[PaulHoule]

Socially: Because Apple is a monopolist that wants to force you to buy an Apple computer if you want to develop for iOS or send messages to iPhone users.

Technically: attaching to the iMessage network requires that you use the "trusted platform module" that Apple supplies, and signing code on XCode requires the same.

Just like in the 1990's, the "trusted platform module" is a function of the platform owner not trusting you, not a function of the platform owner not trusting criminals who want to rip you off.

[iancarroll]

There is no TPM required for either of these, AFAIK. iMessage and code signing both predate the T1/T2/M1, where there was no "TPM".

[demygale]

>Because Apple is a monopolist There's little about Apple's place in the market that makes them a monopoly. Using this word to describe companies that engage in anti-consumer behavior is reductive and unhelpful.

[PaulHoule]

You have to use a mac to develop for iOS. That's pretty unique.

Compare that to Android where you can develop on a large number of platforms, or the many cross-platform tools that can target Windows, MacOS and Linux. Or embedded platforms like Arduino or FPGA where you can download and install the software on many different computers. Back in the day Infocom developed games like Zork on a PDP-11 and published them to home computers. It's a normal thing in the industry unless you're developing for a monopolist.

Similarly iMessage is sneaky and substitutes for SMS -- my sister-and-law noticed this the other day and was suprised. Thus the system shuns and isolates non-iPhone apple users from their friends and shames and intimidates them to switch.

Android is about as much a real competitor for iOS as MacOS was in the late 1990's when Microsoft bought a stake in Apple to keep Apple alive so the antitrust courts wouldn't tear them apart.

Google doesn't make money on Android, Android phone makers don't make a profit despite selling $2400 phones. The real economic value of Android is that it's an atomic bomb pointed at Apple. If Google decided to end Android the way that they end most platforms, the EU would kick Apple out in a heartbeat. So Apple owes a lot to Google (patronage network style) for keeping an unviable OS alive.

[nojito]

There’s no tpm needed for iMessage.