iMessage has lots of problems. I've screwed it up a lot of times switching SIM cards, I can never understand why it needs to know if I want to contact my iMessage contact by email or by phone number, or why the messages thread differently depending on what I use. But it GENERALLY works okay.
Meanwhile, I use Signal with one friend, and just about every time I launch the damn app on my phone or desktop, it complains that I need an update, or I need to re-link something, or my safety numbers of changed, or some such crap.
And it's all better than Messenger.
And all of THAT stuff is better than Google's incessant abandonware. I loved hangouts.. until I didn't.
If you regularly need to relink Signal Desktop, it is likely your disk is failing and corrupting the sqlite DB that Signal Desktop uses. Back up your other data ASAP!
All it needs is research-verified encryption!
[2] https://www.ft.com/content/74d5ce00-12dd-11e6-839f-292294709...
Also, Signal didn't quite work in the UAE.
The fact is, Google doesn't yet have a replacement for something they stopped developing years ago. It is completely insane.
The latest update to chrome on Android in the last few days removed support for 90/120hz devices. Now everyone who was enjoying a nice smooth chrome experience on the OnePlus 7 pro, Razer phone, etc. has a nice jarring switch to 60hz when they open chrome.
This happened at the exact same time as they announced the new pixel 4 would be a 90hz phone, with exclusive 'smooth display'. Bleh.
Please elaborate. No iPhone user has to switch from the "iMessage" app to the "SMS" app to reach an Android user or include an Android user in a group chat. While it does indeed involve a different mode of communication, it's all handled seamlessly in the background from the same app.
In fact, if it wasn't for the coloring, they wouldn't even have noticed, except if you exchanged other data than pure text, but I can't imagine this being a real deal-breaker for planning?
Note how the Twitter OP also explained how they were texting the Android student from iOS until they decided to abandon him and create a new group. Not because they had to switch to another app to reach him, but "because he was on Android and turned the thread green" (sic).
People very frequently exchange data other than pure text when event planning: GIFs, map pins, tapbacks to express [dis]agreement, etc.
> The SMS protocol makes "tap backs" and stickers and other stuff work differently (and worse).
I have. MMS always has problems, and can result in extra charges from mobile network if it’s an international number. iMessage or whatsapp gives me confidence that it’s using data only and I won’t experience any charges, I can use it via WiFi without a mobile network, it’s not tied to my phone number for when I leave the country and change SIM, and delivery of messages is confirmed.
I also prefer iMessage due to Apple’s stances on privacy, and integration with macOS.
There are a number of things that iMessage does that SMS doesn’t support.
That's a sneaky odd bit of social engineering. Wonder how many iphone sales they've actually gotten because of this.
That number is biased, however, as 1) it's solely based on a survey done in high schools, and not every teen will feel comfortable admitting they have something else than an iPhone 2) the surveys are performed by DECA Inc. which is more affiliated with private schools and public high schools in affluent neighborhoods.
Still, I estimate that about 3 in 4 teens (and increasing) have an iPhone, either new or a model that was previously used by a parent who bought a new one. That's huge, and iMessage plays a very big role in that.
[1] https://www.ped30.com/2019/04/08/apple-piper-jaffray-genz/
I haven't found anything on Android that allowed me age-appropriate fine-grain controls that didn't require exceptions like turning the entire rule off just to allow a single purchase, or having the same functionality controlled in two or three different overlapping spots, etc.
If you really want to see how bad it can possibly get, take a peek at Amazon's Fire Tablet parental controls. Those take the cake for opaque settings that sometimes do what they say, sometimes much more, sometimes nothing.
On iOS you can disable installing apps, uninstalling apps, updating apps or disable the app store completely using Screen Time and before that you could (and still can) require a password/fingerprint/face ID for any app install including free.
It would take almost no effort from Google's part to replicate the last of these (add an option requiring a password to install any app, even free with lowest rating) but they seem to be unwilling to do so.
If I want to hand my own phone over to a child for a while, there's no way (that I've found anyway) to prevent a child from installing all sorts of crapware on it.
With Google lacking any real leadership in the Android division(See Wear OS) this problem won't be solved anytime soon. I recently switched from Android to iOS because I have faith in their ecosystem and vision. Sure it's a walled garden, but I'd rather have a nice walled garden that's tended to than a forest with no supervision, direction or purpose.
If they made spoons they'd be sharp. You'd cut your mouth on them, but they'd be insanely efficient at scooping ice cream, although entirely useless to a normal human as a spoon.
The _only_ universal _carrier_ solution for messaging is SMS. What does iMessage do to get to all cell phone users? That is the only thing that matters here. full stop.
I have many relatives that wanted me to "install" Whatsapp. I refuse. So whatsapp is the failure here? Or is it me because I refuse?
What is garbage is OOT.
Google is not the failure. Hell, the problem is right in the title of the OP: "Lock-in". At least google is trying to get SMS into the 90's.
You know what, I'm drunk and tired here... it's really just ignorant users that don't understand why everyone just doesn't use iMessage (apple proprietary) vs not understanding how open standard protocols and file formats work (email). We'll each be fighting this war till the day we die. It's in our nature.
SMS fallback. iMessage is the default SMS app. You send a message to a phone number. That’s it, you’re already using it. If they have an iPhone too you get extra features.
From an onboarding and UX perspective it’s genius/obvious.
It falls back to using SMS if you don't have iMessage.
I'm not sure we agree on what the problem is? If Google monopolized years ago, the story would play the same - only now it's the kid without Hangouts/Gmail. Sure, you're not locked into a physical device, but you're still locked into a service, and that's not guaranteed to hold true forever.
IMO we need a modern messaging standard that's vendor agnostic. SMS/MMS were good but feel ancient now. XMPP seems promising but there's too many extensions such that it's nearly unusable for the layman. I don't see an obvious solution, and asking the top vendors to collaborate on a common messaging protocol seems like a far cry.
But just because it's the best technical solution doesn't mean it'll take hold. If the best tech always won, we'd have adopted XMPP a long time before Matrix was created.
Sadly, I'm beginning to think the only way we're gonna put a stop to this crap is to threaten companies like Apple with antitrust regulation for such actions.
This isn't Google's fault. It's low education users who get whatever phone their parents bought.
And going even further back in time, RIM/Blackberry could have owned the space. Instead they focussed on hardware instead of the real driver of their sales: BBM.
Their market cap these days is $4b, while Whatsapp sold for $18b.
It didn't help that Blackberry's comms encryption for consumer devices was complete and utter garbage.
But really this is Google's problem, not Apple's.
Google could have owned this space if they hadn't taken their eye off the ball and fucked up Hangouts. There was a period of time where everyone used Hangouts, and they did a brilliant job getting market penetration by including it in Gmail. It's cross-platform, so it could have been the lowest-common-denominator in over the top messaging services, the thing that everyone knew everyone else could use when you want something that's not SMS or kludgy MMS.
But Google snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, seemingly intentionally driving people off of Hangouts into other apps. This was incredibly stupid -- when you tell your users to switch to a different app, they may well switch to a competitor's. If they wanted to roll out additional features, they should have done it in Hangouts, not by building new services. (And RCS is garbage. I don't know who wants a carrier-dependent, unencrypted messaging service in 2019, but certainly not me.)
The lack of a viable iMessage alternative is entirely because of Google's failure to invest in the Android platform and produce one.