How is iMessage a monopoly? I would like open communications standards as much as the next guy, but next to iMessage there are WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, WeChat, Facebook Messenger etc. etc.
And as far as I know, you have to use the official WhatsApp app to chat on WhatsApp, same for Telegram, etc. etc. So apart from iMessage not being a monopoly, they are also not more restrictive than their competition.
So besides not matching with our "open" ideology for communication, what exactly has Apple done wrong here?
My view is that all of those messaging platforms blocking alternative clients are equally problematic.
I've arrived at this position because I'm not able to use any of those platforms because they don't provide accessibility tools that I need. Beeper does, and most matrix clients do also.
I recognize that the open source "everything should be open" view is not remotely mainstream, but the only way forward is to demand better.
We have best practices and movies about having too little control of other people's systems too. If law, morality, and debate only required finding whether there was a negative outcome they would be trivial. Unfortunately that doesn't yield practical results. Things need to be weighed and debated on a larger scale.
Throwing in my perspective: I largely agree with the DMA and think while iMessage was found not to be popular enough to qualify in Europe we should have something similar in place in the US and it certainly has enough penetration here to qualify under the same wording. I.e. I think we need something between "free rein" and "monopoly" for very large players which has practical effects on how you're required to interop.
Apples only escape here is that they're only popular in America. Whatsapp, Facebook messenger etc have to open up in the coming months because it's illegal in Europe. Apple should open up too, just like they have to with the App Store (because that is big enough to count as a gatekeeper)
Definitely not true for Telegram, they are completely open about the client side infrastructure: https://telegram.org/apps (and there are dozens of third party clients, some even linked on their official website)
Telegram does have some weird restrictions on third-party clients -- in particular, you'll get blocked if you try to create an account or perform certain other operations using an unofficial client. But generally, yes.
> How is iMessage a monopoly? I would like open communications standards as much as the next guy, but next to iMessage there are WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, WeChat, Facebook Messenger etc. etc.
Because it's the replacement for SMS for Apple phones and doesn't require an account in the same way those other services do. It just uses the Apple account iPhone owners already need to have.
> But most people don't because it's the default. MS was found to have a monopoly with IE even though there were alternatives.
Windows also was the dominant operating system with a market share in the 90% or higher. iOS isn't even the market leader in the US let alone the world, so can't really be a monopoly now can it?
> Really? It's never insisted upon for any core service?
You might need to qualify "core service" here, but no. Calls, SMS, MMS, internet all work fine without an account. You need an account to download apps from the app store, but that's a different argument. If you wanted to, there are various methods to load apps up without an account too (side loading via Xcode, MDM, etc).
Apparently since Apple made it more convenient to iPhone users to not only message other iPhone users from iMessage, but also receive their text messages in that single app too, it's a monopoly?
That probably didn't help things but I think the root cause comes down to the usual source of monopolies in this case: having vertical integration and a default app. Technically you don't even need an iPhone or SMS service to use iMessage. It is by the most common use case though, and one which increased the amount of integration a bit.
So if your ISP like AOL makes all of their webpages nice and fast but competitors slower and uglier artificially then is AOL abusing their market position here? We already set the precedent here that this is market abuse. This new case is no different.
Also, Apple knows this. They know they'd lose that's why they are already ahead of this by announcing adoption of RCS in 2024.
How can anyone presume that Apple would stand some sort of ideological ground here? We literally have emails where Apple c-suits say that iMessages mistreating android benefits them and they don't want to fix this. This is such a clear case I don't understand how anyone can defend this.
And as far as I know, you have to use the official WhatsApp app to chat on WhatsApp, same for Telegram, etc. etc. So apart from iMessage not being a monopoly, they are also not more restrictive than their competition.
So besides not matching with our "open" ideology for communication, what exactly has Apple done wrong here?