lessons to you, on how this stuff works, when you are getting basic facts like that wrong, unfortunately.
> You have found, presumably by broad googling
I have those sources saved, actually, because I got so annoyed at people repeating this very common and incorrect assertion that a supermajority is required for something to be illegally anti-competitive, when the court precedent is clear that it is not the case. So I looked into this enough, that I found extensive legal opinions on this saying otherwise.
> a case
It was not "a case". It was 3 cases. And if you had read or paid attention to the sources I posted, you'd see that it was 3, which makes me think that you didn't actually read them.
You can either do the research or not. I don't care. I've done it, and found that it is absolutely not the case that a super majority is required, and I've pointed you to actual court opinions saying so.
> Apple does not control either the mobile
Actually, there is another court precedent that proves that actually, Yes, Apple has engaged in illegal anti-competitive behavior, related to its control of the mobile market. It was the Epic vs Apple case. And in that case, there was an instance where, yes, Apple did engage in illegal anti-competitive behavior, due to its control of the market.
> there is nothing to suggest that Apple
Judge Gonzalez Rogers ruled that Apple's behavior was illegally anti-competitive , actually. So that judge disagrees with you, and thinks that yes there is an instance where their control of the market is large enough, that they could engage in illegal, anti-competitive behavior.
> why that applies to Apple
The point being proven here, is that we have court precedent, even for Apple specifically, that yes their control of the market is large enough, where yes it is possible for their behavior to be illegally anti-competitive.
Unfortunately, its not really possible to engage in the more complicated discussion of how it could apply to messager, if you aren't even willing to accept 2 basic premises, which is that Yes it is possible for behavior to be illegally anti-competitive, without a supermajority, and 2 Apple has already been ruled to have a large enough share of the market, that some behavior could be illegally anti-competitive.
These are basic facts, and in order to move on from that, you'd need to have actually read a couple hundred pages of the Epic Vs Apple case, and watched the trials, like I have, if you want to understand Apple specifically.
So I will repeat again, my main point, and keep it simple, so you will actually read it. Apple has already, by the court system, ruled to have a large enough control of the market such that it is possible for them to engage in illegal anti-competitive behavior.
You tried to imply that this would be impossible, for Apple to currently be having a large enough control of the market, such that it can engage in illegal anti-competitive behavior. And that is wrong. Because the court system already ruled otherwise.
I have neither the time nor the inclination to dive into the transcripts here to figure out exactly how the issues in these cases apply to messaging, a topic I note you studiously avoid.
As we used to say: plonk.
This part right here is the important part of how to apply it to apple:
"You tried to imply that this would be impossible, for Apple to currently be having a large enough control of the market, such that it can engage in illegal anti-competitive behavior. And that is wrong. Because the court system already ruled otherwise."
Some part of me would LIKE it if someone would make (in effect) Trillian for iOS, but expecting Apple to do it when it is not in their interest to do so is just entitled.
It is not a violation of antitrust laws to build a better mousetrap, and require people to do business with you in order to enjoy said mousetrap.
Am I harmed by Ferrari simply because their roadster can go faster than my Ford Pinto? The driver of the Ferrari gets plenty of extras that I don't in my base Ford.
Apple makes phones (ferraris) that can send sms messages (make left turns). They allow you to runs various messaging apps (self driving software) on your phone, but only allow their app to send sms messages (make left turns).
It is not uncommon for someone to have installed an assortment of apps from the following, Android or iPhone: Instagram, Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, Viber, Signal, WeChat, LINE, WhatsApp, Hangouts, Slack, Discord, Telegram and maybe someone is still using BBM somewhere.
In addition to the iPhone Messages app, I have, and use the messages features of 4 of those, which I think is probably low, and I might be overlooking some. In order to make it all work though, I have notifications turned on for them, and the experience of receiving a push notification from Slack is functionally the same as receiving an iMessage which is functionally the same as receiving an SMS or MMS. In fact, it’s a pretty standard experience across most or all messaging apps, with the key difference that when I tap on the Slack message, it takes me to the relevant chat box in the Slack app, instead of the relevant chat box in the Messages app. It was much the same on Android. This setup and usage pattern is probably the common case; I’m not exactly coloring outside the lines using default phone features that require zero or minimal additional setup (i.e. hitting “Yes” on the notifications prompt) and reflects the behaviors I’ve observed or asked about in how others use their phones.
Now on Android, the key difference was that you could designate a different app to receive your messages. At the time that I used Android, Hangouts was the best one I found which was head and shoulders above the trash default on a Galaxy Note II (can’t remember if it was Samsung or Google SMS software by default), but as far as the basic experience of seeing push notifications from messengers aggregated and then deep-linking into the associated app, it was basically the same as my iPhone now.
So, what is the advantage here? I thought it was “neat” that I could designate the Hangouts app as my SMS receptacle, but even by that point the dream of one unified phone messenger for everyone a la Adium or Pidgin was dead for me, and is still dead for me. If Apple put in the additional work to build an SMS/MMS access API, they would also be on the hook for supporting it. If at some point in the future I took advantage of this and moved my designated SMS/MMS app to WhatsApp, not all of my iPhone-using contacts necessarily use WhatsApp and I wouldn’t want to see my chat experience degraded for them specifically, so I would probably still be using iMessages, but now the SMS/MMS users would show up in WhatsApp instead, and the “unified inbox” that is notifications center would still be aggregating from 5+ apps and deep-linking me into the relevant conversation threads.
So, how do I profit from Apple expending employee time on this feature request? The Messages app is still the best SMS/MMS interface I’ve ever used, and still has the familiar interface I’m used to from Adium/iChat AV, and the “problem” described all up and down the comments here seems almost entirely academic. I think the people that stand to benefit the most are people who have a very specific setup: iPhone users with iMessage disabled on principle + only one other messenger that they could in theory receive SMS/MMS messages in if there was an API. I won’t yuck their yum, and as paying customers they can ask whatever they want from Apple, but I’m a paying customer too and I’ll be honest, I would rather Apple expend employee time on almost anything but that.
I don't know how sound this argument is but for me, as a non-Apple user I think I am harmed by people using iMessage, I can't text them without accidentally ending up in that technology ecosystem. I can get 15 context-free messages from other participants in an iMessage group chat. I freaking hate it. If it was clear that iMessage is not SMS then that same person wouldn't send an iMessage group message they would send a mass text, but they don't. I can't force that person to so my SMS in box currently has 15 messages at the top that read "Yes", "No", "Out", "Maybe", "My kid has dance so I will be late", "Sorry man, take me off this list Thursdays are no good for me now"... etc.
It sucks.
No, you chose to put Apple between you and your carrier.
Make a different choice. Apple isn't imposing itself on you.
> monopolistic behavior
> It doesn’t matter to me if a company achieves a monopoly
Ok, so you don't actually care what the meaning of these words are, you just want to throw them around when someone does something that you don't like.
Right, because the other option was to put google between me and my carrier - which comes with a ton of stuff i’d be upset about (e.g. terrible privacy protections) but you’d blame me for “choosing” because you don’t actually care if I have a choice you just want to blame me eye rolls
“Apple isn’t imposing itself on you”. Both Apple and Google don’t force people to use them but they do things that make it harder and harder to choose neither of them. In 2022 it’s not easily possible to live without Apple or Google as a consumer without severely putting yourself at a disadvantage.
Regulation is needed not to create an even playing field but to stop companies from screwing consumers. This is why European and Australian warranty and quality laws for products are much better than American ones. Saying make a different choice only leads to all companies to do the bare legal minimum. In these cases upping the legal bare minimum is absolutely necessary.
Americans seriously need to stop drinking this free market Cool aid. It’s not a free market. It’s highly lop sided and the consumers are at a disadvantage.
In complete fairness, Apple doesn't stand between you and your sms carrier. I can't think of any company that does that actually?
All companies that I am aware of pass through sms messages to the carrier sms service, and deliver messages from the carrier sms service. Most companies layer a service on top of the sms, but sms itself is meticulously unmolested in every system I'm aware of.
Finally, giving devs an api to intercept and process sms messages would be naiveté in the extreme. With so much sensitive data coming through sms, it just would open too many holes. A random dev could intercept passwords, 2 Factor information, account balances, and on and on.
For my part, I would be entirely against hackers having that access.
You can see this since if you switch away from Apple after using iMessage, anyone using iPhones will not be able to message you unless you go through a procedure to remove your phone number from iMessage.
The messages people say are hijacked are from other Messages users, sent to an individual's Messages label that happens to look like their phone number.
Anyone using SMS can SMS your number on your new phone, since SMS is not being hijacked, and Apple is not intercepting SMS to do anything with it.
If you don't want Apple friends using that label to reach your remaining Apple devices (a normal use case!), then remove the label yourself before ditching your iphone:
- https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201349
- https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203042
Or, remove it yourself after:
The only time I use iMessage is when I speak to friends and family back home.
And only one of them (the one made by the platform vendor) can degrade to using the sms service that the hardware is capable of and I pay my carrier for.
Nobody is forcing you to use this.
Few countries (only the US? Canada?) actually have any real social usage of SMS at this point. That’s becoming increasingly the case in the US as well, Apple/iMessage aside. Everyone else has picked an app instead (usually given an effectively local monopoly to an every changing array of owners over the last 20 years). That’s true even on Android without this SMS gatekeeping status that you speak of. Given the world is majority android, and the lack of SMS/RCS leading to any kind of decentralization, your argument doesn’t seem to have much merit that opening up iMessage would usher in a new decentralized era.
WhatsApp can't and won't, because using SMS would break multiplatform compatibility.
They do control their PLATFORM, but that's within their legal rights.
If you don't like how iMessages work, you can absolutely choose another phone platform, or another messaging tool on iOS. Since you have this choice, there is no "monopolistic behavior" here. Apple are not obliged to allow all comers to use their systems.
Yes I can buy a google phone. And when I have a problem with something on it you’ll say “well just go buy an apple phone there’s plenty of options” and all of a sudden i’ve used up my two options.
ALL markets have limited choices, and yeah, it'd be nice if MSFT hadn't completely failed any time they tried to do mobile, but healthy competition exists in the mobile space now between Android and iOS. There is no applicable antitrust regulation here.
https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/united-sta...
You know you can just disable iMessage and then the service is not used.
Apple does not hijack or intercept SMS messages. Apple respects the delivery label(s) you put on your Apple Messages.
The messages people say are hijacked are from other Messages users, sent to an individual's Messages label that happens to look like their phone number. This label can also look like an arbitrary email address of choice that does not even have to be your Apple ID.
Anyone using SMS can SMS your number on your new phone, since SMS is not being hijacked, and Apple is not intercepting SMS to do anything with it.
If you don't want Apple friends using that label that looks like your number to reach your remaining Apple devices (a normal use case!), then remove the label yourself before ditching your iPhone:
- https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201349
- https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203042
Or, remove it yourself after:
So it looks like your phone number, but isn't. Have fun explaining that to any random trying to message you at your phone number.
> then remove the label yourself before ditching your iPhone
First: thanks for the link, I genuinely didn't know Apple added a service to deregister. It took them so long.
Then, you still have a flurry of issues if you want to keep iMessage for some people on your iPad or Mac for instance, but switch to an android phone. You can deregister the number, but contacts that were using your email in iMessage (so "the label that looks like your email but actually isn't") and try to just send a message to "you" (your name in the "To" field) will send an iMessage when every party involved really wants an SMS to be sent.
I think you'll blame the user for not understanding the situation, that what worked before won't anymore, and they should either realize your phone is not on the "blue bubbles" anymore and they need to force "green bubbles" even if they're sending messages to seemingly the same person using the same app. And they propably will need to do that at every message until they realize they need to recreate a new thread, explicitely with your phone number this time.
That’s disingenuous. It took you so long to realise they were doing it.
It is not. It creates an account on their platform, with the phone number as an identifier. It does not interfere with SMS routing in any way. This bullshit is already all over the thread, has been corrected countless times, and is plain wrong.
It's like a zombie dog that will follow you whatever you do, and will keep eating messages sent to you again and again. There's an ecosystem of tutorials online to go the right step to minimize the effect (e.g. https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/three-steps-...)
That doesn't look like a "Apple did no wrong" situation from any angle we look at it.
It definitely was bad when iMessage first launched, but they probably made that site five years ago and it works to get rid of it.
The view that Apple is forced to support other protocols or networks "just because" is pure idealism.
The history of technology and business is a "maze of twisty little passages, all alike" for longer than we admit. Interoperability relies on government/intergovernmental mandating of standards - if you leave it to industry you get patent encumbered formats (see H.265).
Carriers have a lot of control over Android and they simply didn't want to be cut out. Google could have just copied iMessage from the start if it wasn't for carriers not wanting to be cut out of messaging.
You can download WhatsApp or Signal or Facebook Messenger or whatever else you might want, and have those work fine. iMessage works really well, and Apple enjoys some network effects here, but you say "they consider this a competitive advantage" like that's a bad thing.
They made a better mousetrap here. Bully for them!
Signal on Android is a far better experience than Signal on iOS, because the former allows you to choose it as your default SMS app and the latter does not.
But you're right - what we really need is a way for each messaging app you install to be able to inform the system which contacts it can reach, a simple way to set a priority order (eg. just a draggable list where you can put iMessage above Signal above WhatsApp above SMS), and a single messaging frontend which can render all the ongoing conversations in each installed messenger. (I believe AppleTV attempts something like this for video streaming services?)
In Europe I see people using anything but iMessage, so...
In the US in many places (like teenage users) they do have a dominant market position, and they abuse by actively trying to worsen the user experience of buyers of their products who dare to include an Android phone user in their friend groups.
That's quite a logic leap and a logic twist.
The whole green vs. blue started way before Android even had any messaging story (and it still doesn't). It is literally "users on iMessage vs users sending SMS".
Funny how it's "they worsen user experience Android boohoo" in the US, but the exact same thing in Europe is "yeah, it's fine, they don't have a dominant position".
0: https://www.businessofapps.com/data/signal-statistics/#:~:te...
> Danger zone
> Most users should not do this under normal circumstances.
What is the danger here? Where is the F-Droid application?
iMessage took over because iPhone users could no longer send group SMS. Apple killed group SMS. Google never did this. Only tried to change Sms and enhance it.
If everyone has it turned off, it is just the normal group SMS experience (also terrible). SMS group chat isn't gone, you just very rarely see it because there is almost no reason for an Apple user to disable iMessage.
This is also no different to everyone in a group who can use WhatsApp or a similar app using that.
SMS is the lowest common denominator fallback. RCS is not much better.
One of the group chats my wife uses for work is all SMS users except for her.
Or am I misreading your comment?