[lurkerasdfh8]

> I wonder what made them take this path?

it was literally an email that surface on the Epic store litigation, where one Apple exec says (quote from memory) "We can't have facetime for android because that will remove the barrier for families to buy Android phones for their kids"

So it will be crappy and have TONS of limitations (wouldn't be surprised it it only work with one apple device hosting) because it is only for legal excuse reasons.

[psanford]

That email was about iMessage, not FaceTime: https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/9/22375128/apple-imessage-an...

[bottled_poe]

> We can't have facetime for android because that will remove the barrier for families to buy Android phones for their kids

I might be missing something... Is there something in this that is illegal?

[lurkerasdfh8]

> illegal

besides being immoral and a literal F-U to your consumers, it can bring anti trust cases when you are as big as Apple.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock-in

But other than that, well, just go celebrate your $2 gain on your APPL stocks despite the fact you were prohibited to call 50% of your friends just so someone couldn't save a few bucks when buying a phone for their teenage kid. Go you!

[Grustaf]

How is it immoral to not actively support your competitor's hardware with your software and services? Of course it isn't, iMessage is not a utility, it's not a public good. You can still text or make voice calls to anyone you want, or even video calls using dozens of third party apps.

They have no moral obligation at all to extend their own first party services to Android, that's an absurd idea.

[dhruvdh]

The intention behind not letting it work for their competitors is immoral and potentially illegal. They want to do it to prevent their consumers to buy their competitors products for their family, even if their competitors product are better; just because they already have a device in the Apple ecosystem.

[Grustaf]

They are not "preventing" anyone from doing anything, they are simply, until now, refraining from improving their competitors devices by releasing their software for it.

Of course they prefer people to buy iPhones for their kids, there is nothing wrong with that, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with not actively working to make the experience of mixed Android-iPhone families slightly better.

There are literally dozens of cross platform messaging and video calling apps. Banning these would have been wrong, and possibly illegal, but they are not doing that.

[seanicus]

It is immoral and illegal that McDonalds won't serve me a Chik-Fil-A sandwich.

This is such a great rubric!

[dhruvdh]

The email we are discussing specifically says they want to prevent customers from buying their competitors products for their friends and family.

[rrrrrrrrrrrryan]

A small software company is treated differently than one of the largest companies on earth, both from a moral perspective and a legal perspective.

Anticompetitive behavior is illegal for companies with a monopoly, and based on the leaked emails, it seems Apple's intentions were clear. The "monopoly" bit is still up in the air, but it's becoming increasingly clear the "anticompetitive behavior" bit is not.

This FaceTime news shows that Apple's lawyers are probably worried.

[Grustaf]

Reasonable people may argue that they have a monopoly on iOS apps, which could be problematic, but they don't have anything even remotely approximating a monopoly on video calling or messaging apps, which is what we are talking about here.

They also don't have any kind of monopoly on TV or music streaming, so there would be nothing wrong (and certainly nothing illegal) with keeping Apple Music and Apple TV exclusive to their platforms, so clearly they believe they will make more money by making them cross platform. Presumably it's the same with Facetime.

[simondotau]

I think it's funny that Android users are so angry with Apple for not releasing iMessage and FaceTime for Android. How dare Apple not make their communications platforms even more dominant! Not having iMessage on Android is immoral! Not having FaceTime on Android is "a literal F-U" to their customers!

I think it's funny because Apple left a decade-long opening for Google to build equally good Android alternatives to iMessage and FaceTime and dominate in cross-platform communication. Instead, twelve chat platforms later, I'm not entirely sure if Google has finally released something that won't be superseded next year.

[gman83]

In Europe at least, I'm very unhappy that neither Google or Apple has managed to create any form of standard communications platform, because now instead of one of those two, everyone uses WhatsApp from Facebook, which I personally hate using but am obliged to if I want any kind of social life. If Apple had created Android versions of their messaging products, their own users wouldn't be forced into Facebook's arms.

Before you say, "just don't use it", here are some examples. My kids parents/school group uses WhatsApp, same as my kids sports club to organize matches/training. I'm a volunteer for a local association -- WhatsApp group. I really have little choice in using it.

[fauigerzigerk]

>I think it's funny that Android users are so angry with Apple for not releasing iMessage and FaceTime for Android.

I don't get the impression that Android users are angry at all. It's me as an iPhone user who is pissed about never being able to use any of these supposedly fantastic services.

I have never used FaceTime and probably never will if it is true that Android/Linux/Windows users cannot initiate FaceTime calls on this new FaceTime web app.

[vetinari]

I don't really care for iMessage or Facetime, I don't use them even though I can, but

> because Apple left a decade-long opening for Google to build equally good Android alternatives to iMessage

is simply not true. No one but Apple can integrate SMS and messaging on iOS as Apple can; others do not have entitlements for that. You could do it on Android (and Google did for a brief period with Hangouts, and so did Signal), but you can't do it on iOS.

[lurkerasdfh8]

you talk like either as if facetime is a good product, or as if you love anything from apple regardless.

i think it is a closed solution that sucks just like all the others.

i think every single one of those lock-in-for-profit platform only attract idiots (in the original greek work meaning of the word) and makes true open solutions that will ultimately help everyone slower to show up. Because eventually they will.

[nixy]

To be honest, it is more a F-U to your competitors' customers than to your own. I don't get why Apple creating a feature for their own ecosystem has to be made available to other ecosystems as well. It's not like Face Time is the only video calling solution out there.

[fauigerzigerk]

>To be honest, it is more a F-U to your competitors' customers than to your own.

Why? As an iPhone user, I am the one who paid for the development of FaceTime, but I can't use it because communications tools require network effects that FaceTime doesn't have. I can't even use it with my wife.

I'm not saying it's somehow illegitimate or even illegal for Apple to do this, but what it tells me is that Apple cares more about hurting competitors than about providing a useful service to its own paying customers.

[simondotau]

The way Android users complain about the lack of Apple iMessage and Apple FaceTime on their phones, you'd be forgiven for questioning whether Android had any messaging or video calling features.

[vetinari]

I will tell you a secret: it's not Android users who complain about the lack of iMessage or Facetime. Most of them are not even aware of their existence. They are using Whataspp, or Viber, or whatever and go on with their lives.

[stevetursi]

I agree with the arguments (usually made by Apple fans, and I don't mean that as a pejorative) that Apple is probably in their legal rights and that it makes dollars and cents business sense for them to limit iMessage to iOS as much as possible.

But it's still a shitty thing to do. I have a tremendous amount of respect for companies that do things that are contrary to business objectives because they're the right thing to do. In this case, Apple chose to do the shitty thing.

[dkonofalski]

I don't have an opinion on this either way but why is that "the right thing to do" in your mind? It seems to me like making that available on non-Apple products would give very little benefit to them or their users while introducing lots of uncertainties that may actually make the experience worse for most users. The reason most Apple features work the way they do is because of the complete vertical integration of hardware and software. Introducing unknown hardware seems like a bad idea when consistency is your whole schtick.

[avereveard]

They could have been in every school and every office by now with a cross platform solution, instead they have zoom&co eating that space. I don't think they're happy about that either.

[teekert]

Prohibited? There are many many other options of course. Admittedly, FaceTime is the best I ever used (no echoes, just works, works best over low bandwidth, etc.)

[geon]

Calm down.

[infofarmer]

It seems to violate various competition laws depending on jurisdiction.

[yoz-y]

Does it? One thing going for this is that Apple is huge and iMessage has a massive amount of users. But on the other hand forcing developers to support all platforms is just not realistic.

[samstave]

Facetime already has a lot of limitations . While I do love it, it's very data heavy - have you ever looked at how much data it consumes? Also, it's a fn batteryand heat hog. It freaking makes all my phones hot and uses tons of power.

You can't easily record a call (unless I am unaware) it's hard to take screenshots, and you can't take a shot of just the other party, it always will have your personal view in a corner.

The call logs suck.

And obviously the walked garden.

I'm typing this on android, but I also have an iPhone on me that's wifi only such that I can facetime and imessages.

However imessage is broken as well: I can text people but some people can't text me back.

I also have a google voice account and somehow these three platforms have confused the system, as messages constantly get lost ,,,

[ezfe]

Yes, it is only available to invite others. You cannot start a FaceTime call from the web

[lurkerasdfh8]

apple PR is running around downvoting facts :D