[_Microft]

As an iPhone user, I‘m pretty happy how Apple dealt with this so far. I would hate to get spammed on iMessage and knowing that my messages are rendered exactly as intended on the receiver’s side is reassuring.

Calling this anti-consumer is rather subjective.

[luma]

The Apple Stockholm Syndrome is endemic on HN. The lengths people will go to support open source and open access while also vehemently defending the exact opposite behavior from Apple is astounding.

[Grustaf]

It’s not Stockholm syndrome, you incorrectly assume that every iPhone owner is some kind of mini Stallman. Most people really don’t care about all this stuff, they just want a product that works well, with minimum fuss. They don’t care about third party appstores. Sideloading, open sourcing imessage and all this linux hacker stuff.

[treyd]

> Most people really don’t care about all this stuff, they just want a product that works well, with minimum fuss.

And nonetheless there's demonstrable harm to the broader industry being caused despite their lack of care about it. Corporate misbehavior you're not consciously aware of can still cause you harm despite not being consciously aware of it.

[Grustaf]

Sure, when it comes to things like pollution, or for Apple, child labour. But the broader industry is not harmed by Apple not releasing the Messages app for Android, that’s just silly.

[prmoustache]

> they just want a product that works well

It doesn't if it can't reliably do basic things like sending e2ee messages to people using smartphones from other brands with its default messaging app.

[agos]

is there a device that does this, or are we measuring iPhone's performance on some unrealistic standard?

[_Microft]

I do more than enough tinkering but my phone‘s supposed to just work.

[luma]

How is your tinkering enhanced by Apple making it difficult to communicate outside of their kingdom?

[riscy]

I don't see Google making it easier to communicate outside of their kingdom. AFAIK Google's RCS (with their encryption extensions) is not an industry standard or available for 3rd party apps to use. Why is the expectation only on Apple to make such changes?

[luma]

RCS is a spec ratified by the GSMA, the same standards body that specified things like SMS. Google tried to get Apple to do RCS, they refused, then Google tried to get a license to interop with iMessage and Apple refused again. Google has tried literally everything to try and get Apple to play ball here.

[paulmd]

the best part is that I, as a google voice user, still don't have RCS support even though it's a google product.

google implemented the exact minimum they'd need to give them a foot to cry on in the courts, and no further. and now that there is a mandate to implement RCS, they almost certainly will choose to kill google voice rather than implement it. I am already planning my exit strategy, because otherwise they'll take my phone number with it. and this is not trivial, we are talking about buying another phone (hopefully it will make it until the next-gen iphone with N3E) and paying for two lines for a couple of months. This is a pain in the ass for me.

and google has already embrace-extend-extinguished the standard - their encryption implementation is proprietary and they've refused to let anyone interop, so essentially they have put themselves as imessage 2.0 but with google as the man in the middle this time.

[riscy]

> One thing that isn’t part of the [RCS standard ratified by GSMA] is the encryption standard Google is adopting. It’s building it on top of RCS right into the Android Messages client.

> If you are texting with somebody who isn’t using Android Messages (say, somebody using Samsung Messages or an iPhone), the fallback to either less-encrypted RCS chat or SMS will still work just fine.

Sounds like Samsung users need to separately download Android Messages to get E2EE.

Quotes from https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/19/21574451/android-rcs-enc... which is cited by Wikpedia on RCS.

[joshmanders]

> Google has tried literally everything to try and get Apple to play ball here.

You're framing it in a nefarious way as if Apple is flat out denying it. They didn't. They would have to LOWER security in iPhones by implementing RCS because iMessages have E2EE but RCS doesn't. Which is something all you anti-Apple people seem to conveniently leave out, because you know nobody would take it seriously if you said it.

[redhale]

You seem to be mistaken: https://9to5mac.com/2023/11/16/apple-rcs-coming-to-iphone/

[tedd4u]

Apple says they will implement RCS in 2024.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/16/23964171/apple-iphone-rc...

[legobmw99]

Without end to end encryption, because that is not part of the standard, as the grandparent comment said

[nicoburns]

IMO they should also be made to open up. As should whatsapp and facebook messenger.

[luma]

My suspicion is that someone like the EU made it clear to Apple that they would either interop or the EU would make them do so. They have finally relented to support RCS in the coming year.

[rakoo]

Because this story is about Apple ?

What is good about whataboutism again ?

[paulmd]

> How is your tinkering enhanced by Apple making it difficult to communicate outside of their kingdom?

OP didn't say they tinkered on their phone - actually the total opposite. Read it again.

"I do more than enough tinkering but my phone‘s supposed to just work."

Anyway, you've missed the point that at the end of the day there's real-world benefits to many of the things people complain about. The FindMy lockout prevents phone theft (and has strong reductions in theft rates for these users). Serializing parts prevents thieves from stripping stolen phones and selling for parts. Having only one app store prevents large players with high network effect (tencent, facebook, etc) from demanding you install their app store to bypass the Apple's review/permissions process to spy on you (FB already got caught using dev credentials to do it anyway). Etc.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/facebook-and-google-...

I tend to agree, that a phone is not where I care to tinker in my life. Having it be secure and well-integrated is more important to me, I have a PC if I want to tinker. I can sign and sideload apps already if I want to try something (for 7 days), or getting an official dev credential extends this to 30 days. Android phones have a real problem with OS support lifespan and OEM parts availability, and I have no desire to install third-party ROMs and then spoof safetynet so I can run my bank app. Assuming that's even an option at all - Sony for example will wipe the camera's firmware when you unlock the bootloader, so it degrades a premium cameraphone to flip-phone levels.

"Not everyone wants to be stallman trying to figure out how to root their phone and spoof safetynet" is actually a great way to put it.

[endisneigh]

Those are not contradictory viewpoints anymore being pro housing but not wanting random homeless people in your house while you’re away isn’t contradictory either.

[Larrikin]

Your messages are all screwed up when delivered to anyone not using an iPhone. Pictures and movies are basically destroyed and worthless.

The fake spam complaint is addressed in the article.

[BlackjackCF]

I’m likely wrong here but isn’t that a problem with SMS and not necessarily iMessage?

[daedalus_j]

I can exchange MMS to other Android users (and it's MMS, not RCS) that aren't ridiculously compressed, so I've always assumed it was Apple.

[giantrobot]

MMS limitations stem from the carrier. They have different attachment size limits which affects how Messages will encode the content.

[jmye]

This is absolutely, unconditonally untrue. I can send a message to an Android user just fine. SMS is delivered as it is anywhere else. Pictures go through fine - my partner and I can, and do, regularly share pictures without any issue at all.

Why hyperbolize things and spread outright nonsense? To what possible end?

[sixothree]

I experience the issues described when texting android users.

[Larrikin]

MMS in 2023 is not an acceptable fallback. We all have cameras capable of shooting amazing pictures and 4k movies.

The size limit destroys decent looking pictures and basically prevents movies from even being an option with how grainy they appear stretched out on our 4k screens.

This is ignoring all the other interactive elements that are just table stakes in any kind of messaging application that make SMS absolutely terrible in comparison.

[Grustaf]

If you do don’t like mms, don’t use it, there are tons of alternatives. I have half a dozen chat apps.

[_Microft]

> Your messages are all screwed up when delivered to anyone not using an iPhone. Pictures and movies are basically destroyed and worthless.

Sure and it is absolutely obvious on my side because these contacts don’t show blue messages. Take that away and the situation turns worse because now I‘d have to guess.

Edit: don’t get me wrong - I don‘t send broken messages, I just contact them on other messengers instead.

[sanex]

It's obvious to you but not obvious to your average iPhone user which is why I get videos with 3 pixels sent to me repeatedly. On the flip side I can mms videos with acceptable resolution just fine. It's all just to try and keep people in the system, not because it's a better user experience.

[inferiorhuman]

Bullshit. AT&T limits MMS videos to 1 MB, Verizon to between 1 MB and 3.5 MB depending on the sender, T-Mobile/Sprint 1 MB to 3 MB depending. If you're getting "acceptable resolution" H.264 videos they're being sent over RCS.

[crakhamster01]

This comment makes no sense - I'm an iPhone user and receive spam almost daily. And if it's reassuring to know that your messages are rendered correctly, Beeper Mini would only expand the number of contacts that this applies to.

How exactly is Beeper worsening the iPhone experience?

[dimator]

> Calling this anti-consumer is rather subjective.

This is the entire fiasco distilled down to what is the root of the issue: to apple, non-apple users are not consumers. Substandard. This is the exact sentiment behind "Buy your mom an iPhone"

Messaging is by definition something that needs interop. This is why Apple (begrudgingly) supports at least SMS and MMS, because obviously you need to interop with "the others." It's also why they're being dragged kicking and screaming into RCS, which in all likelihood, they'll make equally shitty.

The fact that one company can dictate the terms of that interoperability, and make it as excruciating and inferior as possible, tells you all you need to know. But if you're the "in group" you can't even see what the issue even is.

[_Microft]

Actually you are correct. I confused consumers and customers.

[Centigonal]

Are you okay with Apple not supporting RCS on their phones? As far as I can tell, that strictly worsens your experience as a user.

[_Microft]

I was not familiar with RCS yet but according to Wikipedia, Apple will begin to support RCS in 2024.

On the other hand, this doesn’t exactly inspire confidence that it is going to be a polished experience: „Not all RCS functions defined in the standard are offered by every network and every client; only the services that are available to two communication partners are also offered in the client.“ (translated from the German Wikipedia article).

[forty]

That's one of the point of the article. It's not known whether the RCS implementation of apple will be interoperable with Android's.

[Grustaf]

I’ve had iPhones for ten years and never once cared about RCS. Never even heard of it until recently, and I don’t think anyone I know has ever heard of it. It’s very very niche to care at all about it.

[Centigonal]

While "RCS" is an obscure standard nobody cares about, "being able to send reactions, high-res photos, videos, and voice memos in text messages" is a pretty universal concern. iPhone support for RCS would let iPhone users have those features in conversations with the green-messages.

[Grustaf]

I never once wished I was able to do that, the only application for that would be to communicate with android users that for some reason refuse to use whatsapp, fb messages, telegram or any of the numerous cross platform that do that. Why would anyone want to do this specifically using the sms protocol?

[Centigonal]

Dating :upside_down_face:

Also, some of my friends and family aren't on those apps and exclusively use SMS/iMessage.

[Grustaf]

The point is that I don’t care about doing these things specifically over SMS. I send photos, voice memos etc over apps like whatsapp. It wouldn’t improve my life one iota to be able to do that with some legacy protocol.

[prmoustache]

Spam is a lame excuse.

From what I have understood in the first beeper mini anonucement, iMessage spam does already exist.

Also I never received spam on any open source messaging app, even when they were interconnected with gmail and facebook (xmpp). I've never received spam from telegram either, despite clients, protocol and API being open source. I have received less than a handful of spam on Whatsapp in more than 10 years. The only platform where I have received spam in their messaging app was instagram (I left in the meantime). It would be the same for iMessage. As long as spam is bound to a phone number, spammers will be banned the minute they start sending messages to people and will never reach you.

Spam however is a big deal on SMS, which if I understand correctly end up on iMessage on Apple devices.

So basically the Apple way is the worse way to deal with spam as all end up on the same app while on most other smartphone OS spam end up in the dedicated SMS messaging app that you can just totally ignore and disable notifications for. Apple does make it worse for its user in that context.

[ricardobayes]

Please drink verification can and continue.

Anyone unsure what this means: it's a popular meme where the future of cloud/online gaming will degrade to cross-sell products maliciously. (Requiring the user to drink a sugary soft drink to continue using the product).