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Comment by talldayo | Hacker News Reader

HN tells me that there's only one more step left after embracing and extending. Apple didn't make some mistake putting iMessage and SMS in the same app, they want you reliant on their service so that SMS seems (rightfully) poor by comparison.

There would be nothing wrong with that if Apple wasn't equally as miserly with that power as the carriers they want to valiantly protest against. I'm no fan of cell carriers either, but now that we see Apple's end-goal I don't think their cause is righteous at all. In the friendliest of interpretations, they are a competing alternative enabled by disproportionate first-party integration on Apple's behalf. It doesn't take long to extrapolate their motives for deliberately neglecting cross-platform interoperability to bolster their market presence.

If it harms the market, prevents fair competition, and doesn't benefit the general public, there is no rational reason to let iMessage persist the way it is today.

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The problem with "prevents fair competition" with regards to iMessage is that there were plenty of chances for fair competition and others (particularly Google) kept messing it up. How many chat platforms did they blow through?

I can absolutely install other messaging apps (WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, etc.) on my iPhone and contact other people on an Android device using that app. The thing that keeps me from doing so isn't the fact that said applications are locked out of a decent percentage of the phone market, but that the network effect helps Apple. Most of my friends don't know, or care to know, what Signal is, even though it's a better application re: privacy than iMessage.

> How many chat platforms did they blow through?

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/a-decade-and-a-half-...

Which, to me, demonstrates the core problem: Apple succeeded by remaining focused. Google failed because it has some form of institutional ADHD when it comes to messaging services. Google even had a six year head start on Apple with Google Talk, and still managed to fail because they couldn't remain focused.

People are upset that Apple succeeded, but they aren't even running the most popular messaging service out there.

It is so funny how differently the Messages app is viewed.

In NA, Messages is the true source of Apple’s power and the key to their evil anticompetitive empire, the only ones who can stop their masterplan are the men in suits from the DOJ.

Outside of NA, it’s the app you use to get TOTP codes and phishing attempts.

You’re right that the real story isn’t that Google missed out competing with iMessage, it’s that they missed out competing with WhatsApp despite having control over the OS and being able to bundle their own messaging app!

Google is not even competitive with third tier apps such as Viber which is really funny. I read HN compulsively yet I don’t know what the name of Google’s current chat app is or even if they have one.

Google isn't really part of Apple's messaging roadmap aside from RCS (which is also not great). For the most part, for better (and absolutely worse), Google's default messaging app on Android has always been SMS. There were no cheeky attempts to weasel Google Talk or Hangouts into my texting app; they were separate things.

It's a mistake to assume that Google wants to pick a fight with carriers just because Apple does. Their goal isn't to replace SMS or use it as an obtuse marketing stunt, and whether or not that's the right or wrong decision is a hilariously irrelevant distraction to the actual problem. SMS sucks, and replacing it is either a community effort or a regulated one. Apple chose "regulated" a long, long time ago by making an insular service their replacement candidate.

WhatsApp too is a problem in it's own right; but again, it's a strawman when we're discussing Apple's specific damages (which neither Google nor Meta copy in-full). Apple uniquely uses their vertical integration to create a less competitive environment for third-parties, which is damned for scrutiny everywhere they try it. There is no reality where Google announces that WhatsApp comes preinstalled in the messaging app without immediate and legitimate antitrust bundling accusations.

Generally companies need to do something wrong before being regulated, as self regulation is the goal. There’s a lot of opinions in this post as well, with “extrapolating”. Have you asked the actual customers how they feel? I’m an Apple customer, and really wish the Android customers would focus on their own wants and needs. Blue bubbles are not a need.

> HN tells me that there's only one more step left after embracing and extending.

It is a wild projection, a common one amongst members of this esteemed congregation.

Removing SMS supports invalidates and revokes the 3G/4G/5G network compliance with standards and certification, whether you are Apple or an invisible fifth column. It also voids the right to display the very same 3G/4G/5G sign in the upper part of the smartphone screen and opens a very expensive path to litigation from all sorts of patent holders from the 3/4/5G patent pool.

You don't have to remove support to extinguish a protocol; just sufficiently degrade it to the point that it's unusable.

With that in mind (and how outrageously useless SMS is in 2024), I think you can absolutely accuse Apple's reluctance to standardize as extinguishing. Unless they correct course, iMessage's greatest contribution to text-messaging will be making it a proprietary affair. That would be the lamest way to go down in history, which is why I really hope Apple does the right thing and either a) commits to a better standard than RCS or b) extends iMessage to some more reasonable and open protocol.

I am not following the train of thought. All I am reading is yet another wild projection.

SMS is the lowest common denominator across all mobile networks and is the ultimate fallback option for a smartphone if more modern messaging standards or extensions (RCS, iMessage or whatever) are not supported. Degrading SMS means losing 3/4/5G certification and losing the telecommunication authority certification in every single country around the world, consequently instantly losing sales. No sane company that is in the business of selling phones would dare to lose the certification on a global scale. SMS messaging has worked like a charm on iPhones, and I am not sure what the insinuation is all about.

GSMA, the governing body of 3/4/5/6G, has neither adopted nor endorsed RCS up to date, and it is supported at the core network layer only by a fraction of mobile operators across the world. SMS, being a 21st century rotary dial phone equivalent, is supported by every mobile network today however outdated it is. RCS is not.

The original spat over RCS, however, concerned a few sticking points:

  1. Google becoming a gatekeeper and holding messages until they could be delivered to the recipient;
  2. RCS not being end-to-end encrypted;
  2½.Google providing a proprietory encryption protocol with no open source implementation and – *at first* – encryption only being available to P2P conversations (aka FaceBook Messenger style secret chats but not to group chats[0]);
  3. Owing to (1), Google gaining the ability to track users via the use of metadata;
  4. Only a limited number of Android handsets supporting RCS in the beginning.

I have no stake in the game, but, if I were Apple, I would have not agreed to RCS, either, considering the constraints.

As of May 2024, RCS is still not part of the GSMA portfolio of standards. From the mobile network perspective, it does not exist.

[0] Added later.

I don't see that removing or crippling an option a lot of users rely on improves the market, or competition.

Doesn't benefit the public? Are happy iPhone users that rely on iMessage every day including it's SMS integration not benefited, or not the public?

> I don't see that removing or crippling an option a lot of users rely on improves the market, or competition.

It certainly doesn't need to be removed, just expanded. Apple can't have their cake and eat it too, you either replace SMS and the multiplatform commitments that come with it or you don't. Pretending to hold down a halfway-house to keep selling iPhones is not only a bundling tactic, but combined with Apple's negligence towards alternatives it's genuinely anticompetitive.

> Are happy iPhone users that rely on iMessage every day including it's SMS integration not benefited, or not the public?

...no, those are happy iPhone users. The public inherently means people that are not paying customers of Apple; regular citizens with no outstanding obligations to any corporation.

I don't understand how you could possibly interpret "the public" to mean "satisfied iPhone customers" in this situation.

> Apple can't have their cake and eat it too, you either replace SMS and the multiplatform commitments that come with it or you don't.

You keep suggesting that Apple replaced SMS. They didn't. So per this new statement, they have no multi-platform commitments because they haven't done anything to warrant it.

Is there an example of Microsoft ever actually "extinguishing" something? The extinguish bit is more about making the competing services non-viable. Microsoft's whole strategy was built around making it so a user on its platform either couldn't or wouldn't want to use a particular technology without their proprietary extensions. That perfectly describes iMessage if we're to believe all the commentary on social media about how iPhone users get the "ick" from seeing a green bubble.

In fact, I'd argue that iMessage has been one of the most successful implementations of EEE ever. Maybe only behind ActiveX and Microsoft's slow adoption of web standards in the late 90s - mid 00s (but MS never actually replaced HTML or JavaScript with its proprietary stuff).

> In fact, I'd argue that iMessage has been one of the most successful implementations of EEE ever. Maybe only behind ActiveX and Microsoft's slow adoption of web standards in the late 90s - mid 00s (but MS never actually replaced HTML or JavaScript with its proprietary stuff).

Is it? Globally, iMessage is far from the most popular messaging application. If it's an attempt at EEE it's not a great one. IE was far more successful in degree and longevity of impact.

And no, they didn't. They just implemented CSS and other things exactly counter to the spec in a number of spots, along with other incompatibilities in order to make developers have to choose: 80% to 90% of the market, or conform to standards?

> That perfectly describes iMessage if we're to believe all the commentary on social media about how iPhone users get the "ick" from seeing a green bubble.

The only people who care about that their own messages on their own phones show up as green bubbles are children. The rest of the world doesn't give a shit. They see green bubbles because they use WhatsApp.

> Is it? Globally, iMessage is far from the most popular messaging application. If it's an attempt at EEE it's not a great one. IE was far more successful in degree and longevity of impact.

I basically already said it was second to IE. What else did MS do that was more successful than iMessage? There were definitely many attempts by Microsoft that were not as successful like Visual J++. They also had a similar strategy to iMessage with MSN Messenger embracing and extending AIM and they had a lot of success with that but most of that success came right before desktop messaging was superseded by mobile messaging.

> The only people who care about that their own messages on their own phones show up as green bubbles are children. The rest of the world doesn't give a shit. They see green bubbles because they use WhatsApp.

Thats just just not true in America. There are literally adult Android users that who post about how using Android is a barrier to their dating life because other adult iPhone users (which is the majority for certain age groups) will just simply refuse to date someone who doesn't use an iPhone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9FbOf3uewU

https://www.cnet.com/culture/iphone-or-android-your-phone-ch...

And countless reddit threads and twitter posts:

https://www.reddit.com/r/dating/comments/qsle1x/is_having_an...

https://www.reddit.com/r/dating_advice/comments/17n91aj/is_a...

https://twitter.com/ldollaz_/status/1783138659480289561

https://twitter.com/tweetsmoe/status/1783274758856925517

Some people even think the issue is Android:

https://twitter.com/EbonyJHilton_MD/status/13480303950157004...

I've also heard personal anecdotes from single men that I know who use Android (it definitely goes other way too but I know more single men personally than women).

All this over green bubbles. Life has gotten so good in the US that all that’s left to focus on is green bubbles. We’ve solved homelessness, wealth gaps, housing crisis, so now it’s time to take down Apple because those green bubbles need to die.

I wish this current generation would learn what’s actually important to fight for. Green bubbles are not on the list.

The problem is that Apple, the world's largest tech company, is reluctant to create or join messaging standards.

I'm not sure if you're very familiar with the prevalence of texting (or Apple) in the 21st century but it stands to reason that this is a rather important thing to regulate. It certainly was worth regulating when Ma Bell tried monopolizing communication protocols 50 years ago.

So tell us; what is worth fighting over? I'd be tickled pink to hear what consumer harms you'd prioritize over something as supposedly-diminutive as Apple's actions.

No the problem is not Apple refusing to join messaging standards. The problem is you thinking this is a problem worth fighting when there are many many many other more serious problems to address first.

Apples actions are not keeping people from living the one life they have. They are keeping people from having blue bubbles. Blue bubbles are not a necessity in life. Food, jobs, money, housing, these are all required.

Take that same energy and focus it on something that will let more people live instead of a nonissue. You are defocusing actual issues to solve a petty fight and force control. Stop.

If you continue to be blind, and focus nonissues, you are the problem.

> You are defocusing actual issues to solve a petty fight and force control. Stop.

> If you continue to be blind, and focus nonissues, you are the problem.

You are the one that has refused to furnish anything more important.

Also, somewhat obviously, food, jobs, money and housing are not distributed arbitrarily. Blue bubbles are.

It sounds like you're really upset over this whole thing, which is concerning once you consider how likely Apple is to lose their case here. Are you going to still be okay in the event that Apple is legislated for this behavior? Are you going to protest in the street against the DOJ for ignoring the real problems, like PB&J distribution at the local middle school?

> You are the one that has refused to furnish anything more important.

I have said many times what is required for life and therefore what is important. You even acknowledged it in your next sentence.

> Also, somewhat obviously, food, jobs, money and housing are not distributed arbitrarily. Blue bubbles are.

Wrong. We are not communist. Food is purchased and people with more money purchase better quality food. Apple iPhones in fact are just as cheap as Android phones. It’s a users choice to choose one or the other.

> It sounds like you're really upset over this whole thing

Yes, because I’m a veteran that has been to war for this country and this is what your generation focuses on? Do you feel like you’re wasting peoples lives at all? Do you feel like you’re wasting the gift given to you by everybody that has died for you? Because you are.

> Are you going to protest in the street

Protesting is a waste of time. You know what works? Having politicians on speed dial and calling them daily. So no I will not be protesting anything much less this. What I will do instead is focus on making housing cheaper and fixing wages not keeping up with inflation.

Again, stop defocusing the work of many thousands of people. Use your energy on solving anything required for life. Or have people like me fight your efforts and force refocusing on actual issues.

> HN tells me that there's only one more step left after embracing and extending.

Perhaps you should read HN less then. Along this line of thinking, any business adopting any open standard is a bad thing. Don't you think it's a very weird take?

Apple never got rid of SMS. And there has been no embrace or extend.

All they did was put an optional message service in the same app.

One that isn’t even the most popular making it strange to say there is no competition.

> All they did was put an optional message service in the same app.

They did a bit more than that. There were the glory days that if you ever left the Apple ecosystem, but iMessage ever had an awareness of your number, no other iMessage users could reach you until or unless you did some incantations that Apple didn't make obvious, ideally from an Apple device (that you may not own anymore), to allow your friends to keep sending you even green bubble messages?

I know multiple people who had to go to Apple stores to try to do this process.

However, the same thing happened to me when I switched from my pixel 3a to an iPhone. I wasn't able to text from my iPhone for a week. I ended up contacting Verizon and they actually had their network engineers investigating. What they ended up discovering, and sent me a contact number for it, was that some how Google's RCS was still holding a lock on my number or something.

So this isn't an exclusive Apple problem.

Ya I got bit switching to android when people started calling wondering what happened when I wouldn't respond to their texts.

> there has been no embrace or extend

Embrace: include SMS

Extend: add iMessage

That's not what the phrase means.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...

Embrace: include HTML

Extend: add ActiveX

Yeah, it is.

Could users still access functionality of pages with ActiveX content, albeit in a “degraded” state?

Given that it never fully replaced HTML, yes.

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