Is it free? I have it bundled as part of my hardware purchases. Is there somewhere to get it without paying?
I have no idea how to compute the actual price. It really isn’t any better than SMS anyway, so I put the value at $0.
Depends on what you do with it. You can send much higher-quality photos and videos over iMessage than SMS/MMS. You can also do things like play games (chess, for example) entirely inside iMessage.
If you're just sending short messages of plain text, yeah, it's not much of an improvement.
You can only get Apple Fitness on Apple devices, but you also have to pay for it.
Imo the only thing that should be done here is only valid Apple IDs should be able to use this service. Then paying customers are the ones using it. Problem solved, right?
1) you have a device
2) you have software
If you buy the software, it is paid.
If you do not buy the software, its free.
If the software is not available for your device that does make it not free; you just have an incompatible device.
Any other take on this is subscribing to some bias.
Paper clips, are not relevant.
There is a distinction, to be fair, between “free open source software” which is free and you can take it and port it to your device if you want.
…but no one is claiming iMessage is FOSS, and when someone says it is “free”, that is not what they mean.
Look up “windows oem” using your favorite search engine.
Maybe it seems confusing because OS X isn't sold as a standalone product, but consider how Apple cracks down on Hackintoshes. They definitely consider it stealing.
The iMessage app is incompatible with non Apple devices - there is no iMessage app available period outside of those that run on Apple operating systems.
The APN is not licensed for “public” third party usage unless permission is explicitly and expressly granted by Apple.
So yes, your non Apple device is 100% incompatible with iMessage, and unauthorized usage of the underlying APNs is illegal under the Apple Terms of Service.
I never said that. The Apple iMessage APNS is proprietary - and Apple explicitly state it cannot be used without their blessing.
In addition Apple have the right to terminate any Apple IDs that they feel are being used to circumnavigate their approved service access.
I’d be grateful if you’d stop putting words into my mouth here. I’m not claiming any analogies- just facts.
You are the one asking if iMessage is “free” (as in beer) software.
It comes with iOS - the license of which is provided free of charge for each user to run on their respective device.
I never made any statement about Beeper - I was talking singularly and only about Apple.
No, i was asking if it was free in respect to beeper, because the beeper not being free is literally the comment i replied to. I feel like you're looking at my comment in isolation, but expecting me to keep your comment in context - which also seems to be lacking context.
You: “Is it free? I have it bundled as part of my hardware purchases. Is there somewhere to get it without paying?”
Not sure where the confusion is. Seems from the quoted text you were expressly asking if iMessage was free or not.
If not, what is the “it” you were referring to in your reply? Your initial response did not seem to compare cost to beeper.
Anyway, i'm just saying that the mints on a hotel pillow are "free" too, but if you cannot acquire them without paying for another service or hardware, they're hardly free.
Best i can give iMessage is that it's complementary. Please correct me if i'm wrong, but almost no one gets iMessage without paying Apple for an associated product to gain access. It's a mint on your pillow.
Both are essentially the same thing.
I'll concede all day long that i may be using the wrong definition, that's definitely not my objection. However free is pretty simple. Entrance fees or any price blocking you from the "free" thing is in any practical sense, hardly free. At least imo.
A lot of things are free if you ignore what you paid for in the first place.
Out of curiosity, how would you even define what is free and what isn't? Lets say a snickers bar released an April Fools edition where you paid the standard price, but only for the wrapper. The snickers bar inside is free. Or the silly paper clip example i gave, with beeper mini. Is there some definition that you would see apt to describe these as practically (as in, how people would interpret them) not being free?