[xg15]

I'd disagree with both Apple and Moxie here and say, yes, for messages or anything else that induces a network effect, interop should be mandatory.

The thing is that I can't choose freely which messenger I want to use like I could with other services: I'm restricted by which messengers the people I want/have to talk to actually use.

So yeah, build your walled gardens if you have to, but then don't force me into them.

Of course forcing people into their walled gardens is something Apple's leadership is very much interested in, as evidenced by the "don't make it too easy for an iPhone family to buy their kid an Android phone" email.

[woodruffw]

It’s not clear that Apple is forcing you to do anything. Much like a tip in a tipping culture, any shame or pressure you feel from a network effect is your own.

This would of course be different if Apple prevented you from sending SMS messages via iMessage, or from installing third party messengers. But they don’t do either of these things.

[commoner]

> This would of course be different if Apple prevented you from sending SMS messages via iMessage, or from installing third party messengers. But they don’t do either of these things.

Apple does, in fact, prevent you from installing a third-party messenger on iOS that uses the device's native SMS/MMS capabilities. Apple's own Messages app is the only app that is allowed by Apple to handle SMS/MMS on iOS.

The fact that Apple has made iMessage exclusive to Messages, paired with the Messages app's privileged position as the only SMS/MMS client Apple allows on iOS, gives the Messages app and iMessage an unfair advantage over competing messengers and messaging protocols.

[woodruffw]

I have Signal and WhatsApp installed on my phone, along with 3 or 4 other apps. The “competing messaging protocols” aspect seems to be doing just fine.

I don’t think a competing SMS/MMS application would shift the competitive landscape significantly here. If it was, we’d see Beeper making an SMS app and challenging Apple’s inclusion policies there, not reverse engineering iMessage.

[commoner]

Beeper (Beeper Cloud) already supports SMS/MMS from Android devices, but is unable to do so for SMS/MMS from iOS devices due to Apple's restriction.

As a Signal user, you might have remembered when Signal/TextSecure supported SMS/MMS on Android in addition to Signal Protocol messages, which was a big factor in helping Signal onboard new Android users when it had a smaller user base. Signal never had the opportunity to do the same on iOS because Apple only allows its own Messages client to handle on-device SMS/MMS messages, which gave Messages (and iMessage) an unfair advantage over Signal (and the Signal Protocol).

Anticompetitive measures like Apple's SMS/MMS client restriction harm the market even when alternatives to Apple's products exist. The entire blue vs. green bubble issue would not be a problem in the first place had iOS users been able to switch to a competing messenger app that supports both SMS/MMS messaging and a newer cross-platform messaging protocol (instead of iMessage).

[paulmd]

Google voice allows sms even on ios, so it’s not as simple as that. Why is what beeper is providing around sms different from google voice? Both cloud hosted etc - this is fine.

Also, google voice still doesnt have rcs by the way, and it’s safe to assume that they will finally sunset the service rather than follow through on “principled stand” around rcs lol. Much like the epic games case… there was never anything more than a ploy to look good to regulators/lawyers. People are tragically unable to identify even very blatant cases of special pleading, especially when they align with the anti-apple zeitgeist among large parts of the tech crowd.

[commoner]

Google Voice does not handle on-device SMS/MMS messages on iOS. Most phone users expect to use the phone number that comes with their cell phone plan, not a separate VoIP service like Google Voice that uses a different phone number. Special pleading is arguing that Apple is exempt from the same FTC regulations that bind other U.S. companies.

[nickthegreek]

You don’t even need to use iMessage. You can fully disable it.

[xg15]

How do you receive SMS then?

[nickthegreek]

Through the Messages app.

[close04]

Interoperability is great though. You can talk with anyone without having to install yet another client or wonder what the other party is using. That’s why SMS is still used despite being godawful.

So opening the standard is great. The question is how will it work and how will the other parties guarantee the level of service. How do they deal with spam for example? Do they build their own network or do they use Apple’s? If Apple is forced to open up does it mean they’re forced to give access to any of their infrastructure? Can they charge or will there be a price cap? Who drives the evolution of the standard?

The details matter more than the principle in this case because on principle you could just end up giving everyone a crappier service.

[woodruffw]

Interoperability is great. But I'm not arguing about technical merits; the observation is solely that Apple isn't actually forcing its users to do anything, in any legal or even coercive moral sense.

(Separately: I don't think Apple's concern is about level of service. I think they're -- reasonably -- worried that the security properties of their messaging system are harder to uphold without confidence in their client itself. This is not an unreasonable concern.)

[xg15]

That's not how the network effect works. In that case, who is restricted isn't iPhone users but Android users who want to talk to iPhone users. Because they can't choose whether or not their contacts use an iPhone and communicating between Android and iPhones makes for a degraded experience (that the whole controversy is about), so in effect, Android users will be under pressure to switch to iPhones without them being able to do anything about that.

[woodruffw]

I talk with my friends with Androids just fine over Signal, WhatsApp, and several other apps. They haven’t expressed any pressure to switch.

But again: a network effect is not evidence of monopolistic or anticompetitive behavior. Twitter has (had?) a network effect, and could not meaningfully be said to have a monopoly over social media.