I have seen lots of comments like “well we need some kind of solution to this problem, whether it’s Apple launching an android app or a 3rd party”, and to be honest with you, I don’t even understand the problem. Maybe it’s cause I’m not from the US and can’t wrap my head around the social implications of message bubble hues?
- It's not just bubble colors, those don't matter. What does matter is that image and especially video quality are absolute crap when texting between iPhone and Android, and almost all iPhone users in the US use iMessage instead of another platform like Whatsapp, so the experience tends to suck on both ends when texting between an iPhone and Android. It's all for vendor lock-in and it helps no one but Apple. Look up the "buy your mom an iPhone" bit.
- Not everyone cares about the private property rights of a trillion dollar corporation. I definitely don't! I think Apple can get fucked, and I think it's cool if people find ways to exploit their APIs to do things Apple doesn't want them to do.
What does matter is that image and especially video quality are
absolute crap when texting between iPhone and Android
Oh. You mean MMS sucks? Why don't you complain to your carrier then? As of 2023 American carriers support attachments of roughly one megabyte. But the CTIA recommended supporting attachments of at least five megabytes… *checks notes*… back in 2013.
Remind me why this is an Apple issue?
I think Apple can get fucked
The poor MMS experience is entirely down to carriers creating a mess of it, just like they did with RCS. Or have you forgot that T-Mobile had to run (and probably still is, but I'm too lazy to check) both a Google and non-Google RCS stack to get a semblance of interoperability?
Here's Verizon's list of supported file formats:
https://www.verizon.com/support/knowledge-base-15892/
Wanna bet that they mean MPEG 4 part 2 and not MPEG 4 part 10?
Not sending high quality video via MMS isn't an Apple issue, it's a carrier one.
What's the threshold below which we should care?
I dunno: to me, Apple's "rights" stop at their doorstep, and if they don't want their service to be accessible to third-party clients, they are more than welcome to just not build such a service (as we honestly don't have any reason to provide legal defense for this one specific business model).
We don't merely generally avoid extending rights over other people... usually we protect people from incursions into their rights by companies, whether by contractual or even by technological means: we have many laws and legal precedents designed to ensure interoperability, fair markets, and basic things such as "legal ownership" (see the right of first sale doctrine, for example).
When Beeper sues Apple (which I do hope is their next step), it is not at all obvious that Apple will get to keep doing what they are doing here... and, even without Beeper's involvement, we're already seeing government regulators and politicians rightfully poking around at the situation, ready to provide some clarification to the rules in order to prevent this kind of thing.
That is exactly what they did. Or rather didn’t. They haven’t sued beeper, or retaliated in any way. They merely blocked beeper from hacking into their network. It is crazy to think that beeper could sue them for that.
If this was YOUR network, would you be fine letting some third party, who’s not paying you, to use it as they wish and profit from that use? I really doubt it. If you say sure, that’s totally fine, I will challenge anyone here to prove it. Accordingly, please post your WiFi network credentials and GPS location here. We can use your network just like Beeper used Apple’s. Then sell access to others through our connection.
I use Whatsapp for all my European friends, but getting Americans to adopt a different messaging platform is as unlikely as getting the Dutch to start using iMessage... So we're left with this situation, and it will continue until Apple/Google adopt RCS and cross-platform messaging becomes as seamless an experience as iMessage.
…because the functionality is a paid product feature that exists on their hardware and software? Because it’s a…product feature??
MMS was dated when I had a Motorola flip phone in high school, I’m not surprised it doesn’t handle 4K video lol.
You can blame your carrier for that.
It wasn't that long ago that MMS too large simply failed, or lived in limbo. I'm not a big fan of low res either, but it's absolutely an improvement and beyond what they need to do.
No. They love the iMessage experience and iMessage inertia means that people without iPhones have to negotiate to get people to use something else. It's not even necessarily malicious or obvious, but it does happen. I was a little hurt when I realized I had been left out of certain group communications that were happening over iMessage when I didn't have an iPhone.
>but for some reason they refuse to use any of the numerous free alternatives?
I guess you could say that, but it's more that the inertia pulls them back to iMessage. I'd try to get people to use Signal/Telegram/Whatsapp/Messenger and at some point, they'd stop checking those apps and I'd have to send them a regular SMS. I was the only person they were checking the app for, so any lapse in our communication could result in forgetting to check the app (and even having it get automatically offloaded).
It's also kind of like being the only vegan in a group of meat eaters. They just get invited to less dinner parties when people don't want to go somewhere that accommodates the vegan's diet. That creates a social rift even if it's not obvious.
Android guy here, so I may be out of the loop, but why do they have to check the apps at all? Shouldn't incoming messages from any app be shown as a push notification?
100% this. And sometimes I'll get logged out of a service and miss the notification that it happened, so I'll go quite awhile blissfully unaware that I'm no longer reachable. Had exactly that experience recently with Google Chat. Didn't see the message until I noticed the email it got converted to.
I'm noticing a pattern here where people who side with Apple on this issue rephrase what people say, almost to the point of making it bear no resemblance to what was originally said, to make it seem trivial or, in your own words, a "weak basis for indignation". If you need clarification, just ask for it instead of assuming. I'd also ask that you try to charitably interpret what people are saying and use empathy instead of being so dismissive about it.
The issue I'm describing here is quite the opposite: specifically because the chat application isn't generating enough notifications being that it isn't the primary messaging application--remember, they were only using it to communicate with me--it's easy to forget about, especially in a sea of other push notifications. This is just one element of the whole problem as well (lest we get into the circular argument where someone suggests some other suboptimal solution when the obvious answer is to provide some way to have iMessage on Android in whatever way Apple sees fit). It's not the only issues I and others have with iPhone dominance and iMessage only being on Apple devices.
I also don't care if what they're doing is legal or not, they're still fucking with my social network.
But it seems that your argument is exactly as subtle and indirect as I proposed. It’s not that Apple are stopping or even discouraging you from using third-party chat apps, it’s that your communication patterns makes using multiple apps slightly less convenient, hence you wish the first party one was more powerful.
It is quite amazing that you feel that they are “fucking with your social network” for not not making Messages more cross platform.