It's still vendor lock-in. Just not to the same extent.

To what does Whatsapp revert when the recipient doesn't have Whatsapp?

The suggestion of WhatsApp is so that everyone can use their own phone and have full features. If someone wants to join the chat, then its on them to get on board with what everyone else wants.

However, when a community of people chooses Whatsapp as the exclusive form of communication, everyone in that community is forced to get that app or be left out of the loop. Those who object to installing Whatsapp because of the serious privacy controversies surrounding its parent are left with no choice.

This is where Messages shines, as it doesn't exclude those who can't or don't want to get an Apple device. And while the SMS fallback is indeed degraded, it still fulfills its basic promise: quick textual exchange of information. Additionally, if the recipient does get excluded because of the degraded experience, it shifts the fault and liability for not-knowing from the recipient who didn't want to accept the WhatsApp TOS to the senders who didn't provide the information because they didn't like the green bubble, although I'm fully aware that that's not how it always plays out in reality.

Neither approach is ideal, but I believe it's more important that no one should feel forced to install a proprietary app they don't trust just so they can stay up to date with their community, even if they are the single person objecting.

TL;DR Even though it falls back to its most rudimentary form, Messages by default doesn't cut off people that don't bring in any money for its parent. WhatsApp does.

The current situation of competing proprietary non-interoperable systems seems ridiculous.

The issue isn't as much the lack of an open and secure messaging protocol as it is an inability to build a social network on an open client that is as large as the ones that private corporations have been able to build with their closed source solutions.

Their adding of additional features into their messaging apps that add both usability and complexity makes this an even more difficult barrier to overcome.

I've been using riot.im for some time and have generally been pleased with it.

Messages doesn't entirely cut you off from people who don't bring money to Apple, and it doesn't require another app to communicate with them. It will handle and integrate it all in the same interface with iMessage, seamlessly switching in the background to make that possible. Whatsapp, OTOH, plainly refuses to let you interact with anyone who prefers not to accept an intrusive TOS and bring in (ad) money to Facebook.

I agree that both apps have different approaches and both have pros and cons, but I don't support the suggestion that Whatsapp, or any similar app for that matter, is any less "vendor lock-in" than Messages.

I'm unsure of what do you mean when you say you see the same "vendor lock-in" in both cases.

Given the differences in authentication and encryption, I consider that feature to be a security hole. And honestly, in my experience it doesn't work very well.

When I need to chat with folks who don't have an iPhone, I use a different app, like Google Voice or WhatsApp.

Almost everyone I know uses WhatsApp. Funnily enough my family are the only ones who don't, and use iMessage instead. This isn't an active choice though, it's that they are on an iPhone and using SMS, so they get iMessage by default.

This is a long way of saying that for many Europeans, "Just use WhatsApp" feels like an obvious response, why wouldn't you?

Agreed. When they purchased it, people were obviously concerned, so they promised not to combine it with Facebook Messenger. But, at their F8 conference this year they announced they are going to unify them. So you're right when you say it doesn't feel like a facebook product yet. But, I guess it probably will at some point. I think we all knew this was coming though -- there's not much point in purchasing it if they're not going to leverage it one day.

FB purchased them because they were huge.

Sure maybe the "experience" hasn't changed from a UI standpoint but FB is weakening WhatsApp's end to end encryption and mining your conversations so under the hood the experience is radically different.

There is a reason the founders of WhatsApp quit FB post acquisition (literally leaving hundreds of millions of dollars behind) in disgust over the privacy abuses Facebook was proposing. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/26/whatsapp-co-founder-explains...

Given their history, I would be surprised if they don't do some on-device metadata analysis.

An anecdotal experience i might just chaulk up to coincidence if not for this but, was talking with a friend in WhatsApp something about babies, my friend was browsing Facebook at the same time about a minute or two after our conversation about babies, my friend started getting a bunch of baby videos popping in her Facebook feed that hadn't been there prior to our conversation.

Actual text of convo: not yet but soon. Metadata: yes.

I'm building Thread - an ad-free, private social network for groups. It's an alternative to Facebook (Messenger and WhatsApp), iMessage and GroupMe. It's the best way to connect with, share content to, and interact with the people in your life.

It's a limited release right now (still in alpha), but please sign up and check it out at https://thread-app.com/register. EDIT: it only is available on desktop web at the moment to US based users. Anything else will most likely give you an error.

E2E encryption is something we are considering building. Right now, the promise is no-ads, no front-end tracking, and no selling data to third parties.

Happy to chat more about it and answer any questions (maybe this isn't an appropriate place for that discussion).

Minor bit of very biased feedback – the name "Thread" is quite overloaded. Thread (my employer) is a clothing recommendation service, ThreadsStyling is a luxury fashion concierge, Thread Group are an IoT specification, Open Thread is an implementation of that spec I believe.

Are you using ActivityPub &c?

Even if it is somewhat bulky, these linked data standards are the way to ensure you are creating the most open, reusable data possible on the largest stage.

And also it goes pretty much in the clear through the global SMS network.

What $750 dongle? You can get an iPhone for like $300 these days.

Forces itself into your life? How? Apple's data security is better than literally every other smart phone provider and its OS is fundamentally less intrusive than Android.

This post is honestly full of unfounded claims, like the rest of this thread. The HN bias towards apple as a company is straight up strange.

Lol, you can't be serious.

And in addition i'm sure you're aware that google paid apple 9 billion last year to make it the standard search engine in apple's safari browser. Just a week ago we learned that apple stores significant amounts of its icloud userdata on third party servers despite not disclosing that fact to its users. (related article: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/01/apple...)

So if shoving vast amounts of data through the Google ecosystem is your definition of intrusion, you can add apple to the list.

You can also delete your location history data at any time.

And technically, it is not Android the OS that is doing this. It is Google Play framework.

Apple App Store is a walled Garden but the Banking App you get from the Apple Store is guaranteed to be the actual app from the bank it says it is. (https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/06/24/google-pl...) Plus the apps on the App Store are often of much higher quality than the Google Play store because of how much more revenue app developers can make on the Apple Store and the better demographics there for most company's targeted audiences.

Apple's voice software is worse because it doesn't do as much machine learning off device and it doesn't try to learn as much about you and communicate it home.

I haven't found any "TV box" to work all that well with a phone. AppleTV does seem to be comparable to others.

These are all trade-offs and subject to the individuals preferences. But saying Non-Apple products don't also "force you" or have trade-offs is misleading.

You can use other voice assistants, you just can't set them as the default (which is a reasonable complaint)

As an Android guy, I have to say that after trying Rokus, Fire TVs, and chromecasts the Apple TV is far from crappy and is honestly one of the best smart TV boxes. Anyway, you can also buy a lightning to HDMI adapter if you want to mirror your screen.

You can't even tell users how to subscribe without giving Apple a cut if you're on iOS. To any normal person that's an egregious abuse of power. Somehow people on HN just suck it up.

Does WhatsApp force a particular voice assistant or app store on you? No? Apple's lock in is abusive.

Stop prostrating in front of trillion dollar megacorps for $deity's sake. Apple is probably the biggest blind spot this site has.

Google forces their App Store and Assistant on you. Your Android phone manufacturer also forces other garbage on top of that as well as locking you into a version of Android with no guaranteed upgrade path. See: Samsung and Bixby.

Get your facts straight, or at least take off the blinders that is your hatred of Apple.

The non-Apple base have decided that Apple is just overhyped over-expensive gear which is only slightly more polished and a lot more locked down than whatever their favourite thing is.

Apple users use Apple products because mostly it’s just honest. You get what you pay for, no hidden agendas, no up-sell.

All concentrations of power are bad. As a society we must always seek to reduce power imbalances, not perpetuate them

WhatsApp is not a mobile OS.

Even the most basic of google searches proves that not true. There are literally dozens of ways to use AirPlay without an Apple TV (or even using any Apple products besides the phone), let alone additional ways which don’t involve Airplay.