[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.