apple acting self-interested (which it’s entirely justified in doing, IMHO; this is the same company that almost had a tragic death in the 90’s) just opens up more competition IMHO. it’s too bad that true open-source phones are still crap, that android gave too much power to the cell network providers and became bloatware vehicles, and that microsoft completely abandoned its phone efforts even though its OS on there had a promising GUI.
Maybe what we’re seeing is more a symptom of that.
Also blue texts, because Google can’t get its head out of its ass long enough to actually summon and stick with a real iMessage competitor
So yeah, I'd say there's quite a few long-time Apple execs who have been there through the thick and the thin. More power to them. Know who else has stuck with them even longer than them? Me. Been an Apple guy since I was 12 in December 1984, when my otherwise-frugal fam got the Macintosh 128k. ;) In 1997 I was doing part-time work as a mainly-Mac computer consultant on the side (while serving in the USAF) and things were DIRE for any Apple believer. But anyway, bygone days.
Not that Google has an attention span here (I'm still annoyed at them for what they did to XMPP), but RCS exists, and Apple is perfectly capable of at least supporting a fallback spec written this century. Their choice to instead just actively degrade the messaging experience, for everyone involved, when anyone involved isn't their customer, makes the entire market worse.
See also: Safari
https://www.androidauthority.com/rcs-google-3090142/
> In a word, RCS is like SMS, but better. Except that it isn’t. Not every operator has enabled it yet. Not all phones support it. Not every implementation is the same — especially in terms of encryption since that bit is optional. And even if you download Google Messages and use the now-supposedly worldwide ‘Chat features’ there, you’re still at the mercy of Google’s servers which can go down or become buggy any time. Which they have done rather frequently.
> RCS is also completely reliant on your phone number being active when you send or receive messages (note: Apple stores iMessages for some time offline). This makes it intricately linked to your carrier bill (h/t Ron Amadeo for bringing this into the discussion). If you happen to miss a payment or have an issue with your carrier, or if you live in a country where number portability is difficult or nonexistent, your line goes down and so does your ability to use SMS and RCS. This is unlike IP-based chat services where you can connect back at any point in the future, get all of your pending messages, and continue where you left off.
Google probably guessed (which was reasonable) that an app like Whatsapp would come along and handle this market... which wasn't entirely false... but instead it's been fractured across many apps like Whatsapp instead of having a unified feature set (such as iMessages', such as: end to end encryption, reactions, high resolution photos and videos and livephotos, voice texts, offline storage of messages until devices come back online, smooth transition to a high resolution audio or video chat (Facetime Audio or Facetime), etc.) And Whatsapp STILL doesn't have features I'd consider basic at this point, like Tapbacks: https://www.engadget.com/google-messages-android-imessage-re...
So now Google is realizing that this was a mistake (perhaps due to the unexpected "luxury appearance" of "blue-message cachet") and is NOW pushing hard for RCS... too little, too late IMHO.
As an iPhone user, my messaging is currently scattered across: mostly iMessage, but some Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger (and a smattering of others now and then like Signal). The advantage of the top 3 of those for me is that I can also send and receive them from my laptop... something that RCS also DOES NOT provide. In last place behind all of these we have SMS messages from Android users, where messaging is less reliable (I have literally gotten into fights with people due to missed messages!!), sending a photo along with text either fails or downsamples the photo to a thumbnail, etc. etc. etc. At least I can send and receive SMS to Androids from my laptop in iMessages, through my phone when it is nearby.
But this isn't about the use of Web-based services, this is about a text client. That's not going to just disappear anytime in the near future, it isn't reasonable to compare them to better chat networks when we're specifically talking about fallbacks, and whether they have incentive to implement a standard for it doesn't mean they should just have free reign to promote ecosystem lock-in for the basic functionality of a phone.
And do I also agree that the implementation of RCS has been less than stellar, but that's in part because of fragmented adoption among vendors, which is a problem that Apple is a part of.
(And speaking of ways that markets are worse because they don't have "incentives" to adopt standards, I forgot to mention their continued use of Lightning.)
Wouldn't their users gain better security and privacy with RCS (because of e2e support)? Or are you saying that an Apple user's security and privacy is not an incentive for Apple?
The App-Store is, in this context, merely a Content Filter. So why not allow multiple content filters?
Perhaps if apple had approval on those third-party appstores and held them to a standard and charged pushed those support charges onto them..
If some alternative appstore manages to break the sandbox, then they have different problems.
The problem is not that Apple can't make this happen. The problem is that they don't want it.
If users complain after sideloading was enabled, the Geniuses can simply tap on the sign.
After some taking the customer allowed us to take a look at things before we did the refund. It turned out her nephew, whom she had turned to for help setting up her new computer decided for her that she didn’t need a mac, she needed a mac running windows. He had resized the Mac OS partition to as small as it would go, installed windows and configured boot camp to boot entirely into windows. As a result all the problems she’d had under windows remained (made worse by not having antivirus because “macs don’t need antivirus”) and she never got any of the firmware updates because Mac OS was never booted and never checked the update servers.
Boot camp was an involved process at the time, with plenty of scary warnings and no official support at all. But the end user never even saw them because the “tech” person in their lives just set it up anyway.
The result of this was a few hours of employee time and and out of policy assurance of return long after the normal return policy if the customer still wasn’t happy trying the proper Mac and Mac OS experience for a while.
No amount of disclaimers, not taking responsibility or sign tapping would have gotten a better response, and not taking that responsibility even though Apple explicitly disclaimed responsibility would have resulted in brand damage, costs in terms of returns and restocking and the loss of future sales that (later happy) customer represented.
In the end, customers aren’t impressed with your signs and disclaimers. If apple is the product vendor, they will demand apple fixes it.
At some point you're just going to have to expect users to grow and learn alongside the platform.
Edit: I should also note that Apple is perfectly fine with taking credit, as product vendor, for content that they are hosting on one of their apps, but not actually producing:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30191126
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/apple-podcasts/id525463029
2nd Edit:
> No amount of disclaimers, not taking responsibility or sign tapping
I've also wondered about that. Apple is a master of UX patterns. The whole green vs. blue message bubbles alone has become a social/cultural signifier. Let's say the UX was similarly tweaked if a user had sideloading enabled, maybe an unsightly header. If there were similar color filters or distinguishing UI that specified installed apps as not from the App Store. Wouldn't that be enough to create user behavior to distinguish between "official" App Store apps and sideloaded ones? Emergent behavior will arise from simple prodding. The green/blue division is real.
Denying service to a lot of users still means having to talk to them. And will leave users upset.
> you make it very visible in the UX that you are essentially in a "non-safe mode" (the actual security status probably varies, but Apple would probably go out of its way to hype up the potential of danger here), and you consent to all sorts of disclaimers disavowing Apple's responsibility here, and recommending they make backups before doing so. In fact maybe they could distinguish between pre- and post-sideloading enablement backups.
Also making security better, like sandboxing all sideloaded apps. But then you are suggesting that Apple takes a lot of time and effort to implement a way for them to lose revenue AND have upset users when their phones are bricked? Even though I want sideloaded apps, I can see why they don't want to do that
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/notarizin...
> Notarizing is not App Review.
This is where you're wrong about Apple. To Apple, it's Apple that makes the platform attractive. Developers are a dime a dozen to them. Especially indie / small scale devs.
If Apple cites copycat as a rejection, there's already likely 50 other apps just like it and the pattern of app is finally being rejected. There's still opportunity, but you need to be an 'early copycat' to make it so.
I don't think anyone is under the illusion that this isn't a Wordle copycat. Even the author knows it.
Are Wordle's mechanics even copyrighted?
Edit: It was trademarked only. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30378491
Based on the screenshots, it also looks like this whole app rejection process took place prior to the NYT purchase.
My understanding of intellectual property is that not only are the game mechanics not copyrighted, they aren’t even copyrightable. The code and assets that are used to implement the game mechanics are automatically protected by copyright but not the gameplay itself.
Bringing copyright into this discussion is an irrelevant distraction.
Edit: as both Apple and the NY Times are based in the US, I thought I’d double-check what the US legal situation is (in case American rules differ from the Berne convention). It turns out there’s a whole Wikipedia article dedicated to this subject¹:
> There is a long established Copyright principle called the idea–expression distinction, where Copyright is meant to protect a creator’s unique expression, without giving anyone a monopoly on a broader idea. The US Copyright Office specifically states that “Copyright does not protect the idea for a game, its name or title, or the method or methods for playing it. Nor does copyright protect any idea, system, method, device, or trademark material involved in developing, merchandising, or playing a game.”
Also: A Stack Exchange answer² provided a reference for the quotation cited in the Wikipedia article. The original US Copyright Office URL is now a 404 but here’s the archived version of their article: https://web.archive.org/web/20160403041628/http://www.copyri...
¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protecti...
However, even if you disagree with me, and think that there should be no app implementing Wordle-style gameplay on App Store. What's your opinion on Minesweeper, Tetris, or Tic-tac-toe? Should no iOS versions of those games exist? Remember that Apple only ever refers to the original Wordle website in their rejections and never even acknowledges the existence of Wordle clones.
What about Scrabble? If they were applying their rules consistently they would surely kick out Words With Friends, but what about Wordfeud? Should they kick out Wordfeud because Scrabble implementations already existed on the web?
1. Apple doesn't actually have a "no copycat apps" policy, instead its an unwritten and inconsistently enforced rule
2. In this case, providing a Swedish version of the game is actually good for users and arguably should be encouraged
https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#cop...:
4.1 Copycats
Come up with your own ideas. We know you have them, so make yours come to life. Don’t simply copy the latest popular app on the App Store, or make some minor changes to another app’s name or UI and pass it off as your own. In addition to risking an intellectual property infringement claim, it makes the App Store harder to navigate and just isn’t fair to your fellow developers.
We have no indication of the many, many other copycat apps that were let through may also already support Swedish. So if that low hanging fruit is covered, scratch that as a distinct feature...
I don't care what Apple or you think. I’m calling both you out for being insensitive or at best oblivious douchbags and telling you you’re wrong. You are free to disagree but your comment is going dangerously grey so citation needed on your assumption about how many others agree with you.
Further, they only pay such attention to Wordle clones because they were publicly called out on it. Other clones, even ones that violate IP laws, still get a free pass.
And it’s not as if they’ve stopped allowing Wordle clones in, either.
If we considered language differences as sufficiently distinct, would that also mean allowing companies that watch for any new interesting idea and replicate it in language X?