Beep Beep
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There's a reason iMessage is a sticking point for Android users and other iPhone-exclusive features like iCloud, Force Touch, AirDrop, etc aren't. iMessage is integrated into a service (SMS) that is designed to facilitate communication between phones. Apple has hijacked the UX of an existing messaging service in a way that creates two tiers of conversation. Furthermore, they've made conversations with non-iOS devices unnecessarily obtuse.
[1] https://avc.com/2019/12/adversarial-interoperability/
[2] https://blog.nektra.com/2020/01/12/reflecting-on-16-years-of...
I don't think it is a matter of better or worse products, I think it is more related to power and how you apply it.
What was really great about the Microsoft platform (since DOS [1]!) is that they accepted all kind of hackish stuff there. At the end they were winning because you can integrate almost everything into Microsoft ecosystem, even hooking/instrumenting the kernel! This implies more audience.
That enabled anyone to embrace the platform. Things are different now for many reasons (you cannot hook SaaS and there are all kind of security protections at the kernel and user level) but it is interesting that Microsoft embraced the developers, developers, developers! mantra. This is not a pro-Microsoft rant it is just an story that seems unnatural in 2023 where Apple and Google are at one point making worse things that shipping a new browser (Internet Explorer) in an antritrust way.
Amex runs one of the largest travel companies in the world (Amex Global Business Travel) and provides travel agency services for much of the Fortune 100. Much of that is bolstered up by card spend, so it makes sense that they would build lounges in airports that are designed to give people a reason to sign up for a Platinum card ($650/year; worth it) or enroll their company into their Corporate Card program.
Apple Card is free, and Apple isn't in the travel business. This synergy doesn't make sense.
> Keeping an exclusive feature exclusive is not “squashing competitors”. And chatting between different platforms is easy, secure, and free, using apps like WhatsApp and Signal.
I agree. This is what upset me the. most about Tesla being de facto forced into opening up their Supercharging network. They spent years building it at significant risk while big auto continued to sideline EVs and run smear campaigns against them. Now that Tesla is eating their lunch, they got to successfully complain that charging sucks and the only solution to it is to piggyback off of what Tesla did. Big Auto should have been forced to put their money where their mouth is and build their own networks.
Apple can *win* of sorts, but at the huge cost of reputation. Apple, you already have an integration for businesses -- it's called iMessage for Business, and you do it today. Just let Beeper use it and make money off of them. Or better yet, actually deliver on the Android and desktop clients.
There's also the question beyond green or blue -- is this a communications service or an Internet service. That has huge legal implications. If this is a communications service, say under Title II, Apple, make a deal before someone in the FCC makes one for you. You are not loved. Personally, I don't get this -- Beeper is small, Apple is cash rich. Just *buy* Beeper and its staff -- it's probably not even lunch money for Apple, declare this a new Apple product and everyone is happy.The precedent I’m watching for isn’t airport lounges[1], but Carterfone — in which it was successfully argued that AT&T, the dominant telephone service provider in the U.S., should allow compliant client devices to connect to its services.
Is Apple, with its second-place mobile OS, the dominant messaging provider? Does it have an effective monopoly on messaging nationwide? Is there no other way for people to exchange messages?
This all seems like a pretty steep hill to climb, particularly if it’s only in service to the marketing efforts of Google, the first-place mobile OS vendor, who has control of the actual most-widely-used default messaging app.
[1] TIL Gruber has an Amex.
See the Anil Dash article from yesterday re: internets about to get weird. The median HNer does not realize the regulatory stuff has moved from theoretical to concrete.
I appreciate the 1st versus 2nd mobile provider line of argument when it first dropped a few years back, but it's outmoded, it was a theoretical one invented for Apple that has been ruled out of being something real. (BA in Economics here: you never ever needed to be 1st place in a market to be anticompetitive)
Additionally, Google doesn't own SMS or RCS, that's why it took years and completely open infrastructure for telcos to allow RCS.
How much iMessage is used relative to other services depends on who you ask, I guess, but nobody seems to think it's in the top 3, and most don't even think it's in the top five. SMS is by all accounts #1, with things like Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger coming in after that, with WeChat climbing the charts globally.
Google doesn't own SMS, but I still contend Google is responsible for this "green vs. blue" construct, and it has has been a success in terms of mindshare.
It goes like this… Google considers Apple an important threat, and everyone has seen that Apple considers iMessage an important strength. To mitigate the threat of iMessage, Google and its allies position iMessage as a bigger threat than it is, paint it as more evil than it is, deploy the walled-garden proprietary rhetoric playbook, etc. Comment threads erupt with debates over all of this. Congress pays half-assed half-informed attention and says some hand-wavey stuff about competition and whatnot. Well-meaning and well-informed commenters pick up on competition as well, and start debating the anti-competitiveness of Apple, arguably begging the question, but earnestly considering Apple's marketplace practices all the same.
Any one or more of several things can happen out of this that benefit Google. iMessage and blue bubbles could go from being a mark of exclusivity to being more of a scarlet letter, blunting iMessage's competitive impact. Apple could be compelled to make concessions, commercially or technically, that "open up" (mandate support for third-party access) the iMessage product, kneecapping its exclusivity and thus blunting iMessages's competitive impact. Or maybe the kerfluffle helps drive people more toward the third-party messaging services that aren't having their closed, proprietary status challenged, like WhatsApp, WeChat, or, laughably, some Google chat product. Or maybe everyone just quits acting so much like iMessage is such a big deal, stealing some of Apple's thunder.
In any case, it's thoroughly ironic that this is all in light of iMessage working with SMS at all. If iMessage were truly closed and proprietary, iPhone users would still be using separate apps for SMS and for iMessage. Did Apple make a mistake allowing the Messages app to work with both iMessage and SMS? If it ends with the government forcing Apple to make changes to the iMessage product, and if that ends up putting iMessage at a disadvantage relative to the chat products not subject to such government regulation, then maybe.
If a future in which the government decides which chat apps win and lose is the one we want, then okay.
In the meantime, what we have is a situation in which Apple's chat app is competing on its own merits against other chat apps, to some extent because Apple's chat app already interoperates with SMS in a way that other chat apps do not, while those other chat apps are likewise competing on their own merits, and, as a result (and back to the original point), are enjoying a great deal more success by any metric than iMessage is.
There aren't any numbers that position iMessage at the top of the heap, unless you narrowly count only iPhone users who use only iMessage and SMS, which is of course a circular argument. The top of the actual heap is already controlled by those aligned with Google against Apple. Perceptions to the contrary are manufactured by those at the top of the heap, in service to themselves. If it's about users, this is a defensive campaign waged by the current market leadership to mitigate the impact of their biggest rival's most visible competitive weapon.
And by the way, nobody's actually even suffering. Everyone's making out hand over fist, all the way around. Except Beeper I guess.
Now if you want my raw opinion, which maybe you do if you've read this far? Google has embarrassed themselves repeatedly in messaging. This is them trying to make up for that and draw attention away from their own string of self-inflicted failures.
Otherwise, we might all still be using a Google-native chat product like we all were ten years ago.
I worked at Google for the last 7 years and would say generally you'd be very surprised how little actual care is about this. (does not obviate a single word you said, just, eager to point out one of the few things I learned there / from BigCo, how shockingly little care there is in general. (this is not a good thing. I am still s h o c k e d how little people inside the companies pay attention or think about this stuff, it was bizarrely sort of awkward and seen almost as a sign of maladjustment if you were into metadiscussion about industry and products))
Something that does somewhat obviate a bit of what you said is the green/blue thing is a Google construct. There is an ad campaign about it, yes, and its honestly bizarre how much someone in particular fixated on it, like, haven't heard from them in years except this. But that terminology existed farrrr before the ad campaign, long long looooong before. You can't even see the start of the ad campaign on trends.
Happy new year!
Basically, in capitalist societies, where the productivity of the populace is the main financial engine of the economy, what is the purpose of laws and regulations? I'd argue it to boost the productivity of the populace, and both promoting the common good and creating fair competition is a very important part of that. What's the point of opening a local business and investing in innovation if someone can just come along and steal it, as long as they have a moral justification? Which is why the Amex argument makes so much sense: hijacking the investment Amex made on 'moral' grounds makes absolutely no sense. But, as argued by refulgentis, messaging is now a vital service. And while Apple may not look like a monopoly now, they might soon.
Currently, 87% of US Teens have iPhones, and pretty much all of them plan on their next phone being an iPhone[1]. All these people know is iPhones, and without seeing the transition to iMessage, they have no idea what the underlying technology is.
I've seen this first hand, just finishing my undergrad a year ago. When I was an incoming freshman, I had a Google Pixel. In my Comp Sci and EE classes, there was a decent mix of iPhones and Androids, and whenever a group chat was made, nobody had issues using whatever app worked best.
But, I had another group of friends who I went to tailgates with. This group ballooned to 60+ people by Junior year, and I was the only Comp Sci/EE student, though there were a lot of other engineers. We organized tailgates through GroupMe, so they knew other apps existed. However, I was also the only person with an Android phone. Groupchats with me were out of the question. Even small, 3-4 person examples, nobody wanted to download Whatsapp or Signal or anything. Most of these people were genuinely nice people, but their entire perception of messaging and the iPhones superiority was rooted in iMessage. The people who were kind enough to listen to me explain how 'SMS is from literally before we were born, and of course Android phones can send high res pictures, just not through iMessage,' still couldn't be bothered to download another app. The perception was that I was high maintenance for having an Android, and I should just get an iPhone. And when my Pixel died, can you guess what phone I got?
I am pretty sure most of these people will grow up and start downloading other messaging apps when they encounter Android users in their professional careers. But an entire generation is growing up, taking their technology for granted (some people in Comp Sci didn't know how folders worked at first, they grew up just searching for things in Windows) and just assume Android is incapable of modern texting.
When I had the choice of staying connected to my social group, or getting the new Pixel I actually wanted, it didn't feel like much of a choice. And I think it's hard to argue the perception that caused that social pressure isn't by design. Even my parents were kind of annoyed the whole time I had an Android, as I was literally the only reason the entire family used Whatsapp (outside of my dad for professional reasons).
So to bring it back to the legal premise, lack of consumer choice hurts consumers. So while Apple is in their legal right to protect iMessage, I believe the laws need to be changed when the current laws aren't upholding that common good and allowing for fair and open competition.
I agree that forcing iMessage to open up is totally in Googles favor, and the duopoly itself is something that needs to be addressed as well. But it shouldn't be an excuse to not fix another issue.
If you read this whole thing, well thanks haha. I just couldn't get this off my mind, and want to practice more getting my thoughts written down. If you see holes in my reasoning, or if any of my comment is inappropriate, feel free to tear me apart, lol. Happy new year!
I read your comment and recognized much of what you were describing with the caveat that in my case during college it was WhatsApp and not iMessage as I grew up in Europe.
I personally preferred to use iMessage or at the very least some more security focused alternatives like Signal or Telegram, but any one of those options would be ridiculed even when dealing with groups that exclusively consisted of iPhone users.
Funny enough the concept of iMessage was completely foreign to them and would often draw confused looks, whereas offering up Signal or Telegram was deemed too much of a hassle.
Where we differ is mainly in the end conclusion. Namely that, while annoying, I don’t think there’s a role for government to prevent this “bullying” for lack of a better word, and I’m saying that as someone who generally applauds strong regulations.
The reason why I don’t think there’s a role for government isn’t out of a disdain for regulation, rather it’s because I feel this is a social issue that has to do with relationships between people and I feel uncomfortable with the idea that a government would regulate with the goal of influencing social relationships to this degree.
I eventually adopted a personal policy where I simply decided that if people wanted to reach me they can do so in the manner I prefer, instead of ceding ground like I used to do.
This has worked out surprisingly well, perhaps in part because I never really liked the SNR of group chats to begin with, so I didn’t feel like I was missing out on a lot by not being a part of group chats.
Other than the group chats I didn’t miss out on IRL group events or hanging out with people, but that’s in part because there was always someone letting me know of plans made in the group chat and vice versa I’d actively ask.
Ultimately it proved to be useful to be apt in good old analogous social skills, at least to the degree that people wanted me to be a part of things and thus invited me to them (this might also be a matter of choosing your friends wisely).
In other situations, where I wasn’t not always dealing with friends (e.g., group projects, etc.) it also helped that I sometimes was the organizer and in other times that people relied on my contributions.
> And I think it's hard to argue the perception that caused that social pressure isn't by design.
I’ve seen this sentiment before, but I’m not sure about this.
Apple has never expressed anything suggesting this, and their messaging around iMessage has always been consistent.
Some argue that this can be surmised from them building it into the Messages app and activating it based on the phone number, but to my SWE brain that just makes sense in terms of aiming for as little friction as possible when it was launched.
The fact that people independently exert social pressure or express annoyance isn’t enough to convince me that this was by design.
> So to bring it back to the legal premise, lack of consumer choice hurts consumers. So while Apple is in their legal right to protect iMessage, I believe the laws need to be changed when the current laws aren't upholding that common good and allowing for fair and open competition.
I agree that lack of consumer choice hurts consumers, but I think we differ on what constitutes choice.
I see a vibrant messaging service market where there are heaps of competitors. Fork big ones like WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, FB Messenger, whatever the latest one Google is pushing is called, to smaller obscure ones and even ones based on open protocols like Matrix.
On a macro scale there aren’t that many choices, there is Android which is relatively open with options to go at it entirely your own way and iOS which is closed and a very curated experience.
To me, breaking open iOS takes away a choice in a market with only two choices to begin with.
To others, and I suspect you as well, it counts as adding more choices, because the lens through which they look at choices is one that mainly focuses on choices within a specific platform.
Personally I wish that we could gain a third option instead of undermining the premise of one of the two current options.
Say, Android, iOS and a “GrayOS” that sits in between Android and iOS in terms of openness. While still far cry from a plethora of choices, it could at least cover the 3 main philosophies.
But who’s got time and money nowadays to develop an entire smartphone OS from the ground up and work to get manufacturers to adopt it?
Perhaps Windows Phone OS could’ve been this third option in an alternate timeline.
They don't allow for unlimited video. I ran into this the other day trying to send a 124mb video file they said was too large. It seems the current limit is 100mb from my googling. It was a 30-45 second clip (spatial video, which is why it was bigger). I hope Apple raises that limit. I was able to send it via iCloud in the end which was functionally the same expect it expires in a month.
Maybe if Amex also owned most of the airports and had their own airline? And you could only get into the lounge if you were also flying on Amex's airline? And while they let other companies operate lounges in their airports they made sure it was a pain in the ass to get to them?
At a certain point I aged into noticing it was sometimes longreads on one man's journey to find a way to justify a trillion dollar company, and it was tissue thin.
More concretely, if you do this, it's good to then go one more layer and imagine how the people you're trying to write off would respond to the analogy.
I don't think it's worth getting into here, it'll sound absurdist to people who don't believe the lounge sounds absurdist so I'll just be upsetting everyone, but if you run with Beeper's "this is for everybody's safety" position and the credit card lounge analogy...
For the sake of his analogy, American Express is not a dominant player in the credit card industry compared to mc/visa.
The real situation is this: Apple is intentionally hindering communication between people to coerce others into buying an iPhone. This is different from American Express, where you can bring guests with you into a Centurion lounge.
> > Earlier this month, Beeper introduced Beeper Mini, an interoperable messaging service that allows users of the Android mobile operating system to communicate with users of Apple’s iMessage service.
> Wrong. There is only one service at hand, iMessage, ...
It's interesting that the author completely ignores Beeper (the original, non-mini version), which IS an interoperable messaging client. You can message other Beeper users in the Beeper Community Channel (which operates on Matrix), other social networks (like LinkedIn, Instagram, WhatsApp, Signal, etc.), and up until recently, iMessage as well.
I find it difficult to take this post seriously when the author strawmans the opposing view's argument.
Of course, Apple is free to do whatever it likes - it's their servers after all. But trying to spin this into something it's not is imo disingenuous.
I'm not saying Apple should allow "freeloaders", I'm saying Apple should not abuse its position into coercing non-iPhone users by playing dirty. I'm sure this will fall on deaf ears though, just look at how they coerce users into using iCloud or making it so only the 1st party solution is able to run background tasks properly. And that's fine - I will continue to go around recommending anything but Apple products to others, and support politicians that advocate against big tech abusing their positions.
Is everything this guy writes this one-sided?
Yes.
I think the issue there was Microsoft using its OS position to force other companies to bundle their browser—and not a competitor’s—versus Apple doing all of this with only their own products.