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Comment by shreyansh_k | Hacker News Reader

This seems to be Beeper's insincere attempt at dressing up their grievances to appear as if they were in advantage of the [Apple's] customer.

Apple has made it clear that they won't bring iMessage to Android. People who choose to invest in Android phones know they won't get access to iMessage.

It seems a bit entitled behaviour for someone to feel like Apple should be forced to bring iMessage to Android for any reason besides Apple's own choice, and that they know better than Apple on how to run Apple's business.

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> It seems a bit entitled behaviour

What's entitled behavior is big tech thinking it can dictate how and where we use technology and services. Why should we be roped into serving Apple's interests and ignoring own own? Beeper can pursue their own interests while benefiting users, that's hardly a negative.

I'm sure if Ford dictated how and where you drove your car you'd be outraged, but we should kowtow to the likes of Apple?

> I'm sure if Ford dictated how and where you drove your car you'd be outraged, but we should kowtow to the likes of Apple?

I just wouldn't buy a Ford.

What if Ford made it so that their vehicles drive worse when non-Ford vehicles were on the road, and then when confronted about it told all of their customers that they should convince their neighbors to buy a Ford to solve the problem?

> What if Ford made it so that their vehicles drive worse

Then you really wouldn't buy a Ford. Problem solved?

It's not entitled, it's pushing back against a gigantic company exploiting network effects to create user lock-in, because that's easier than competing on the merit of your products.

Speaking for myself, I think iMessage is a good product, and it's one of the (many) reasons I use Apple devices as daily drivers.

You make it sound like people only use iMessage because of the network effect/lock-in, and clearly aren't considering that perhaps said network effect exists at least in part because iMessage is just...good.

People absolutely do buy Apple devices purely because of the lock-in. Many people in my own family have. Obviously there are others that just prefer iMessage on its own quality, that goes without saying (which is why GP didn't mention it).

If the product is so great why doesn't Apple make it available on more platforms? The answer is because it's not a product, it's a marketing tool. And a very successful one based on the widespread bullying it has caused.

If Zelda is so great why doesn’t Nintendo make it available on more platforms? Being able to run Nintendo games is a prime feature of the Switch product, and being able to run Apple software and services is a prime feature of an iPhone product. By your definition anything useful about an item is simply a marketing tool?

It’d be a very different world if nothing was allowed to have unique access to anything. It might even be better, but it would be a long way from this current version of capitalism.

The answer is the same: because their platform is not very good. So if buyers had the chance they'd instead buy Zelda games for the PC for instance.

It would be a real problem if Nintendo had a monopoly on good games on the US.

Not many Apple products get made for non Apple devices.

Give me a fucking break, “bullying” for Christ’s sake!

They invented a nice thing, made it available on their hardware, and now people like yourself who refuse to buy their hardware for whatever reason are salty you can’t play on the platform so result to juvenile arguments like “I’m being bullied” to try and get your own way. It’s fucking ridiculous and you need to grow up.

EDIT: that should be “resort to”.

Apple did not "invent" instant messaging.

It's fine to use it if you think it's good, hell it probably is. What isn't nice is when I get forced to buy an iphone start using imessage because everyone else is when I don't want that, which is what is happening.

If iMessage is so good, why do so many people want to use Beeper instead? If I thought my Keurig were a good coffee machine, I wouldn't go out of my way to install a different coffee machine.

Now apply this logic to any other company product, maybe even your own or the company you work for and tell me if this sounds as ridiculous to you as it does me.

Most companies don't have network effect with lock-in, and especially those we depend to live our everyday lives: I can send money to my buddy who uses a different bank, I can send emails to gmail users from my yahoo account , I can also refuel my car at any station and not be tied to one brand. Imagine being locked in to any of those.

There are of course a lot of companies with lock-in out there, but none with such big network effect deeply intertwined with peoples' communication and personal lives (in the US).

The thing is: it is not locking in. At the moment through SMS and it will support RCS next year.

And RCS will solve it all. If group chats and high quality media work, people will only complain about the one thing they hate most:

The bubbles will still be green.

But I am from Europe, we don't care around here and I don't like iMessage that much. Compared to Telegram/Whatsapp, it's slow at loading old messages, has sync issues and only gut swipe to reply this year.

1. You cannot opt to use SMS on Apple Messages when talking to someone. If they are registered on iMessage, you are forced to use it. This happens transparently, automatically, and for the most part, silently. This helps to create the illusion that Apple devices are just better at texting, and anything else is old and shitty. When in reality, Apple itself only supports their own proprietary messaging system, and an ancient texting protocol that is bad.

2. I hope you are right that RCS will solve everything once Apple implements it, but I don't have confidence it will. The biggest problem is how they handle group chats: If iMessage group chats cannot seamlessly convert into RCS group messages (without duplication or splitting) then it will solve it well enough. This is unlikely to happen unfortunately

You absolutely can disable iMessage for yourself and text anyone using regular texts (SMS) only, you are never forced into iMessage. You can deregister your phone number on Apple's website without any Apple device.

Also, where is the "illusion" about "being better at texting"? Apple is literally coloring the bubbles differently to tell you that _iMessage is not the same_. How much more explicit can it get?

> And RCS will solve it all.

If the deployment is anywhere close to how it went in Australia, RCS will be a bumpy road with many people turning it off to get messages delivered. My usual experience for months now is: send a message, get a "can't deliver" notification an hour later, resend by SMS, next message delivers through RCS and switches the conversation, repeat.

You can send a text to any user, regardless of service. I don’t understand your analogy.

We're talking here about literally the most valuable public company in the world and a product (iPhone) used on average dozens of times and several hours daily by nearly 50% of the US population. I'm generally a free market kind of guy but even I admit that at this scale it is OK to apply different standards.

Speaking as a life-long Apple user who mostly thinks the rampant attacks on Apple are basically the same as the ones people have been throwing for 30+ years, just with "Apple is dying, no one should use their stuff" replaced with "Apple is too big/tyrannical, no one should use their stuff"...

I agree.

But.

The solution to that is to get antitrust regulators to step in and use the force of the law to change things.

Not to cheer on a third party using security vulnerabilities to piggyback onto Apple's service and charge a subscription for it.

There is no security vulnerability, that is FUD. They're charging a subscription to fix Apple's bugs that intentionally cripple communication communication with Android phones for Apple's own benefit and nobody else's.

Now apply this logic to any other company product

Ok...third parties should be able to sell ink that works in your HP printer, or coffee pods that work in your Keurig, or tires that work on your Ford.

tell me if this sounds as ridiculous to you as it does me

It sounds not ridiculous at all. The only difference with Beeper is that there is some marginal cost to handling messages, but we all know that's not Apple's real problem with it.

  …third parties should be able to sell

To take that analogy a step further: third parties can sell messaging apps for iOS.

Any other company using network effect to force lockin should have the same logic applied, yes. That feels like a pretty sane philosophy to me.

To turn it around, which company do you see this not applying ? What services with a strong position do you see justify to abuse it to lock users ?

I'm curious, before (and even while!) they do their assigned thought exercises, would you mind explaining to the rest of us how ridiculous it is?

That doesn't seem right. People can also push back against Apple by voting with their wallets.

Apple has been able to create their ecosystem by exerting control over it. If someone doesn't like it, they can start their own business giving people what people want. Now, that's another way of pushing against any gigantic company or Apple.

> It seems a bit entitled behaviour for someone to feel like Apple should be forced to bring iMessage to Android for any reason besides Apple's own choice, and that they know better than Apple on how to run Apple's business.

It is simultaneously possible for it to appear entitled, while also recognizing how extremely restrictive, anti consumer and anti competition Apple is. And in this fight of a trillion dollar company vs something a little bigger than a startup, it's fun to root for the small guys who are hitting back at that restrictedness, sometimes even successfully.

It can be agreeable to an extend that Apple seem like an extremely restrictive, anti consumer and anti competition. But, the other side (Android), which has been positioned open, pro-consumer and pro-competition doesn't seem to be true to its roots or any better anyways. Android is mostly dominated by Samsung and Samsung is heavily pushing their own ecosystem of apps, just like every other company, and most brands want to lock in their users too.

It's a sad state of affairs.

You can push your own ecosystem of apps and still allow your customers to replace them. I'm not aware of a Samsung app or service that cannot be swapped out. And I struggle even more to find a Samsung component that is designed to create network effect lock in like iMessage is. And Apple Messages can't be swapped out, it is the only texting app on iOS. You can install Signal or Whatsapp or whatever, but you can only talk to other people who have those apps installed. You cannot use them to talk to any phone number like a texting app can.

RCS can't be swapped out, Google hasn't opened the API so you are forced to use Google or Samsung messages app.

Out of curiosity why does this matter? Do iPhone users not use WhatsApp or Messenger? Is this a USA specific thing? As a UK Android user I've never used iMessage and don't see any reason why I'd need or want to.

USA specific — Americans pretty much universally use SMS messages, which ends up being iMessage for Apple devices.

Huh. How does that work with multimedia? Do US carriers not differentiate between SMS and MMS?

They don’t, it “just works” (to the degree MMS can work at all) — which means iMessage is perfectly positioned.

Ah so do "free texts" in the USA include MMS? That might explain the continued usage. In the UK MMS often aren't included, if anything they're charged stupidly high, so you'd never send a pic via text message.

To give you another perspective, I’m UK based too and use iMessage daily to stay in touch with my family and close friends. Every now and then I’ll have bad signal (or maybe the recipient does? I’m not entirely sure…) and whatever I’m sending will be sent as an MMS. It happens so rarely it doesn’t really register, and I’d wager it costs me less than a quid a year (on EE, but I assume most MMOs have similar MMS pricing).

On most plans in the US, unlimited texting is the only option, and there is no differentiation between SMS and MMS. It's all free with your plan.

yes

To clarify:

On the iPhone, the Messages app handles SMS.

It also handles iMessage.

They are two completely different protocols, with iMessage's featureset being a superset of SMS's. If you are conversing with someone else with iMessage (either through an iPhone or another Apple device), Messages will automatically use iMessage; otherwise, it will use SMS. (If you prefer to use SMS, you are welcome to disable iMessage on your phone or other Apple device.)

iMessage goes over the IP network, not a side-channel in the cellular system the way SMS does—so you have to have either Wifi coverage or cellular data available; if you don't, as a matter of fact, it falls back to SMS within the same conversation, provided you are conversing with someone else who is identified by a phone number, and not just an Apple ID.

Carriers typically charge the actual media portion of MMS (e.g. the photo or video) as data.

I'm not sure how universal that is, but it doesn't really matter when data plans are almost always unlimited. After all, iMessage also goes through cellular data.

I guess egoism is so entrenched in the USA that choosing a platform that all your friends and relatives can use to communicate to is just too much for them.

People use Beeper Mini because the Apple users they text with want them to. There's zero reason for two Android users to talk over iMessage using Beeper Mini. RCS provides nearly all the same benefits. But when the social pressure is for you to buy an iPhone that you don't want, it's sure tempting to just install an app so that Apple friends can stop complaining, and stop cutting you out of group chats.

If no one used iMessage, the value of Beeper Mini is zero. The value is smoothing the interaction with people who assume everyone is using an iPhone, and treat it as an annoyance when they don't. So effectively saying "just buy an iPhone to use iMessage" means "just buy an iPhone so you can talk to your iPhone friends".

How is being able to send iMessages to your Android-user friends from your iPhone not to your advantage as an Apple customer?

It's not to Apple's advantage, though.

That does not address my question.

You’d be surprised how many people in the US have purely iPhone social circles. They won’t care.

The graph is almost disjoint. Outside tech nerds, android == poor.

You're still advantaged should you ever make friends with an Android user in the future, or at the very least you're not disadvantaged since you would not have had any difference made to you.

> to appear as if they were in advantage of the [Apple's] customer

They are. This was perfectly normal and expected functionality once upon a time, back in the days when Adium/Pidgin were still useful.

There are reports of kids being bullied (this [1] is an example from a Tell HN post), but I have anecdotally heard similar cases because they were "different" for having a "non-blue bubble" phone.

When there is broad agreement that apps like Tiktok and Instagram are toxic for teenagers, I have no idea why this aspect of Apple's lock-in hasn't received as much attention. It's way more serious than just some users wanting blue bubbles when your applications are common enough that they can cause social isolation and bullying in schools.

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[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35014499

Entitled behavior is Apple dictating what code I can run on my non-Apple servers and devices. They can keep blocking it, and people will keep finding workarounds. That's the nature of DRM. It's not a battle they can win.

They don’t dictate that at all. What they do dictate is what devices are able to connect to their network and utilize their push notification service.

> Apple has made it clear that they won't bring iMessage to Android.

Apple might disagree. https://9to5mac.com/2023/11/16/apple-rcs-coming-to-iphone/

That’s not iMessage.

RCS is a replacement for SMS.

It's pretty much iMessage.

No, it’s not even close.

RCS is a totally different messaging protocol.

It’s pretty much to iMessage as iMessage is to SMS.

Reread what I said. I did not say "you are wrong" or "RCS is iMessage". I said "Apple might disagree with you" and "RCS is pretty much iMessage". Why don't you stop trying to make me seem wrong by putting words into my mouth.

This is the original message you replied to:

‘Apple has made it clear that they won't bring iMessage to Android.’

This was your reply:

‘Apple might disagree.’ and you then proceeded to supply a link to 9to5Mac about Apple interfaces iMessage to RCS.

TFA states:

“But at the same time, iMessage isn’t going anywhere. It will continue to be the messaging platform used for all communication between iPhone users. RCS will simply supplant SMS and MMS and exist separately from iMessage when available. SMS and MMS will also continue to be available as a fallback when needed, Apple says.

This is not Apple opening up iMessage to other platforms. Instead, it’s the company adopting RCS separately from iMessage”

The very link you supplied disproves your point.

iMessage is iMessage. RCS is RCS, and SMS is SMS.

Sorry, but iMessage is not RCS.

Base RCS for example does not support E2EE. iMessage does.

You can claim they’re the same as much as you’d like, but their only similarities is that iMessage will send messages to RCS and support the native carrier chosen RCS features.

https://www.engadget.com/what-is-rcs-and-how-is-it-different...

> This is not Apple opening up iMessage to other platforms.

Which I never claimed.

> Sorry, but iMessage is not RCS.

The only person who keeps repeating "iMessage is RCS" is yourself.

> You can claim they’re the same as much as you’d like, but their only similarities is that iMessage will send messages to RCS and support the native carrier chosen RCS features.

Less than 1% of iphone users even know what e2ee is. Less than .01% disable that icloud backup thing that makes iMessage e2ee useless for them and their contacts.

If iOS has a messaging system that is capable of things imessage today is capable of and is interoperable with android then the only people for whom the separation between imessage and RCS matters is pedantic nerds, no offence.

Is Beeper’s whole purpose to satisfy people’s vanity to have blue bubbles or what’s wrong with plain ol’ SMS?

SMS is not end-to-end encrypted (E2EE). The purpose of Beeper Mini (not to be confused with Beeper Cloud, which is not E2EE) is to allow Android users to send encrypted texts to Apple iMessage users the same way iMessage users can send E2EE texts to each other.

An Android user and an iOS user could both use a third-party app like Signal. But Beeper Mini's main feature is maintaining encryption for chats between Android users and iMessage users, saving the Android users the need to convince iMessage users to switch to a different messaging app. 1. The benefit of E2EE applies to the users on both ends, including iMessage users. 2. With Beeper Mini instead of an E2EE-dedicated multi-platform app like Signal, only one side of the communication pair needs to install something.

Beeper Mini Apple doesn't want to make an iMessage implementation for Android.

aside from the magic features not working; SMS costs money.

On some mobile contracts it's pretty close to free these days, but international SMS's are certainly not. - not sure it's a common use-case but it definitely is a common use-case for me.

Ironically, iMessage not being available on Android causes the other messenger apps to be more appealing. Whatsapp/Facebook Messenger. -- because they can be more ubiquitous across friends.

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