[ericabiz]

I believe this is SpaceX trying to stay one step ahead of Apple.

Anyone else remember this strange rumor about iPhones including satellite capability a year ago?

https://www.macrumors.com/2021/08/29/iphone-13-to-feature-le...

Now you have Apple’s event in a couple weeks themed “Far Out” with space pictures.

I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Apple announced something similar, possibly with Globalstar instead.

Of course, Apple’s solution will likely only work with iMessage. So of course Musk comes out first, with the “we are doing it too, but it will work with any phone.”

Interesting times.

[mr_toad]

> Of course, Apple’s solution will likely only work with iMessage.

If I’m in the middle of nowhere and need to send an urgent message I wouldn’t want to be worrying about whether the recipient had an Android phone.

[cheschire]

This conversation is a frequent annoyance for me. I’m tired of asking folks if they have Apple or Signal available just to send a photo. MMS is unreliable and opaque to most folks it seems since pictures never seem to get through if they’re on android.

[Melatonic]

Same is true for android to android - it does a much higher quality non MMS. Unfortunately neither Google nor Apple will open up their damn protocol to the other.

[Stevvo]

https://www.android.com/get-the-message/

This page, from Google, makes it quite clear their protocol is an open standard, and Apple are the only closed one.

[Melatonic]

There are no android clients that can do it besides google messages. Google also has their own version of RCS that only works messages to messages. Carriers also have a version of RCS but its not quite the same.

Apple could and should totally adopt the carrier version of RCS though. And it would be great if Google would let apps like Textra in too

[dfadsadsf]

If recipient does not have iMessage he will get it as SMS.

[black3r]

iMessages aren't converted to SMS on Apple's servers side. It's a fallback on the phone's side. When you're on a WiFi but with no cell coverage, you can send an iMessage but can't send an SMS.

[londons_explore]

But, for such a satellite phone service, Apple totally could make a SMS to iMessage gateway, or even just a web interface where non-apple users could log in and see that someone had sent them an iMessage.

Obviously Apple will make the process as painful as possible to encourage buying iPhone.

[skimo8]

This isn’t entirely true. If you have WiFi calling enabled, you can also send SMS over WiFi if the carrier supports it. I use this extensively when traveling internationally.

[Taniwha]

it's not really an android phone or an apple phone though - good satellite reception (as opposed to initial middling reception) is going to mean phones with radios meant for satellites and antenna that are designed to look up (and track) and not just sideways.

5 years from now you'll be choosing a particular android or apple phone because its good for satellite, just like you choose a particular one today because it's small, or fast, or has a good camera

[crossroadsguy]

Well, if you’re a fruit company user you’d think about such petty things? So better start pestering everybody to get an iPhone.

[KennyBlanken]

Because clearly nobody has ever been able to send a text message from an iPhone to an Android device.

[BurningFrog]

Today's announcement says my existing T-Mobile phone already had satellite capability!!

They just need to get the satellites up.

[vlovich123]

And your existing Tesla can do FSD with its current sensor package. Any day now.

[thepasswordis]

My current Tesla started doing FSD almost a year ago.

[vlovich123]

Let me clarify. Musk claimed 6 years ago [1] that shipping Teslas would be capable of Level 5 autonomy. While Tesla’s markets their feature as “full self driving” it’s a far cry from even level 3 afaik.

It’s kind of sad people fall for this. It also has lethal consequences as people assume it can do things it very well can’t (cruise control+ is really what the feature is). It’s a very obvious grift and SEC and FTC regulators have apparently been asleep at the wheel to enforce it. Wouldn’t surprise me if there’s a shareholder lawsuit at some point. Certainly if the stock collapses once someone beats Tesla to level 5.

[1] https://www.motortrend.com/news/new-tesla-models-will-featur...

[throwawaylinux]

Yep, if there's one thing that the AI "community" has done, it's over promise and under deliver. Tesla was a lot more fortunate than some others, being an automotive company first, and an AI company at best 4th (after battery, charging network).

[dailykoder]

Musk already admitted that he was very wrong about FSD and that it's not that easy.

Sure his talk was dumb and a lot of people fell for it, but that's just how marketing works.

[bagels]

That's how fraud works, not marketing.

[babypuncher]

I mean, he still took a bunch of people's money for the feature, then didn't give it back after admitting L5 wasn't coming any time soon.

[philistine]

That is not how marketing works. Show me a reputable book about marketing that says: promise something that doesn't exist.

[ROTMetro]

By 'how marketing works' do you mean 'how every software sales VP I have ever worked with works'?

[KaiserPro]

My 2009 kia rio has FSD too, and like the tesla, it won't stop for children in FSD mode

(note the FSD mode here is basically a brick on the accelerator)

[speedgoose]

If you think about the recent test conducted by a Tesla AI competitor, it wasn’t FSD mode. See https://electrek.co/2022/08/10/tesla-self-driving-smear-camp...

[KaiserPro]

fair enough, thank you for sharing this.

[babypuncher]

Not L5 like Musk claimed. It's a stretch to even call it L3 right now.

[oldgradstudent]

It's not "a stretch". It's just wrong.

FSD requires constant human supervision. It has nothing to do with level 3 or above.

[LightG]

"FSD".... lol

[yreg]

It's not the first time I hear about this tech. AST SpaceMobile[0] wants to do exactly the same with existing 4G/5G phones.

Of course, they are launching with SpaceX. They might get sherlocked before even finishing their product.

[0] https://ast-science.com/spacemobile/

[muttled]

They're ready to launch their test satellite in the next few weeks and are already building the capabilities for the next satellites in the constellation. I'm watching them carefully as it looks like they're going to be able to do it.

[phillipseamore]

From the rumours I've heard, OneWeb is involved with that. OneWeb sats are basically LTE basestations.

[panick21_]

The current once are not, they are a technology level behind what even Starlink v1 is. Maybe some future OneWeb will be able to do it, but not for a long time.

[bhauer]

If you are right, T-Mobile's effort to get Apple onboard with making the necessary changes to separate iMessage payload from regular cell data on these special low-bandwidth space-cells could be a challenge.

[fragmede]

Not really. Apple gives T-Mobile the hostnames/IP addresses they use for iMessage, and T-Mobile configures their APN to only allow connections to those addresses. There's a lot that happens on the backend for cell data to work that consumers don't see.

[jahlove]

They need to know more about the payload, so that they don't try to upload a video through starling, for instance.

[vineyardmike]

Already solved on in-flight wifi.

[vineyardmike]

They figured it out for the free inflight wifi that allows messaging.

[yurishimo]

That isn't anything special. Every smartphone can send SMS over wifi. You need to connect to the in-flight wifi to use the service. The router on the plane has a hole in the firewall that allows unpaid users to access the specific HTTP server to send and receive SMS messages. Absolutely nothing special about it.

[rlt]

Eventually this would be no different: Starlink can provide (firewalled) data service to iPhones to support messaging apps.

Speculation is that initially there would be a small number of satellites periodically passing overhead, leading to the 30 minute send/receive times, and likely not supporting non-SMS messaging apps well.

[CharlesW]

> Of course, Apple’s solution will likely only work with iMessage.

What makes you think that? (Messages doesn’t need to be on your carrier’s network to send/receive MMS/SMS messages.)

[ericabiz]

I wasn’t looking at this from a technical perspective, more of a business/finance/operations perspective.

This is Apple we are talking about. They wouldn’t make this play without some form of vendor lock-in. They will probably choose to lock in based on hardware (“must have iPhone 14 for this capability!”) — but I wouldn’t be surprised to see them lock in on the software side as well.

If I were Tim Cook, I might play both sides. “Bandwidth is limited, so for now, this will only work with iMessage.” This gives them room to open it up later for more good PR, and allows them to test the reaction of having it only work with their proprietary software.

I have no insider knowledge here. I follow this space closely due to co-owning an independent repair business that primarily works on Apple products.

[vineyardmike]

I doubt it.

The value-add now is that you keep and iPhone so you have iMessage. You stay blue bubble etc.

The value add of satellite is that you have service on a mountain (or a plane?). The value is that most androids won’t have that (a musk-maybe-one-day project aside).

It’s way more likely they’ll make it exclusively available on high end phones. Thats a way more obvious play for apple.

[dmix]

iMessage seems like an odd choice to single out for lock in though. This is a whole network, I doubt it will be integrated directly with services. There’s not any precedent for anyone else doing that (besides maybe Facebook with their phones). Despite the fears about net neutrality.

[fragmede]

Apple's a corporation like any other, and they're not above a little bit of vendor lock-in. Plus, given the low data rates this will support, this can only support a limited subset of Internet access.

[CharlesW]

> I wasn’t looking at this from a technical perspective, more of a business/finance/operations perspective.

I understand, but an iMessages¹-only Messages² is a non-starter at Apple because it causes complexity and customer confusion, two things that Apple is stellar³ at minimizing.

¹protocol ²app ³overall, always exceptions

[ericabiz]

Oh, right. I agree with you on that front. I see it working this way:

If you are standing on top of a mountain, right now you can’t send anything.

With Apple’s upcoming announcement, you’ll be able to send an iMessage.

If you try to send a SMS, it just won’t go through—-same as it would today.

I hope Apple allows it for all messages, personally. But I could definitely see them restricting it, especially at the beginning.

[CharlesW]

> If you try to send a SMS, it just won’t go through—-same as it would today.

I may be confused about the scenario then, because this does work for me. Specifically, when I turn off my cellular radio (I'm a T-Mobile customer) I can still send and receive messages to people not using iDevices.

[vineyardmike]

Most carriers have wifi-calling (and wifi SMS) that you can enable.

[easton]

Even without Wi-Fi? Because that’s the scenario they’re talking about, where nothing sends because you have no signal whatsoever.

[rblatz]

Weird, I’m on Verizon and if cellular is off all sms is broken but iMessage still works if I’m on WiFi.

[CapmCrackaWaka]

I find this completely false, messaging anyone on a non-iPhone (from my iPhone) is a complete disaster. Pictures / texts randomly fail to send, videos turn to 12 pixel noise, it’s so bad that an entire generation of people have friend groups that apple / android only because communication between the two phones is so bad.

[CharlesW]

> I find this completely false, messaging anyone on a non-iPhone (from my iPhone) is a complete disaster.

You should complain to your carrier. I'm on at least 5 different active text chains at any given time (family, friend groups, school parents) with a mix of devices, and it all works fine.

> …videos turn to 12 pixel noise…

That's an MMS limitation. If you regularly send videos, you'll want to use WhatsApp or some other non-standards-based messaging app.

[roywiggins]

iPhones are stuck with MMS limitations because Apple won't support RCS.

[Infinitesimus]

There isn't really an incentive for them to support anything beyond iMessage for now.

End game will be their own private networks but that's still a while away

[ProfessorZoom]

Because Apple loves to keep a walled garden

[extheat]

Apple phones are a lot less ubiquitous than general cell phones. Anything with an antenna and a (e)SIM card can get access to the T-mobile network, so what Apple is providing might be nice but I can't see how they compete at the level SpaceX can. And the global regulatory approvals needed will be a problem for everyone.

[JohnJamesRambo]

47% of smartphones in the USA are Apple. Seems pretty ubiquitous.

T-mobile has 110 million subscribers and the population of USA is 329 million people.

[imwillofficial]

They don’t even have a majority, much less ubiquity.

[fastball]

Ubiquity is not a step above majority. It's a separate concept.

[imwillofficial]

This is wrong.

Ubiquity means “everywhere”

So not only do you have a less than 50/50 chance of seeing an iPhone, it certainly isn’t everywhere.

[atyppo]

Spend some time in an affluent neighborhood in a large metro area and I think you'll realize that isn't true. I sure don't know any Tribeca or Pacific Heights residents with Androids.

[alphabettsy]

iPhones are the plurality. If you have a few random people together in the US there’s a good chance one of them in an iPhone. Pretty sure that’s what they meant.

[vineyardmike]

They could put-compete if they can create an iPhone with extra powerful antennas or other hardware. Like they always do- own the full stack to allow it to work better.

[shaklee3]

you can't create "extra powerful antennas" in a cell phone. it's physics, and antenna gain is driven by size.

[vineyardmike]

It was somewhat off the cuff and meant to encapsulate the idea that you can improve the ability of the phone to connect with the satellite. That isn’t possible if you don’t design the phone.

You could potentially control the situation enough where a user can enable “satellite mode” which uses extra power for sending messages. It’d affect battery life, and need to be manually enabled, but it’d enable better connections in emergencies.

You could try to improve directional antennas and some sort of aiming system with the screen.

Lots of things that maybe could happen when you control the client side instead of just the satellite side.

[jupp0r]

And then you need to design it in a way that it’s not blocked by somebody’s hand when they hold the phone.

[ComodoHacker]

Or just add a telescopic antenna and present it as "innovation never seen before".

[b112]

What?! You mean, have an antenna show outside a phone, like in the pre-2010s? In today's world, form is more important than function.

Especially for fashion statements like iphones. (Doubt this? Upthread people are discussing how certain affluent neighbourhoods only have iphones).

[fragmede]

Apple could partner with SpaceX and T-Mobile, like they did with AT&T and the original iPhone launch instead of trying to compete with them.

[rlt]

They could, but they’ve supposedly been working on hardware support for Globalstar satellites in the next iPhone for 2 years.

They want this as a differentiator from Android. Starlink will work on Android too.

So maybe it would actually make sense for Google to partner with them somehow (I believe they’re also a SpaceX investor) but I’m not sure how.

[LightG]

Of course, despite Musk's largesse, no one is really going to give af about it.

The Apple Event will put it front and centre.

Musk coukd have announced it a year ago, it wouldn't have mattered.

[Axien]

Apple, as far as I know, does not own spectrum. Therefore I doubt it is an Apple thing. More likely an AT&T or Verizon thing. And the service works on the iPhone.

[panick21_]

Apple can talk about what they like, between Starlink and Kupter there is little available heavy lift for a long time to come.