[garygao]

Apple doesn't inherently prohibit programmatic messaging. In fact, they actually developed Applescript for people to do that. What they are against is spam and abuse. Therefore, as long as we stay compliant and prevent spam, Apple is not necessarily against this.

[morpheuskafka]

> iMessage is intended for communicating with family and friends, and is not for conducting commercial activities or disseminating unwanted messages. iMessage misuse may result in service limitations.

https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/messages/

Apparently, they are against ANY commercial messages. Even if I personally sent marketing messages and typed them myself. So of course they are not going to like you making it easier for people to do that at scale.e

Technically, you are right that being programmatic is not the issue (so presumably those openclaw adapters are okay).

But let's not mislead investors or customers -- Apple has clearly stated your use case is not welcome (except through the iMessage Business Program they control).

[frumplestlatz]

They developed AppleScript for people to do this individually, at limited scale.

Push notifications, attached to an application or website, and controllable by a user on that basis, are the solution for corporate messaging at scale.

This will get you banned. It’s not a question of if, but when. Users will hit the report spam button. Apple will shut you down.

[zwily]

Are you telling me that the “report spam” button actually does something??!?!?!!!

[striking]

Your messages on iMessage are private by default, so "Report Spam" is the only way for Apple to receive the message for spam review.

[garygao]

People don't report our phone lines to be spam because the use cases that we focus on are either mostly inbound (e.g. customer service, the user is the one who texts first) or warm opt-in outbound (e.g. form-fill text back or follow ups). Businesses want a better medium to communicate with their users and users want something more conversational and native to their messaging behaviors.

[frumplestlatz]

I genuinely can’t tell if this is naivety or willful ignorance, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter.

This is in direct violation of the terms of service, and Apple invests a lot of money in keeping iMessage clean of this kind of misuse.

They control the servers, the client, certificate provisioning, hardware identification, and user identification. They can trivially trace a registered account to the point of sale and the card and PII used to buy the hardware on which the account was registered.

You will fly under the radar for just as long as it takes to annoy enough of their customers that Apple brings down a massive ban hammer.

[trollbridge]

I also can’t tell why these use cases can’t just use RCS.

[antiframe]

Elsewhere in the great they said they can't support the customer in the right way on RCS. I can't think of any technical reason for right vs wrong support, but I can think of deception as a reason (gaining trust through using a closed platform).

[garygao]

SMS/RCS is better for some use cases (e.g. transactional messaging, promotions, or order updates) while iMessage is better for others (e.g. customer service). iMessage is better for these use cases because it feels more natural to the users texting the number

[trollbridge]

The only reason it feels more “natural” is because Apple prevents non-humans from being blue.

iMessage fully supports RCS.

[skupig]

That "opt-in" is going to be a vaguely-worded auto-filled checkbox and the "consent" will be stretched far beyond what any user thinks they're agreeing to.

[evilduck]

How are your financial incentives aligned against sending spam? From this side, your words seem hollow and the typical viability of these businesses relies on sending spam.