[jcomis]

I know it seems absurd, but as an android user I really do get cut out of group message convos due to not being on imessage. I realize many other countries use whatsapp or whatever, but my social circle in the US explicitly does not and won't. Even my parents have issues and frequently try to send me large videos. I've had to to completely decouple my phone number from my imessage email to be able to chat with people. Frequently things get messed up because iOS will always default to imessage over sms, so if your primary way to talk is via sms, but you do have an imessage and the person has both in your contact card you don't actually get anything on your phone. I can't really see how it isn't anticompetitive.

[hangonhn]

As an iPhone user, I find it super annoying too. I love my iPhone and Apple products in general but it's not fair to expect all my friends to be the same. One of my friends has an iPhone but turned off iMessage out of an abundance of caution. As a consumer, I would really like it if non-iMessage user can get the same experience as all the iMessage users. We know there is a way. The standard wasn't great when it was new but it has matured a lot. I would really like it if Apple supported it. Its behavior seems needlessly antagonistic.

[jorvi]

> Its behavior seems needlessly antagonistic.

It is just standard fare across the modern bigtech world.

Prior to the iPhone / iOS, Apple would have happily built in support for something like Google Cast, because they operated from the idea that their products should be the most useful for their customer.

These days it’s all about forcing people into your ecosystem for increased lock-in. Thus, no baked in support for Cast (except in the Apple Music app on Android). As far as Apple is concerned, if you are visiting a friend and want to play some music on his Chromecast, the solution is to buy your friend an Apple TV for AirPlay.

[davisr]

Free software (libre -- free as in freedom) is the antidote to this entire mess. We should always choose free software whenever we can, so that we cannot get used by agents of corporate media in their hunt for more loot.

https://fsf.org

https://gnu.org

[cyanydeez]

the problem isn't just producer caused, consumers use Apple products as status systems.

libre software is not going to stop that.

[davisr]

Oh, you're right, let's just not even try and wallow in self-pity while we continue to be slaves to megacorporations. Or...just choose free software yourself, so that _you_ don't get used by these entities who seek to eliminate computer user freedom.

I run Trisquel GNU/Linux-libre on my laptop. It is totally possible to use 100% free/libre software. I use it for professional work. If GNU/Linux ain't your gig, lots of people also run OpenBSD.

[adamomada]

Google chrome cast is a really bad example of something they could add because it is s locked down proprietary technology that you need to have permission from Google to use now and at all times in the future.

The open cast protocol (miracast?) was lacking in some ways or other and therefore they chose to make something that did what they wanted and also could guarantee it would still be working down the road (AirPlay)

What they should have done is open up AirPlay and perhaps turn it into the next standard that everyone expects to be able to use.

[jorvi]

> Google chrome cast is a really bad example of something they could add because it is s locked down proprietary technology that you need to have permission from Google to use now and at all times in the future.

They have added it though, in Apple Music on Android, so they clearly already have both a license and a developed Cast “app” that gets loaded onto the Chromecast.

> The open cast protocol (miracast?)

It was DIAL. Why it died is anyone’s guess. Perhaps Google wanted more control, and Netflix et al didn’t feel like carrying the development burden.

[nox101]

You need permission to use Chrome Cast?

My Hyatt hotel supports Chromecast to the TVs in the rooms in the hotel. At no time did I have to give permission to Google to use it from my iPhone

Or are you meaning some other permission?

[danielheath]

The TV manufacturers obtained permission to ship devices with support for chromecast

[pmarreck]

> Prior to the iPhone / iOS, Apple would have happily built in support for something like Google Cast

I really don't think you can assume this. For example, a long time ago in computer years, Apple rolled out "Yellow Box for Windows" which was a way to get NeXTStep apps running on Windows http://www.shawcomputing.net/resources/apple/os_pictures/ybn... as part of Rhapsody Developer Release 2 (this was a prerelease OS X)... and then promptly ditched it.

Being able to develop once and then deploy to both OS X and Windows sounds great to developers, but think about this: If you had access to Mac apps from a Windows machine, then why would you buy a Mac, when Apple is competing on quality and not price? It'd be a win for app developers but a big "lose" for Apple.

So why would Apple have ever built a way to cast to Google Cast if they already had an AppleTV product that wasn't competing on price with Google Cast? (AppleTV's are great, btw)

[jorvi]

> So why would Apple have ever built a way to cast to Google Cast if they already had an AppleTV product that wasn't competing on price with Google Cast? (AppleTV's are great, btw)

Because it makes iPhone and Mac users their (digital) life better?

Let me give you a different example: you visit a hotel. They have Cast-enabled TV’s, but those do not support AirPlay. Anyone with an iPhone or Mac is SoL. It literally goes against Apple’s old “It Just Works” adage, when they probably would have looked at Cast as just another protocol to support. The only reason to do that is if you think the net decrease in usability will increase the company’s profitability via lock-in.

To be clear, it is not just Apple doing this. A different vector is a product like YouTube: often when I’m scrolling the comments after a video ends, an ad will play that extends down vertically, making me tap it. If I swipe it away, the entire screen shifts again, but now there is an ad strip at the bottom, that I accidentally tap again, taking me out of the app. This is obviously horrid UX, but Google doesn’t care because the only thing Google wants from you is eyes on ads. They don’t have to deliver a good product (users first), they just have to make the product barely not-shitty-enough that you won’t leave.

A great counter-example is 1Password: they support numerous ways to export their own or import other services their vaults. If you have a running subscription with a competitor, they will credit you the remainder of your bill if you switch. If you asks customer support for help if you are switching to, say, Bitwarden, they’ll help you. They believe in their product and that you’ll either come back or stick with them because it is the best on the market. Which frankly, for now, it is. Due to user-first perspective :)

[NickFanion]

You’re making a good point, but I don’t think this is fair to AirPlay. You don’t need an Apple TV to use AirPlay. My LG TV supports AirPlay. I recently stayed at an Airbnb with a TV running Roku OS. It supported AirPlay as well. Sonos and various other speakers and AV equipment support audio-only AirPlay.

When AirPlay launched in 2010, Google Cast didn’t exist. EDIT: TV manufacturers only started adding AirPlay (now “AirPlay 2”) in 2019. Still, I think it’s reasonable to expect a modern device, without extra hardware, to support AirPlay.

[jorvi]

Ideally of course Apple would bake in Cast and Google would bake in AirPlay 2. Best case for users, worst case for them.

Much more tangential but AirPlay (even AirPlay 2) is hot garbage for music due to the gigantic audio buffers. When I press “play/pause/next”, I want my command to process immediately, not after 2-3 seconds.

[soperj]

> Because it makes iPhone and Mac users their (digital) life better?

They have never cared about this.

[jorvi]

You should really watch a bunch of the old Jobs videos.

A prime example is price. Jobs’ was asked why they didn’t make a competing MacBook at the $600 Windows laptop price point (I think this was the mid 2000s?). He said that it might have sold really well but that they would have to severely degrade the user experience to hit that price point, and he refused to do that because he wanted to make great devices.

Back in those days you could plug any non-exotic device into a Mac, and it would mostly just work instantly, which was paradise compared to XP and 7’s driver and .dll hell. These days, I’d expect Apple to do stuff like patch the AirPods Max firmware to break the Android apps that enable all the cool non-basic features.

[pmarreck]

That's literally bullshit. They literally wrote the book on human interface guidelines

https://andymatuschak.org/files/papers/Apple%20Human%20Inter...

[bloppe]

Google can and has done the same thing. They stopped supporting YouTube on FireTV because Amazon refused to sell ChromeCast devices on their website. All these competitors have options to force you to buy their hardware just to use their services and vice versa. Google could start slowly degrading all their services for users without Chromebooks. Microsoft could force you to buy a Windows phone just to use ChatGPT.

Clearly, all of this is bad for users across the board. Apple is by far the most aggressive when it comes to this kind of anticompetitive bundling. You can't just say "of course they want to be anticompetitive, that's just business!". You're supposed to not let them pull this shit.

[lamontcg]

> As far as Apple is concerned, if you are visiting a friend and want to play some music on his Chromecast, the solution is to buy your friend an Apple TV for AirPlay.

airplay works fine on my roku, OTOH my chromecast is becoming useless because i don't use chrome as a browser.

[cyanydeez]

the lockin isn't just producer side, many consumers love ve the conspicuous consumption and exclusivity this create a toxic capitalism and antisocial behavior the clearly mimics the current American class struggle.

[pmarreck]

> One of my friends has an iPhone but turned off iMessage out of an abundance of caution

In my experience, iMessages have far greater delivery reliability than SMS text messages.

I've actually gotten into inadvertent fights with people over undelivered SMS text messages.

[AnthonyMouse]

The issue isn't that Apple should be using SMS in particular -- SMS sucks. But they should either use some standardized protocol, or publish a protocol standard for iMessage.

Someone willing to do the work should be capable of producing an interoperable implementation.

[Jtsummers]

You'll get your wish later this year with iOS support for RCS.

[AnthonyMouse]

Not exactly.

It's a step in the right direction but it's the same problem as iMessage supporting SMS in addition to its own protocol. If the proprietary protocol supports something the open protocol doesn't, or that Apple doesn't implement for the open protocol, a competing implementation can't do it. And if it doesn't do that then why does the proprietary protocol exist?

If you're going to make your own protocol, publish a spec.

[peyton]

Isn’t iMessage a service, not a protocol? Should I be able to operate a business that sends bulk advertisements to iMessage users?

[naravara]

The touchy part is the end-to-end encryption. The whole point is that Apple is the trusted party there. As an iMessage user I don’t want my messages passing through who knows which other parties’ servers when I send messages to others.

The point of the blue bubble is to ensure the encryption is there.

[Sabinus]

If you're an iMessage user, don't you want your messages to non apple users to be encrypted?

Kicking them out of the system makes your messages less secure, not more secure.

[naravara]

Who verifies that the client on the other end of your line isn’t intercepting the messages after they’re decrypted?

[AnthonyMouse]

End-to-end encryption is where the client device encrypts the message and then the other end's client device decrypts the message. It doesn't matter how many servers it goes through, none of them can read it, that's the entire point of end-to-end encryption.

The hard part is associating some identity with the user's keys, but when the ID is your phone number or email address, the entity doing that is inherently your phone company or email provider. You can standardize a way to do that, i.e. to sign up you get an SMS or email with a code and have to enter the code. The client can automate that if it has access to read your SMS or email, or otherwise you enter it manually.

[naravara]

If the person on the other end is using a non-Apple client you cannot verify independently that their client isn’t peeping. It’s the client, not the servers.

But also when it comes to managing the keys and syncing across devices it’s also the servers.

[crazygringo]

> I've actually gotten into inadvertent fights with people over undelivered SMS text messages.

Oh, man.

Thankfully I haven't had an undelivered text in over a decade.

But back in the early-to-mid 2000s, it was maybe a 5% failure rate in the country I was living in then? With no indication.

And yes it really did cause arguments with romantic partners. There were times I had to pull out my phone and prove I'd asked/invited/told them whatever. But it's not like that ever really fixes the situation either.

But if you asked anyone to confirm they'd gotten your message you seemed paranoid or needy.

You just couldn't win. So much friction.

[godelski]

> but as an android user I really do get cut out of group message convos due to not being on imessage.

I'll second this complaint. Though personally I try to use Signal with my friends and this led to the strategy of "it's like iMessage, but cross platform" for those who aren't security conscious. Sure, not exactly, but close enough. There's a lot I like about Apple, but the closed walls are a major hindrance. I really wish companies would see the value of open source or at least open protocols. I mean hasn't our entire technological framework essentially been built due to source code being available? Certainly we can point to the internet, android, any programming language, linux, and many other common systems that we use daily (knowingly or unknowingly). I mean it's like turning down free work... Why?

[sircastor]

> I mean it's like turning down free work... Why?

When you're in a competitive industry, you want to commodify the spaces where your competitors have an advantage, and keep proprietary the spaces where you have the advantage. A good example is Google's early embrace of XMPP. They made their chat system use the open standard and then when they had a strong base, they started to build proprietary things on top of the standard. Then they were diverged enough and it was their way or the highway. It was a page out of Microsoft's book. I think Google really could have owned modern chat if they'd stayed-the-course with one of the chat systems they announced.

Open source is a great philosophy, but whenever you adopt it you're (potentially) funding and doing development work for your competitor. In theory those competitors are going to also contribute, but it's often assumed that competitors are fair players. That you'll both be trying to make the best thing. Your competitor might simply take your work, and undercut you on price. You're left holding the bill for all the work you put in, and they make a profit (Smaller than you would have, but their cost was negliable)

[godelski]

> Open source is a great philosophy

So I guess I should be clear, I'm thinking source available. I know Open Source is a loaded word.

But doesn't this kinda support my thinking? They accelerated by using the open tools and then slowed once they had a more mature product? I mean we've seen huge advancements in LLaMA and StableDiffusion because of their open source-ness. One could argue that GPT is also getting major benefits from this, but I think also partially because it's the most common LLM to perform analysis on (which is a bit weird that researchers do this on a closed source/data model...)

I definitely get the argument around your competitor being able to snag your work, but if we're talking about source available then that becomes a legal matter. And truth be told, we could say the same about a lot of hardware. I mean anything hardware you can visibly inspect.

I definitely don't know how that all plays out in literal numbers and I do wonder if there is some counterfactual data out there. I'm just highly suspicious that it isn't as big of a cost as many assume it is. Even software you can do a really good job at cloning if you have access to it (even if completely black box). There's definitely costs, my question is just how much this compares to benefits. And is source available cost being confused with first mover cost? Because that has the same implication as you note in your conclusion.

[hutzlibu]

"I mean it's like turning down free work... Why?"

It is currently also creating lots of pressure for people to also buy an IPhone to not be cut out of circles. And once they have an IPhone, they can integrate it better with other Apple devices and once you are inside the walled garden, you will likely stay there, if you can afford it.

I don't see Apple opening up on their own anytime soon.

[godelski]

I mean I can understand the argument, but is there any good counterfactual evidence to this? I'd wager the stronger effect be from simple peer pressure and wanting to fit in (don't have strong evidence either, so I'll admit to that). I mean Apple has spent a lot of marketing on aligning their products to social status and let's be real, people do associate Android phones with being cheaper. So I hear the claim, I'm just not ready to buy it without good evidence and more importantly, that this outweighs the benefits of the "free work" (especially given that there are other mechanisms to get said desired outcome).

[turquoisevar]

This won’t help you, but might help others in a similar situation:

If a sender starts a new conversation based on your name and they happen to have your email stored in your contact card as well, and the email is registered with iMessage, it’ll favor iMessage via email over SMS the first time, unless your number is specifically chosen[0] and then it’ll remember that preference for subsequent times

This doesn’t happen when there’s already a conversation going based on your phone number in the contact card, even if that phone number used to be registered with iMessage (in that case it’ll switch to SMS) or if the phone number is typed in manually or the sender searches you with the phone number.

You can of course, as recipient, also select with which email addresses and phone numbers would want to be reachable via iMessage.

To me this seems like good idea reservation and generally desired behavior because it prioritizes a richer messaging experience over one that is basic and you l, by virtue of enabling receipt of iMessages via email, essentially advertise that you’re able and willing to receive iMessages.

0: https://ibb.co/VV9hvxF

[figassis]

To me, the fact that Apple broke SMS by defaulting to iMessage to that contacts not on iMessage that previously had iMessage interactions get messages silently dropped is where the hammer should drop on Apple.

[barbazoo]

Their message app is kinda weird in that it seems to be impossible to see which number a messages has been sent from. I found myself messaging a person and asking them what their current personal phone number is because it wasn't clear from the app.

[pmarreck]

This is because iMessage (somewhat notoriously) allows not just multiple single identifiers (such as a phone number or email address) but multiple identifiers AT ONCE (such as BOTH a phone number AND an email address)... And all of these are treated differently!

iMessages from the same person will end up in 3 different conversations based on whether they specified (for that conversation) only their cell number as the recipient identifier, only their email address as the recipient identifier, OR BOTH! Which is of course madness. Which is why I tell everyone within earshot to ONLY check off the cell number identifier (even on their non-cell devices) and uncheck ALL other identifiers, for sanity. (This is under iCloud settings somewhere.)

But that explains this. Why is it like this? Well, once upon a time there was the iPod Touch, which had iMessage but didn't have a cell connection or cell radio or cell number (think: kid with an iPod Touch who never had a cell number). Also, Macs have iMessage and don't have those either.

[zimpenfish]

> it seems to be impossible to see which number a messages has been sent from

If you tap on the contact at the top of a conversation, then on "info", there'll be a "RECENT" tag on the source of the most recent message.

(Now, admittedly, this won't help much if they're sending from an Apple ID rather than their phone number but it might work sufficiently for you and your conversations.)

[bmitc]

Yep. We have to use WhatsApp. There's no other choice. Texting between Android and iPhone is completely broken.

[mb64]

How so? I have iPhone and have a group text with 3 family members on android and it seems to work fine.

[bmitc]

The above commenter explained how. iPhones will sometimes simply refuse to send an actual text message if the phone number was once associated with an iMessage account. I have deregistered my phone number from iMessage, iCloud, and whatever else, and my parents' iPhones still send me iMessages despite texting my phone number, even replying to a message or geoup that I text messaged from my phone number. Apple has already been sued about this before. That and picture and video sending is horrible, I think because Apple has historically not implemented protocols that Android exposes.

[dp-hackernews]

IIRC the Blackberry Messaging app (BBM) was cross-platform.

[Bud]

It's not anticompetitive because you're misunderstanding what Apple Messages fundamentally is.

It's not just a protocol. It's a very expensive service platform that Apple runs as a service to its users. Apple is simply not obligated to let Android users use that platform and derive all its benefits for free. It's not.

This isn't anticompetitive; it's an example of Apple being simply better at competing in this particular arena.

The fact that your social circle has certain dynamics doesn't change this at all, of course.

[Krasnol]

You make it sound as if it's something innovative or special.

It is not.

The only reason it's causing problems is that it is an intentional tool to drive users as OP into the environment through the external pressure from his peer group.

This is a highly anti-social behavior by a company which obviously has to do it because it lacks true innovation or actually good reasons which would draw customers such as OP to their products.

It's nothing to defend or be proud of.

[turquoisevar]

> The only reason it's causing problems is that it is an intentional tool to drive users as OP into the environment through the external pressure from his peer group.

I see this claim made often, but I have yet to see anything substantial that serves as evidence that Apple is intentionally trying to get customers to exert peer pressure or even anything that hints that they’re relying on said peer pressure to generate sales, regardless of if they drive customers to exert the peer pressure.

I’ve read more pages of internal communications published through discovery than I care to admit, but I have yet to find anything substantiating this claim.

As it stands now, this anti-social behavior seems wholly driven by the culture of people in general, or more so the culture in the US if we’re being specific.

Would you happen to have anything concrete to support your assertion?

[Krasnol]

> I have yet to see anything substantial that serves as evidence that Apple is intentionally

Like what? What do you need here, additional to what is already happening? A letter signed by the CEO? Seriously? The evidence is right before us all. It is happening. People are being bullied because of this. Why should they have to write it down? For people to leak and make them liable?

They do it this way and it works automatically. At least in the US.

> As it stands now, this anti-social behavior seems wholly driven by the culture of people in general, or more so the culture in the US if we’re being specific.

Yeah, it is easy to blame it on the people. The fact remains that they could do something about it, and pretty easy. They don't and there is no sane reason to not do it. Meanwhile, the pressure for Android users to switch remains and the whole practice is even being promoted and defended by their own customers for them. Here you go with your anti-social Win-win.

[turquoisevar]

> Like what? What do you need here, additional to what is already happening? A letter signed by the CEO? Seriously? The evidence is right before us all. It is happening. People are being bullied because of this. Why should they have to write it down? For people to leak and make them liable?

You assert that Apple has a specific intent and goal concerning bullying; “what is already happening” proves very little in that regard.

Case in point, my intent and goal is for you to produce something that supports your assertion so I can finally assess if your assertion, and others similar to it, have any merit.

But “what is [actually] happening” is you trying to flip it on me by trying to make your lack of supporting evidence my problem, only to continue and essentially claim that no further evidence is necessary because “it’s happening.”

Clearly, my intent and goal have little to do with the actual outcome.

Just as it is clear to me that you don’t have anything substantial to support your assertion that Apple is intentionally driving their users into anti-social behavior, which ultimately is your problem because you’re the one making the assertion.

> Yeah, it is easy to blame it on the people.

Yes, of course, it’s easy to blame it on the people that do the actual bullying. Because they’re the ones that do the actual bullying. I fail to see how this is controversial in the slightest.

I generally don’t subscribe to the “people’s own responsibility” doctrine when we're dealing with things where companies go out of their way to manipulate and influence consumers by preying on human weaknesses and tempting them, employing an army of psychologists to target these weaknesses, etc.

Things we see with loot boxes, gambling ads, crypto, micro-transaction games, and what we saw in cigarette ads.

However, none of that seems applicable here. To my knowledge iMessage isn’t even actively advertised, much less in a way that it tries to manipulate consumers with dopamine injections or representations of a lifestyle that is out of reach, even less so in a way that would encourage dickish behavior.

So yes, I blame it on the people who actually act this way without any stimulus that fosters that behavior.

> The fact remains that they could do something about it, and pretty easy. They don't and there is no sane reason to not do it.

The only thing they could do to “do something about it” is to give away their IP or lessen the value of their IP. Those are pretty sane reasons not to do it. Other than that, they have no moral obligation to do so, in my opinion.

The fact that they don’t choose to do that doesn’t equate to them condoning such behavior, much less intentionally driving said behavior.

Others can also do something about it, and it would be without much effort. People could, for example, choose to be less shitty without any sane reason not to be shitty, or people could address people that act shitty.

This notion that someone can do something about something and therefore has a moral obligation and the moral liability to do something is quite a slippery slope, one that I’m not even opposed to on principle because many people are in ridiculously inhumane conditions just in the US alone.

Conditions that are much worse than being bullied for not having a blue bubble, conditions we all collectively have created and benefit from, and conditions that could all be solved tomorrow if we all decided we could do something about it with little to no effort on individuals in this collective.

But alas, we have decided that it’s more important for small groups of people to thrive and, with it, corporations such as Apple. As such, a corporation’s IP is theirs to use as they see fit, so under the morals we have chosen to live by, they don’t have a moral obligation to “do something.”

> Meanwhile, the pressure for Android users to switch remains and the whole practice is even being promoted and defended by their own customers for them.

Which practice would that be? The alleged practice of intentionally driving customers to bully others?

I haven’t seen people here in HN promote or defend bullying, much less Apple intentionally driving it (if they were to be inclined to take the allegation at face value without anything substantial corroborating that allegation).

But, like with the allegation itself, I’m more than willing to take a look at comments you found here on HN that champion the idea of Apple intentionally driving people to bully other people.

> Here you go with your anti-social Win-win.

Let’s keep it classy and save the ad hominems for the back alley.

——

So in the end, ignoring the distractions, I’m genuinely curious if you have anything substantial that supports your assertion.

[Krasnol]

> You assert that Apple has a specific intent and goal concerning bullying; “what is already happening” proves very little in that regard.

I assert that a company like Apple would have no problem with interoperability of their messenger. They wouldn't have a problem releasing an iMessage app for Android. They still don't do it.

I also assert that they profit from the resulting toxic situation, as people are forced to change to their environment if they don't want to be excluded in their social circles.

Ergo: it must be intended.

> But “what is [actually] happening” is you trying to flip it on me by trying to make your lack of supporting evidence my problem, only to continue and essentially claim that no further evidence is necessary because “it’s happening.”

I questioned the naive presentation of your request. You can't be serious, requesting from me (or anybody) some kind of written statement which would write down what is actually happening. Who would do that? For what reason? Who is this statement supposed to serve internally if the policy to prevent interoperability suffices? So why should there be anything?

I also don't see how this is even relevant because it is happening. We're faced with the facts I've written above. It is their day-to-day business to keep up this toxic situation for no other reason.

Besides that, there is of course the Epic lawsuit: https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/9/22375128/apple-imessage-an...

> Yes, of course, it’s easy to blame it on the people that do the actual bullying.

If you create an environment where this bullying develops, you are to blame first.

And it's not like this is something users came up. It is a pain in the ass for both sides affected. But it is not because of what those users do. It is because the communication protocol makes it so.

> To my knowledge iMessage isn’t even actively advertised

Why would they have to? It's a native communication environment.

> The only thing they could do to “do something about it” is to give away their IP or lessen the value of their IP. Those are pretty sane reasons not to do it.

They don't have to give up anything. They could have made an iMessage app for Android. Apple users would still use it as it's the native tool to communicate on their devices. People know it and obviously are even now too lazy to switch to much better, safer, etc. tools. This is a common trope in software. The only thing they'd actually lose is the pressure on Android users. This is of course also "sane" if you don't care about the toxicity you create and only care about profits. Which is what I said they do.

> Others can also do something about it, and it would be without much effort.

I assume you didn't follow the Beeper story: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/22/technology/apple-iphone-b...

> This notion that someone can do something about something and therefore has a moral obligation and the moral liability to do something is quite a slippery slope, one that I’m not even opposed to on principle because many people are in ridiculously inhumane conditions just in the US alone.

What's wrong about a "slippery slope" to better moral standards?

> Conditions that are much worse than being bullied for not having a blue bubble, conditions we all collectively have created and benefit from, and conditions that could all be solved tomorrow if we all decided we could do something about it with little to no effort on individuals in this collective.

The whole business model plays upon a systematic problem within our capitalistic system. It thrives from envy, greed and loose moral standards. You saying that people who grew up within this system, being told how great it is and how special they can be if they wave their expensive device in front of the faces of others can be "simply" overcome by everybody deciding they could just not participate in it is at least naive.

At this point, I really wonder why you just don't proudly admit that they're successful with what they do and that they should be proud about how well this works, since the moral outline of your argumentation points exactly to this. It says that people are idiots, and they are supposed to be milked by companies which follow the line the system draws.

> I haven’t seen people here in HN promote or defend bullying

Just like the company itself doesn't have to say that explicitly because it is already built into this situation, you won't see it said explicitly on HN. However, it doesn't mean that it is intended. You do defend this practice here.

Also, it is being promoted if you don't get on with your tinder match because the color of your bubble shows that you can't afford an iPhone or if you're being thrown off your classes group because people are annoyed with the shortcomings of your communication and so on.

As I said: I don't blame those people. Their argument is reasonable. It's a pain to communicate with Android users. The fact that we're already one step further and people who didn't even experience the pain "discriminate" because they KNOW it's a pain doesn't make those people worse. They are only better informed about the toxic situation Apple keeps up.

> Let’s keep it classy and save the ad hominems for the back alley.

I didn't intend to aim that sentence at you. It was aimed at Apple.

[Auracle]

I’ve never received a spam iMessage. My dad, on the other hand, receive one through WhatsApp that lead to him being scammed for tens of thousands of dollars. God knows I receive plenty of regular text spam messages.

Should Facebook be forced to let people on Twitter message them and vice versa?

I think the only reason anyone cares is because it’s folded into the default SMS app. If it were separate like Google Meets/Allo/whatever they’re doing now nobody would care, even if it wasn’t available on iOS.

[Krasnol]

The fact that your dad (and our all moms and dads) get spam, and we don't (or less) doesn't have anything to do with the messenger. Just google "spam on imessage". It is because your dad has people in their contacts who are not careful with their phone number. Or your dad is.

[paulmd]

in general, a lot of people get pretty worked up about anything having to do with the fruit company so I find it often helps to just substitute in "discord" and see if the argument sounds hyperbolic.

"discord is intentionally causing problems by blocking interoperability with third-party clients and using that to funnel sales via peer-pressure from his peer group"

why does discord have to allow third parties to run off their infrastructure and development spends? is discord a gatekeeper in this context? certainly it would hurt me socially to not be able to access the space where all my friends hang out, and they monetize that further by forcing me into shitty pay-by-month upgrades that are only possible via their gatekeeping (otherwise I'd trivially be able to add animated emojis back etc).

or how about slack?

email is another great example... if you figure out how to spoof some headers and trick gmail into thinking you are another gmail SMTP relay, do you have the right to build a commercial service on the ability to send email through gmail's infrastructure, and gmail is legally prohibited from closing the open relay ever again? And bear in mind that google is DEFINITELY a gatekeeper in all senses of the word - it is very hard to convince gmail and outlook to take your emails from a self-hosted server.

XMPP allowed interoperability, but it was never a legal requirement. And if you do create this legal requirement, you turn it into an email-like situation where there are certainly parties who would love to use that relay to worsen your customers' quality-of-life.

[Krasnol]

I don't know how any of those examples are supposed to help in this situation.

You have exactly two relevant phone infrastructures in the Western World. One is pretty open and the other is locked. Usually it doesn't cause many problems besides envy. People can still talk with each other. It works quite well all over the planet because of third party commutation software like Whatsapp, Facebook, etc.

However, on the locked ones biggest market there is a special situation where the fact that third party software is not that popular. This situation grew out of historical reasons and has created a toxic problem which divides the whole country almost in half. None of your examples above is so widespread and creates such a huge divide.

So what is it you can do about it as a company? You could allow for interoperability within the established communication methods your customers use. Or you could just ignore the problem and be happy about all those customers who have to buy your expensive devices and services only because they don't want to be outcasts in their class, in dating, at work, etc.

The decision Apple made here shows their attitude towards their customers and their potential customers. An attitude towards the society at large, actually. Looking at it from outside the US-bubble it's quite shocking and pretty much disgusting. I wonder how people working there are not ashamed of themselves for keeping such a problem up.

[ccorcos]

People also seem to miss that the hardware-level signatures are the reason they’re able to manage spam so effectively. Opening up iMessage could easily lead to email levels of spam.

[pmarreck]

> as an android user I really do get cut out of group message convos due to not being on imessage

Well, that's the drawback of having an Android I guess, at least in those spaces (I also inhabit one). The evidence of the disjoint relationship between a product space that competes on price and one that competes on quality. /satirical-elitist-shrug-with-smirk

But seriously, didn't Google try at least 10 different ways to roll out their own iMessage competitor and SMS eclipser, and failed every time? This is not all Apple's fault, here.

> Even my parents have issues and frequently try to send me large videos

Yeah, my S.O.'s parents kept trying to send videos from their Androids to our iPhones and they come in as tiny thumbails. I FINALLY got them onto a Whatsapp group text to exchange videos and photos over, although they still miss out on LivePhotos, which is a favorite Apple feature of mine.

[CharlesW]

> I know it seems absurd, but as an android user I really do get cut out of group message convos due to not being on imessage.

I'm a U.S. iPhone user on many "green bubble" (standards-based) group chats, as are my wife and kids. I don't think we're outliers in this respect. If you're getting pushback on this, consider that this may say more about your social circle.

[jcomis]

Lol, this response always happens in the discussion of Android and imessage. It's great that it works for you, but I don't think this is the case for most given the level of discussion on this topic across the web here, reddit, etc. I totally agree standard messages work fine. But nothing is really standard anymore. Videos for example are the typical culprit in degrading the experience: If I'm in a group chat and someone sends a video it gets reduced to such low quality you often can't even tell what it is. Same with facetime, large amounts of photos, the list goes on. Recently stuff like message reactions were fixed, but still cause hiccups.

[godelski]

> Videos for example are the typical culprit in degrading the experience

My dad does this to me all the time. For those that don't know, the videos we receive are 320x240p. Talk about potato... No matter how many times I tell him, he still does it. It's quite deliberate from Apple. For example, I have a video that I received which is 0.1MP (262kb) but an image I received that is 1536x2048 or 3.1MP (548kb). Why are my images double the size of the videos? I find it hard to buy an argument about bandwidth when doubling the video size would make it substantially more visible (though still quite annoying). I can't think of how this is anything but deliberate. Even if it isn't, clearly it's going to be taken that way.

[CharlesW]

> Videos for example are the typical culprit in degrading the experience…

So you send links, or use use alternatives like Discord, Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram, etc.

[shortformblog]

> If you're getting pushback on this, consider that this may say more about your social circle.

It can’t be the multi-trillion-dollar company that’s terrible, it must always be the people in your life.

[The_Colonel]

It's shi*y human behavior, but it shouldn't be encouraged by the technology.

[nvy]

>If you're getting pushback on this, consider that this may say more about your social circle.

Maybe, just maybe, technology should serve the user by enabling people to socialize with whom they wish, rather than the opposite.

[pmarreck]

The problem is that someone always has to be in charge. If no one is in charge, usually nothing good happens.

So for example, we have Ecosystem A and Ecosystem B, each led by a company. Their users (note: NOT those companies) want an enhanced messaging standard between them. Who should be in charge of it? One of those two, or someone else? WHY would either company be incentivized to do so, since it hypothetically facilitates losing users to the other ecosystem? WHY would a third party come up with the best possible standard between these two (as well as maintaining it!) that they wouldn't then be compensated for?

So when you say "technology should serve the user", who or what "should" do this, and why "should" they do it? For free? You have to find or build the right incentives if you want something to be.

This is the same reason we are still grappling with a single medical records standard/exchange format. No one wants anyone else to be in charge of it, and yet someone must be, otherwise you have dilution of responsibility and perverse incentives.

[AnthonyMouse]

> WHY would a third party come up with the best possible standard between these two (as well as maintaining it!) that they wouldn't then be compensated for?

This is the easiest one to solve, because it's not that expensive to make a decent messaging standard (Open Whisper Systems was very small, for example; solitary individuals have done it in other cases). It's not a matter of getting someone to do the work.

It's that messaging systems have a network effect, so when one comes as the default on a device with a billion users, it has a big network regardless of whether or not a competing protocol might be just as good. And then they want to lock competitors out of that network effect, which is an antitrust issue, and so here we are.

[noiseinvacuum]

In this case, the simple solution is for Apple is to have an Android app. Which, as per the email revealed in court cases, they have had and haven't launched since 2013.

[pmarreck]

Wow. I was not aware.

[error9348]

This may be ignorant, but why does green/blue bubble matter for US folks? Almost all cell providers have free SMS/MMS. Would people even notice it if the color was always blue?

[lastofthemojito]

Green/MMS messages end up having much lower quality images and videos than iMessages. Send the video to another iPhone user and they see it in HD. Send it via MMS and someone gets a blurry postage stamp video.

[izzydata]

But from an Android phones perspective it is the iPhone users that have low quality images and compatibility. Whenever someone sends me an image or video from an iPhone it seems like their phone must be terrible.

These systems could work together if Apple wanted them to. Google / Android isn't the part that is preventing interoperability. So ultimately it really is an iPhone being bad problem. They've marketed the problem well to make it seem like it is the other way around in order to make iPhones more desirable.

[stjohnswarts]

because it doesn't allow nearly as large images/videos/etc to be sent. They either get dropped or reduced in size by various means. If you stick to text I've had no problems, if you don't you're on your own if your doing Android <-->iPhone . most of my friends use signal or whatsapp so it's not a big deal for me, but others have issues.

[error9348]

Thanks. That explains why I never notice the difference.

[lozenge]

The green bubble makes it hard to read the text. (It actually violates Apple's own guidelines for text contrast).

[Krasnol]

Come on. It's such a known problem in the US that even people from other continents know about it.

It is nice that it works for you, but do not play stupid here. You know it's huge.

[CharlesW]

It's really not, it's just the norm. Android has 40% market share in the U.S., so virtually all group chats are going to be standards-based SMS/MMS for interoperability with at least one Android-using member.

[Krasnol]

If toxicity based upon bubble shame becomes a norm. You should actually be ashamed of yourself as a company, but I guess these days shame came out of fashion.

[the_gastropod]

I'm a U.S. iPhone user, and I have approximately 0 confidence in MMS message delivery. They're extremely unreliable in my experience. I'll suggest going to Signal or something similar if I need a group chat that includes non-iPhone folks.