Hacker News Reader

Comment by zuppy | Hacker News Reader

I honestly don't understand why everyone misses a very important fact: iMessage is not an app, it's a service that uses Apple's servers and Apple's engineers to maintain it and you have not paid for it. No, as an Android user you do not have a right for free access, use SMS for that. It would have been nice if there was an Android iMessage App, but demanding for someone else to pay for you is dishonest.

View on HN

If you want to be pedantic in this way, SMS isn't free, either. You pay your carrier for access to that (and their servers and engineers to support & maintain it).

Technically a carrier is only needed for receiving messages and not sending. Sending a SMS to someone who is on AT&T is just as simple as sending an email to [phone number]@txt.att.net.

No need for SMS. There are more than 10 free messaging apps, starting with Signal.

To add to that, in most countries iMessage has irrelevant market-share and I know people who don't even know what that word means (we tech people live in bubbles). So an Android iMessage is not really sought after in most places anyway.

I honestly don't understand why everyone misses a very important fact: iCloud email is not an app, it's a service that uses Apple's email servers and Apple's engineers to maintain it. No, as an Android user you do not have a right for free access to other people's iCloud inboxes. It would have been nice if there was an Android email client, but asking for someone else to pay for you is dishonest.

Well yep, that's how it is. You don't get iCloud email account without an Apple device.

That's not what I said, mister throwaway :)

So what did you say? You actually want access to others' inboxes? I don't understand what that means. That's usually password protected and considered private data.

They highlighted that the original logic was somewhat faulty, and could be applied to say "Non-apple users should not be allowed to send emails to Apple users, because they have not paid Apple to maintain the iCloud email infrastructure!".

iCloud Mail is a service that allows your user agent to connect and send messages to other email servers.

iMessage is a service that allows your phone to connect and send messages to other iMessage users.

Use email if that's what you need. Nobody forces you to use iMessage/Telegram/WhatsApp/...

> Nobody forces you to use iMessage/Telegram/WhatsApp/...

The EU strongly disagrees with this statement in case of the the latter two, which is why they are being targetted by the DMA and must provide interopability so that you cannot continue to be forced to use them.

If iMessage had users in the EU, the same would have applied there.

Being forced to use something does not mean you are being held at gunpoint or that no other options exist. For messaging apps, being in a location where your entire social network uses one app is indeed a case where the average person ends up forced to use that app as picking another option means not talking to your social network (unwanted) or having to convert everyone else (unreasonable). This harms both competition and users.

The EU strongly disagreed about many things that it later admitted were wrong (or just quietly changed its stance on), for example nuclear energy policy or biofuel additives. It also kind of does its own thing without really consulting the general population. Practically nobody even knows what's happening there in my country.

We are discussing Apple's submission to the EU regulators.

Yes, one of the newer things EU is wrong about.

"They have previously been wrong, therefore they cannot be right" and "I do not know what they are doing, therefore they cannot be doing the right thing"?

I think that clearly marks the end of any useful discussion.

so? in both cases you are using Apple's precious servers

I don't think your arguing in good faith. I dont like to throw around the word "shill" but it gets hard sometimes.

Assuming you are just misunderstanding. The comment about iCloud email is talking about interoperability. Where someone with a gmail account should be able to send an email to someone with iCloud account. And vice versa.

The argument is that it is not OK to prevent this sort of interoperability, and requiring this does not mean you have serve the users of other services with servers and hosting, you just have to allow WhatsApp to send messages to imessage and vice versa. Just like email

Reply on news.ycombinator.com