I miss the days when chat wasn't fragmented across apps and platforms or could at least be unified in apps like Adium. Having to have a different app installed for myriad different contacts is, at best, irritating.
Before the there there the proprietary networks (Aol, CompuServe and others) along with BBS, IRC, Newsgroups, etc.
I literally don’t remember a time in my life where messaging hasn’t been fragmented.
I used it exclusively for years. It supported all those things (or I should say if someone had multiple ways to get to them, Adium supported at least one of them).
Back then a lot of services also used XMPP but that has been readily abandoned - Slack used to do XMPP, doesn't any more. Google used to do XMPP, doesn't any more...
I suppose one reason for it is E2E encryption.
There certainly was: https://www.macintoshrepository.org/989-msn-messenger-2-5-1
Apps like Trillian, Pidgin (Gaim), Adium actually allowed chatting across many platforms on the client side. To some extent they still can, with add-ons.
Modern XMPP is really great, Conversations is a fantastic client, supports E2E encryption, is open source, and makes minimal use of resources.
Beeper Cloud and Element One do this through matrix bridges, but Beeper has been trying to move this entirely into the client again, which is what Beeper Mini is an experiment for.
If Beeper Mini succeeds, it'll soon also support Signal, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger. If Apple succeeds, messaging will remain fragmented.
Or maybe referring to RL. You know, actually talking to someone on phone or in-person. Although then you have to deal with different accents, dialects, languages, and even regions specific lexicon.
Yes, and you could combine them all into a single multi-protocol messaging app like Adium, Trillian, Gaim, Pidgin, etc. to provide a single convenient unified experience.
But because Apple decided to make their messaging system a marketing tool instead of an interoperable app, we don't get to have a Trillian equivalent today.
They are both issues! Fragmentation in messaging is a real problem in the US, and iMessage has for a decade been the closest to a solution for iPhone users. Users' frustration with fragmentation pushes them into the app where 1) they know the message will get there, and 2) there's a 50% chance the experience won't suck. iMessage's existence in a fragmented market and refusal to interoperate all but guarantees the fragmentation will continue.
The folks complaining are a vocal minority of Android users. Everyone else doesn't care.
Unsiloing messaging isn't some quick fix. It would be like saying "we have all these forums like HN, Reddit, Twitter, SpaceHey, Facebook they should all share a global identity system and be able to be used all by a single app with the same APIs." Like we can't even make a generic ActivityPub client.
Since the old and proprietary protocols are only sustained by the network effect, they lose users, and eventually support for them gets dropped.
It's a method of transitioning from a collection of proprietary systems with their own network effects to an open one, by temporarily supporting both. For obvious reasons the operators of the proprietary systems don't want to be subject to that competition, which is they same reason they shouldn't be allowed to shut it out.
https://www.pidgin.im/plugins/?publisher=all&query=&type=
No iMessage, of course, but you might find it helpful to see the list of supported clients.
the original apple messages app did AOL messenger and others.
then it gradually forced you off of them into imessage.