This sounds promising. But given how much money there should be in this, their timidity is puzzling. Perhaps the solution is brittle or subject to legal or technical challenges. Just read between the lines on this. They’ve got the cure for cancer but there keeping it in animal testing for now…
The app is currently in beta and we’ve decided to keep availability more focused to ensure the best user experience at this time. Although we’re excited to be the first mobile company to introduce a blue bubble solution and we’d like to make it as widely available to Android enthusiasts as we can, we’re prioritizing delivering an optimal user experience before committing to expansion at this time.
I’m still curious if this is even legal. It seems like a really good idea, but is Apple going to be able to sue over it? I almost feel like it could be covered under the reverse engineering clause, because it is meant to enable interoperability with another product. But Apple’s terms of service already seem really hamstrung on what is and is not allowed. With the macOS SLA beginning with:
For use on Apple-branded Systems
Obviously iMessage isn’t macOS, and I can’t seem to find a specific terms of service for iMessage specifically, but it is running on it. Which is what would make this integration possible. So what makes me wonder if Apple’s lawyers could find a clause there.
The reason they’re moving forward with this is because if Apple tries to sue, it could make a case for Google that Apple is trying to take control of messaging in the United States. If they don’t sue, should Google come after them down the line Apple can say “we’re aware of 3rd party iMessage and decided to not take action to increase interoperability” yadda yadda.
Teenagers today suffer unique threats to their health and wellbeing from technology. It may be super easy for you to say “who the fuck cares about the color” but that is far from the case for US teenagers. Willingly setting yourself apart from the group in high school is a precarious move in the best of circumstances.
And for the rest of us, this goes way beyond the color being used. The SMS/MMS fallback in iMessage offers a terrible experience for non-Apple users. Low quality media, inability to manage one’s own memeberships in groups, and no encryption. For those worried about the lack of e2ee: Android users participating in an iMessage conversation don’t have that today. You’re not losing anything from this solution.
Legal disclosures prove that Apple knowingly uses iMessage in an anticompetitive fashion. It’s a moat to keep people from switching away from iPhone. They are leveraging their position in the messaging market to shore up their restrictive phone products. I wish US antitrust enforcement was stronger in this area but until then, I hope Nothing has great success in breaking down this illegal barrier.
Really interesting how different the US is. Here in central europe it’s pretty much whatsapp, telegram, signal. Most people use 2 or 3 of those. Doesn’t matter what device they are using
iPhones are really popular over there. Most people have one. For teenagers it’s something ridiculous like 85% of them using an iPhone. In Europe we have a more balanced split, so only using iMessage wouldn’t fly here.
How is Apple keeping iMessage an Apple exclusive anticompetitive? That’s like saying Google needs to share their search algorithms because they’re “leveraging their position in the search engine market to shore up their restrictive products.”
In the end, Apple created a service that is massively popular and makes people want to use their products. The fact that US teenagers refuse to use one of their many competitors is hardly their fault. The rest of the world doesn’t give a shit about iMessage either.
Google search is available on apple devices though. Same with stuff like Gmail. Imagine if YouTube didn’t have an app for iOS and you had to use the browser. That would be worse for consumers, but Google could use it as a way to force people into Android. That’s what Apple is doing with iMessage and the whole phone ecosystem is worse because of it, whether you care or not.
Using a dominant market segment to reduce competition in another has always been an antitrust violation. A notable example is MS leveraging their Windows monopoly to force Internet Explorer on people.
Personally, I miss out on a lot of group chats because all of my friends have iPhones.
They’ll create a group chat, I won’t get any messages, then suddenly I’m getting a call on Saturday saying “hey are you coming to the party?” or more often than not I don’t get notified at all and end up hearing about all of the things I miss at a later time. It’s annoying, but I really hate iOS so I deal with it.
I’ve got an iMessage server running on my NAS but it’s not perfect, it requires that the iPhone user send the message to my iMessage account associated with my email, not with my phone number.
PyPush lets you link your number to your Apple Account using demo.py if you need that. It needs a cron job to sit on it for the first few weeks but after that its fine.
I’m an adult, and I deal with family members bitching at me that are over 50. I explain to them every time that this is 100% Apple’s designed problem, and they like to roll their eyes in response.
Apple users CAN be really fucking annoying to deal with. In my admittedly limited experience, most of them are this way.
I’m an iPhone user and I don’t care about this. Not everyone who has an iPhone gives a shit about what phones other people use. Use whatever phone you want and whatever computer you want and whatever OS you want and stop giving a fuck about what other people use like it’s some sort of crime.
They want iPhone users to have want they want and need when switching to Android. I think it’s not a bad idea. Personally, I find MMS to be horrible. Not because of lack of features but because it is different for everybody in one group chat. The messages become out of order, things don’t send but say they do, etc. iMessage isn’t the best solution, but if I’m being kicked out of group chats because I’m that one person making it MMS, then I’m all for iMessage on Android.
My problem with that is that a lot of them then insist on using an outdated standard that lacks encryption and high resolution media instead of just downloading something like WhatsApp, Signal, or Matrix.
It’s also noteworthy that the RCS platform adopted by companies worldwide is run by Jibe, a company owned by Google. Doubtless, Apple doesn’t want to use Google’s servers any more than it needs to.
“open protocol” my ass. Google just wants control over everything.
Except companies can run their own. In Google messages it tells you who runs your server. Most carriers ran their own, but when they realised there was no benefit (e2ee) and having to maintain it, they started shifting to Google ran servers.
RCS sucks ass. I have had more missed messages and fucked up communications due to it NOT USING SMS FALLBACK. other person isn’t available via IP? Then FUCK YOUR MESSAGE.
Want a different app? FUCK YOU
Wanna sort your messages, or filter them, or run an automation? FUCK. YOU.
I don’t blame apple for not implementing this shit.
I haven’t used SMS for anything besides receiving auth codes and maybe sending some short info to a stranger (for example a contractor). But then again, I live in Europe.
SMS Is way more common I guess in the US because you can text anyone across the US, whereas before EU carriers may have charged more for intra-EU texts?
WhatsApp became popular (in the UK) around the time when SMS was free for most. It was a huge jump over SMS because:
group chats
read receipts
worked on WiFi without a phone signal
picture / video messages
it was fast (or it certainly felt faster anyway)
From what I recall at the time, BBM was quite popular but WhatsApp won over in the end as it was cross platform. There was a big appetite to move away from SMS. WhatsApp wasn’t even free at the time, it had a small annual fee on Android or a one off installation fee on iOS and still gained popularity. It’s kind of surprising that the rest of the world seemed to make this jump at the same time but the US seems to be stuck on SMS.
There are always four decisions at play - country of origin of sender and receiver, current location of sender and receiver.
Whenever you enter a different country, you gen an automated SMS informing you of the prices of SMS, MMS, outgoing and incoming price calls per minute.
Rule of thumb used to be - SMS receiving is always free, accepting a call with local SIM card is also free. All the other combinations are usually extra if you are currently in a different country than the SIM origin.
But, now that most of EU is either in Shengen or is a partial member with contracts (like Croatia with mobile internet), you either don’t pay as much or pay no extra at all.
But, yeah, that’s probably the reason SMS never really got off.
There is a reason they don’t send it until someone is online. On iMessage, you know if someone read it, not if they actually are able to receive it. If they fix the bug where the time of the message is when it finishes sending, it will be a great feature because you know if they have access to their phone and data. It will try to send it throughout the down time. Also you can use other rcs apps and have things go through rcs messages because of desktop authentication.
Most carriers either have their own app or their own rcs network for rcs. It is also possible to use the web interface of Google messages to make one, not sure if anyone except beeper has done this though.
iMessage automatically goes to read if it doesn’t work correctly. Partner got a new phone number when switching providers. She has a Samsung phone, and kept it. The number they gave her came from an iPhone. All messages sent to her from iPhones were marked read on their end and never get delivered. All messages sent to iPhones appear to send, but don’t arrive. All texts from Android to Android still worked fine so we didn’t realize immediately as I had an android phone as well.
The phone number that isn’t owned by Apple is being routed to them even though they should have no part in the process. Apple’s advised solution is to acquire an iPhone to disable iMessages. Thankfully they have a website where you can remove a number from their service, but it is not intuitive to go to AT&T/Verizon/Spectrum/whoever and purchase a cellular plan and then have to reach out to a 3rd party company to shut down their invasive services on products they down own.
They use a Mac mini somewhere to route these messages. So you’re logging into that Mac mini with your iCloud credentials. Sounds like a privacy/security nightmare and creepy as fuck.
It seems like all efforts to “bridge” imessage to anything outside apple software work this way - there’s a Matrix bridge and a dedicated open source app and they both rely on the imessage client on a mac. Is there a legitimate reason for it not being reverse-engineered yet?
Is there a legitimate reason for it not being reverse-engineered yet?
The actual protocol isn’t a secret. It’s that the authentication of the device relies on a hardware key, and that key is fully locked down by Apple (as it also secures the user’s biometric logins, keyring, financial information in Apple Wallet, etc.).
I use beeper (a version of these apps that is actually released but kinda shit) and it’s perfectly fine. Their solution would be better because it runs locally on the phone, however it’s only on supported phones which is most likely just nothing phones.
When I watched MKBHDs video on this, my first thought was whether or not we could selfhost a service like this. If I could run this through my own Mac mini server to my own / family’s phones, that would be great. I don’t think I’d ever feel comfortable logging into my iCloud account on some company’s server with just their pinky promise as a guarantee.
Isn’t it the fact that there will be features missing if someone doesn’t have iMessage? I genuinely don’t think anybody would care if it were just the color of the bubble that was different and nothing else.
I think green bubbles (non iPhone) means it’s using SMS so it can cost people money to send messages, especially images which would be sent as MMS I guess.
I’m an Android user though so I don’t really know. Also I’m in Europe where nobody cares and just uses Signal, WhatsApp or Telegram.
The kids care. Even in Europe. My nephew and niece had to get iPhones, and soon my son will have to get one or be socially left out. It’s a serious crisis made by greedy corporations is what it really is.
Sounds like an opportunity to educate your kids, and by proxy, others.
Kid’s bubble-shaming is no different than any other stupid shit kids have always done.
Don’t feed into it.
And if you really want to have some fun, host something like the iMessage-Matrix bridge mentioned above, or other messaging apps. When your kid shows up as a blue bubble, but friends notice he’s on Android, they’ll be confused…another learning opportunity.
it’s using SMS so it can cost people money to send messages
This is basically the historical and cultural reason why the US uses SMS and MMS: basically every phone plan has unlimited SMS before smartphones became popular, so any smartphone OS needed to seamlessly support it for adoption. Apple successfully bridged that SMS interface into a proprietary messaging protocol and app even while maintaining backwards compatibility with SMS and MMS, but not the new standard that came out after the iPhone.
Yes. The iPhone to MMS connection has filesize limits that basically make sending video horribly compressed, and even still images are visibly limited in quality.
And then message reactions aren’t directly supported in MMS, so it becomes a clunky communications experience between iPhone and Android texting.
There’s also delivery confirmation, read receipts, and other indicators in an iMessage chat that aren’t supported in MMS.
The color of the bubble is a subtle UI indicator of what features are supported in the chat.
And the same enlightened kids who are so aware about discrimination and gender fluidity (which is good) are the ones discriminating against others because they don’t have an iPhone.
It may be natural to want a status symbol (although that drive probably varies wildly between individuals), but I find it sad that having an iPhone is equated to status.
“Look at me in my expensive walled garden!”
Disclaimer: I also dislike Google’s business practices in different ways
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