[lhamil64]

I guess I just don't understand why it makes Apple look bad here. My understanding is that Beeper reverse engineered their APIs and people expect Apple to just accept it? How is it much different from blocking a hacker who's poking around to find holes? And to be clear, I use Android and I do think the whole iMessage situation is silly. I just don't get how anyone could see an unofficial iMessage client going any differently.

[s3p]

From the article:

>This might be true if Apple was a small company. But they aren’t. They control more than 50% of the US smartphone market, and lock customers into using Apple’s official app for texting (which, in the US, sadly, is the default way people communicate). Large companies that dominate their industry must follow a different set of rules that govern fair competition, harm to consumers and barriers to innovation. We are not experts in antitrust law, but Apple’s actions have already caught the attention of US Congress and the Department of Justice

[biftek]

How do they lock customers in? There are plenty of messaging apps from other tech conglomerates, that no one chose to use alternatives in the U.S. is not Apple's problem. The market spoke.

[rezonant]

Because the market we're talking about is not the broader messaging ecosphere, it's "texting". To the US consumer, Whatsapp and the like are not texting. Frankly it makes total sense that this is the way it is in the US, because most people do not want to waste their time using a messaging app that can only message a fraction of people. They want an app that can message 100% of people. Apple Messages can do that, as can every other texting app, because the lowest common denominator technology (SMS, soon to be RCS especially once Apple ships it) is supported on every single handset. You never need to guess if a phone number is on Whatsapp or Signal or Telegram. You can just send a text to it.

This is pretty different to the international dynamic, as MMS often comes at a surcharge in many non-US markets, but here unlimited MMS has been included in most plans for a very long time, so there's not even a "hey, you are costing me money" stigma involved like there was in the bad old days decades ago.

[agos]

there is no "guessing", the person giving you their number can also tell you which platform they are on (in my country 99,9% of the time it will be Whatsapp).

making an antitrust case on the basis of "I don't want to guess" seems weak, but law can always turn out counterintuitive

[smoldesu]

> the person giving you their number can also tell you which platform they are on

That... doesn't solve the problem. We don't need fragmented messaging systems, we need the world's largest company to lay down some rules and abide by them. Right now, the existence of iMessage is predicated on the poor performance of traditional SMS messaging. It wouldn't surprise me if the United States (much like Europe's antitrust council) forced Apple to standardize their proprietary alternatives. There's nothing counterintuitive about that to me.

[AnthonyMouse]

Messaging networks have a network effect. You have to use the same one as the people you're communicating with, so if two or more people don't want to use the same one, at least one of them is forced to use the one they don't want to.

It doesn't matter how many other networks there are when you can't get your group to use those instead.

[josephcsible]

By going out of their way to make the experience worse when texting people who don't use iMessage.

[jonhohle]

In what way?

[Exoristos]

They don't give them a blue bubble.

[cwillu]

Last century it was bell whining about customers connecting unauthorized equipment to their network. This century, it's apple whining about customers connecting unauthorized equipment to their apis.

[treyd]

This is really it. It's exactly the same scenario and it would be great if it could be restated for the new networks we use today. History repeats itself.

[jonhohle]

iMessage infrastructure belongs solely to Apple. It’s a value add for people who hit their products. What is owed to people who are not their customers?

If you ran a business and provided a service to your paying customers, should you be forced to offer it gratis to anyone who wants to use it? That’s an absurd position.

[treyd]

You have to be an Apple customer to use Beeper Mini with iMessage. What's your point?

[cwillu]

> If you ran a business and provided a service to your paying customers, should you be forced to offer it gratis to anyone who wants to use it? That’s an absurd position.

Yes, it is absurd. It's a great strawman.

A more realistic option would be to say that Apple has to sell access to its infrastructure via the API its own app uses, at a cost allowing some reasonable profit; this would conveniently align with other court decisions regarding anti-competitive practices by incumbent providers with strong market positions.

[philistine]

Last century, were the customers connecting their equipment without paying money to Bell ?

[striking]

You now need legit Apple hardware tokens to connect to the network. Those of us currently with iMessage on Beeper have paid our dues.

[philistine]

You've paid your dues to Apple, right? You're not just using someone else's service to connect to another service you're not paying for, right?

[striking]

Yes, I own the physical hardware that the tokens are coming from. I own an (out of date, but still legit) iPhone 6, as well as a new Mac. I have paid Apple that which they would demand of any normal customer, and now I want the messages to flow to my Android phone and my Linux/Windows Desktop.

[tenebrisalietum]

Yes. https://historyofcomputercommunications.info/section/3.2/Car...

[philistine]

So it's very different. Beeper connects to Apple's service without an agreement or payment. The issue with Bell was with paying customers. No one was asking Bell to allow people without an account with them to connect.

[theamk]

Pretty sure if an alternate phone networks existed, it was free to switch to them, and they had billions of users already, antitrust case against bell would have no merit.

(disclaimer: Android user, wish users had stopped bothered with iMessage already and switched to something else)

[rakoo]

Beeper Mini bas a net positive impact on society, contrary to hackers finding holes. The only reason it's not possible to use iMessage with Android is that it's not profitable, and it's good to remind Spoke zealots that no, Apple isn't here for you.

[AnthonyMouse]

> My understanding is that Beeper reverse engineered their APIs and people expect Apple to just accept it?

It forces Apple to explicitly do the equivalent of Microsoft making competing word processors malfunction in DOS to pressure people to use Microsoft Word.

> How is it much different from blocking a hacker who's poking around to find holes?

That's the easy one. Interoperability is legitimate, credit card fraud isn't.

[__MatrixMan__]

The point of an API is interoperability. If somebody has to reverse engineer your API, you either suck at documentation, or are up to no good.