[1] https://9to5mac.com/2018/06/06/make-facetime-an-open-standar...
I can’t imagine a patent dispute actually stopping them if they were firm on making FT an open standard.
- Patenting an idea that’s core to their business. Doesn’t really prevent immediate attacks from clones, but it does make it much easier for them to get funding from VCs. - Inventors who license the ideas: they patent, then contact manufacturers.
Note: These are not really software-specific as I’m not aware of any software cases where patents benefit smaller businesses.
Maybe we should call it patent fraud and make this kinda thing illegal? Patents should be for companies actually making products to get a market edge of sorts. Not a portfolio of things you never intend to build but instead berate other companies for cash over. Its okay if they are actually still in the process of building the thing but if your company has one single employee and 0 products...
Also wondering where WebRTC stands against that patent.
> Its okay if they are actually still in the process of building the thing
what should happen with a patent holder who sells off their R&D department, and thus stops "developing things"? should they be allowed to keep their patents? (to keep receiving e.g. licencing fees for the stuff they did develop; i think that's how it works?)
Note that I'm arguing from Apple's perspective here. From my own I believe they should absolutely open it up.
Why, though? Does your average iPhone user actually care if the bubbles they see in their chats are blue or green? If so, why?
Note that I'm talking about average users. Sure, there are likely a bunch of privacy-conscious users who believe in Apple's commitment to security and privacy and prefer iMessage on those grounds. But otherwise, why?
> It would in fact disappoint many people as now they can't use their phone to distance themselves from the people who don't have that blue circle.
If that's truly the case, I don't think I'd want to be friends with people who place importance on such superficial, trivial things.
Full disclosure: I've been an Android user for 10 years and the closest I ever got to owning an iPhone was an iPod Touch I stopped using in 2012 or so. SMS is fine for my needs most of the time, though MMS for group texting is ridiculously unreliable so I try to funnel people to Signal or WhatsApp for those use-cases.
I guess I just don't see a closed iMessage as that huge of a competitive advantage for Apple. But presumably they know better as to what drives sales.
They definitely do. Not sure what your age or demographic is, but young folks do care a lot about higher social status which is tied to blue bubble because of iPhone prices. It has nothing to do with privacy though.
In addition, I have been in friend groups that would exclude Android users because if you have even 1 Android user in a group chat on iMessage, you lose tons of features, like the ability to name the group chat (I'm being completely serious here; this was considered an important thing). The work around was "we'll take you out of this chat, and if something important happens someone will send you a text" - of course, it's not very easy to always remember to send that person an SMS, so they end up _very_ left out of things. This has also happened with middle-class people.
Different friend groups may prefer different platforms, but it's pretty rare where someone new to the group refuses what the group is already using, which is almost never plain sms/imessage.
Google voice/sms is almost always for one on one friends where we don't share anyone in common or older relatives.
You made the point yourself here. If the messaging platform the group prefers is iMessage then it's somewhat awkward when someone new to the group refuses to use it. Have you ever tried to get a bunch of people to switch platforms for a single group chat? When most of the people have a working solution already it's practically impossible.
I know a lot of friends who use WeChat to avoid things like international texting rates, but Americans talking to Americans generally do not need this.
Having a blue circle is not the basic functionality of texting. People here are talking about fancy facetime stuff, like group names, and reactions.
"Why would you download an app for the basic functionality of a phone? Texting is an integral part of phones and I haven't met a person in the US without unlimited texting in years."
To your average iOS user they are one and the same, which is why US iPhone users don't generally download secondary chatting apps unless they have to.
Anecdotally, in my social group:
- Snap: withering on the vine.
- Messenger: generally declining with the declining popularity of Facebook in my age cohort
- Instagram: everyone has it, but messaging is definitely a second class part of the app and no one really uses it other than to send instagram memes
- GroupMe: I downloaded it once for one person, most of the people in the chat have iPhones anyways, and people don't really use it other than to contact the non-Apple users specifically.
85%+ of the world's on Android, think outside your social circle =]
What the rest of the world outside of my social circle does isn't really relevant to my conversations inside my social circle.
I've run up against this reality multiple times. I personally prefer signal & whatsapp for group chats than iMessage. If only because I can mute them and not get an annoying red bubble telling me about the hundreds of messages I'm trying to not react to in real time when I'm busy.
Whereas a muted group chat in whatsapp is completely muted, unless someone explicitly @tags you in a message or explicitly replies to your message (another feature iMessage group chats lacks - tagging specific people, and explicit/contextual replies to specific messages)
I'm assuming the majority seems to be third-world countries because in big UK cities the majority of the phones I see around are iPhones.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/271240/android-market-sh...
I’m buying my parents an iPad just because every other type video chat is more convoluted than just clicking on FaceTime from contacts.
WhatsApp is really nice, but you need a phone for it, which some of the older grandparents don’t have. But they do have cheap iPads, so everyone uses FaceTime.
But the younger set of grandparents all have their own phones, so it's only the very old that don't.
And as far as Duo - only if you have a Samsung phone or Pixel? If you have to buy a new phone anyway - since the entire Android ecosystem is a clusterf* when it comes to upgrades - you might as well get one that is going to be supported for years.
> Social dynamics are subtle. For example, group SMS doesn’t support contact names. If you add someone to a group SMS, the other people only see a phone number unless they go out of their way to add the new guy to their contact list. Likewise, the new person has to add everyone else to see names. Decades of research in behavioral economics show just how powerful defaults are, so most people probably won’t bother to add names. Without names, the new person will have a more difficult time connecting with the group.
I know americans that use it, and south africans, and elsewhere.
It's stupid, but whatever. If you're going to be my friend, first things first: no tech prejudice :-) Apple might be more willing to interop if it had less of a network effect. Hell, I'd sub to iMessage if I could get it on Android.
edit: typo
Oh and texting an i phone user sucks because those reactions come through like: Loved "blah blah blah"
Please when texting us android plebians don't use those reaction things.
> Liked "XXX"
to
> (John Smith Liked "XXX")
Including the parenthesis. Make it clear that it's not a real, typed message from the person.
It’s faster to just type the “laughing with tears” emoji and press send than to use the equivalent reaction.
tldr; It's pre-installed and way better than SMS
1. iMessage is leagues more reliable and faster than SMS/MMS on even horrible connections allowing a real-time cadence to conversation with indications if messages were actually received and possibly if they've already been seen. Its features are also not crippled so simple things like sending photos between $1k+ phones does not end up with MySpace quality photos that are otherwise supposed to be 12MP Live HDR photos. Let alone sending longish videos (3 min+)
2. iMessage is already installed and integrated in iOS unlike WhatsApp which literally has all the most important features and MORE, but, for reasons I do not fully understand, I simply like using iMessage more. And so do most of my friends.
I’ve had to use FB Messenger at times to contact my one or two relatives who just refuse to by an iPhone.
I wanted to do a group video chat with relatives and we all had to use Facebook Messenger because one person didn’t have an iPhone. We just left the person out a few times because we didn’t want to bother with lower quality messenging.
If they're going to be this basic, then I'm probably going to extrapolate how these people will behave in the future.
Although, maybe thats why I only have a very few select close friends.
Unfortunately, acquaintanceship is a prerequisite to friendship.
Good, fuck those people, I probably don't want to associate with them anyhow.
I consider this line of thinking to be on the same level as face tattoos, and social media posts about meals multiple times a week.
You're mad at people for succumbing to a dark pattern in tech that they themselves don't completely understand, but are going off on people who post pictures of their food or have tattoos like it affects you in any way?
>Good, fuck those people, I probably don't want to associate with them anyhow.
You know, blue bubbles may in fact feel the same way about you.
Exactly zero of the people who have said any of these things are in the tech industry
People might have gravitated towards iPhones for status signaling in their youth, and by association and inertia, their inner circle uses iPhones. now, as adults, any person coming into the circle needs to conform to the group or be seen as clueless.
An iMessage chat tells me nothing about the socioeconomic characteristics of the owner of the iOS device, unless I am missing something.
Edit: although, now that I have read this whole thread, I am thinking that maybe it’s not the economic status people are looking for, but are somehow deriving some assumption about their “socio” part of “socioeconomic” status, as a non iOS user is perceived to be maybe “different” or “weird” in some way for not conforming and having an Android versus an iOS device.
I personally have never thought that, since I use Signal/WhatsApp/iMessage, and if you don’t have iMessage, I just use one of the other two, and I don’t care. But evidently, some people do.
The worst part is, an excellent upgrade exists. The RCS experience between Android users is pretty much as good as iMessage. Apple could support this; not to replace iMessage, but to upgrade SMS conversations. My tech-illiterate mom's Galaxy S negative 12 has it. Of my contacts, every single Android user I text (maybe a dozen) has RCS. Its standard.
When I put my iPhone XS and my S20 Plus side-by-side; chatting with Android users using rich text via RCS; animations at 120hz on a display so blindingly bright the brightness slider turns red at the end; so seamless with the device's edges its like looking through a portal; unlocking with a sonic sub-pixel fingerprint reader; swiping notifications away at a rate the iPhone can't approach; charging my computer keyboard, mouse, phone, laptop, and smartwatch with the same cable... I've religiously used both iPhone and Android, I switch every year, and the iPhone feels like its years behind Samsung right now. Its not close.
Google's messaging department has been chasing it's tail for 10 years. Unless they clone iMessage from the inside out, RCS has no hope. Personally, I want to see RCS fail. It's a lousy spec with few privacy protections built-in. I had it enabled on my phone for a while and there was no indication as to whether my messages were passing through my carrier's servers or Google's RCS endpoint.
They built out a technology and gave carriers the option to implement it themselves, or they could just piggyback on Google's servers. Carriers obviously opted to implement it themselves because they don't want to become dumb pipes, then dragged their feet for years.
As I understand it, Google wants to get a basic version in place with all the major carriers first, then start rolling out many of the other features you've mentioned.
Apple's been holding out on supporting it because it's not encrypted, but it'll be interesting to see how they respond to carrier-wide adoption of encrypted RCS when that comes. Will iMessage chats fall back to RCS with Android phones? Or will they continue to fall back to unencrypted oldschool SMS?
Just hope nobody who steals your phone puts a screen protector on it.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/10127908/samsung-galaxy-s10-sc...
It'll get there. But, right now, it works great for me.
Because network effects are more important than UX or features.
economic barrier to buy ~$100 used iphone on ebay?
You can live without iOS/Android, even with Android/macOS VM (heh, I've tried it once) - this is your choice.
But not all of the world have moved to whatsapp. I am from Scandinavian and I only have a very limited number of contacts available on whatsapp, most are on iMessage.
The fact their choice leads to needless exclusion of people who would otherwise be their friends.
I also have big trust problems with Facebook products. Apple makes iMessage to sell devices, what does Facebook do with What’s App? There have been reports in the past that installed Facebook, Inc., apps were sending analytics from devices on other apps people were using, pretty much like a Trojan horse. I don’t want any installed Facebook related apps on my devices because Facebook lost my trust long ago. While supposedly What’s App is “secure,” the entire history of Facebook has been littered with “oops, you caught us and we are really really sorry this time.”
When I try to use a "share" action for example, I get my contacts from the phone and Whatsapp at the same level. My list of contacts actually has a merged view of all my contacts stored on my phone, Whatsapp and other services. Contacts on multiple services are merged appropriately.
It works just fine.
This isn’t stupid. It’s the natural consequences of tech that doesn’t conform to real human behaviors and social norms.
I agree with power of defaults though. Only reason iMessage took off, and so did other Apple services.
This is mistaken. I'm in the EU and do not know a single person using SMS, nor Whatsapp, they use iMessage, however, bigtime.
Whatsapp used to be a thing, but that has been over for some time. Now, most are using Messenger, Snap, and Telegram.
And iMessage is not a craze or a phenomenon, it is a simple convenience; it's on your phone already. For most people using it, it is not even a deliberate choice. The younger generation grew up with it, they do not even really know the difference between SMS and iMessage, except that if the bubble is green, the other user does not have an iPhone.
The older generation remembers SMS, so they still tend to call it SMS, even though they are using iMessage.
Android users are in the minority around here, well, at least between family, friends, and at work.
All I mean is: anecdotal evidence and social bubbles
Sure.
However, there is usage data available if one's interested.
https://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2019/02/whatsapp-fac...
Trying to get people to agree to a proper chat platform is like wrangling cats. If everyone in the group has an iOS device, then there’s no decision to be made.
I still use SMS a lot, because it’s more important to me that I can talk and send pictures to people than worrying about them being on a certain platform or app (Discord’s notifications aren’t great on mobile if you haven’t opened the app for a while). But it’s super annoying, and if Apple made iMessage an open standard (they probably won’t, since people buy iPhones for it), I think many people on Android would move to it.
“... though MMS for group texting is ridiculously unreliable so I try to funnel people to Signal.”
Group texting between iPhones just works. Add an Android user to the group and all of the sudden it doesn’t work. Ergo, don’t add them.
Green bubbles signal low status. It also makes it more difficult to communicate: no read receipts, no live location, photo/video/audio messages are clunky, worse emojis, no reaction option, and so on.
It's not like a "relationship killer" or something, but I imagine it is a low-level contributor to my lock-in to the platform.
Your group is likely different from the mainstream.
Sadly, Librem 5 future is unclear, so Apple is probably less evil here.
People buy android phones for all sorts of reasons (in the US, mainly price). But in the US, it’s nearly impossible to have a broad social circle that doesn’t want to ‘text’ so I’d guess at least 99% of US users regularly engage with default messaging apps. if given the choice, of bet nearly all of those users would prefer to centralize their ‘texts’ instead of multi-apping
Look what happened to groupme as soon as iMessage group chat got good...
Why don't people use WhatsApp? Do Android users just not have any friends? Or do they use SMS? which is a joke next to WhatsApp and iMessage.
Everyone I know uses iMessage. SMS is unreliable, works poorly in group chats, and can't easily be sent/received from my computer.
(I will still eventually need to go to Android because I'm not giving up my headphone jack, but I'll be hanging onto my iPhone 6S for as long as possible.)
Notifications being sporadically (at best) delivered is the real deal breaker for me.
What’s more fun than a party you missed because WhatsApp didn’t feel like delivering notifications for a day?
2. WhatsApp has rock-solid message delivery, otherwise it wouldn't have 2 billion users (https://blog.whatsapp.com/two-billion-users-connecting-the-w...). It's the default messaging app in most of the world. You don't become that popular with unreliable message delivery.
I checked again, and yup, a bunch of messages in a group chat I never was notified for.
That behavior is fine if it’s your primary app, but it sucks if you’re not constantly checking.
Also, 2 is a bad thought in general. Consider: “Windows has a billion+ users, of course it doesn’t crash. You don’t get 1 billion+ users with bsod and forced updates.”
Your comparison to Windows is probably more appropriate than you think. When is the last time Windows crashed on you (and it wasn't a dodgy third-party driver that caused it)? It works fine for nearly everyone using it. So does WhatsApp.
I always thought WhatsApp did a fairly decent job at feeling native like iMessage? I haven’t used it much, so I’m curious what you don’t like.
Exactly. These are social products. Features are meaningless if you can’t talk to the people you want to reach.
“Looks like you have never used Telegram.”
This game can go on and on, but WhatsApp is nowhere close to being the best messaging app feature wise.
They will opt to use imessage just the same as everyone pretty much opts to whatever is already installed. You could swap out imessage with a 1990s version of aol messenger and people would opt to use that.
Apple does not have a monopoly on good ux. In fact a lot of it is just garbage
imessage/whatsapp just does the job without stupid questions.
Regardless whether you agree with that, it is super practical for me and my family. It also means we don't have run other chat software like WhatsApp.
The whole experience is just so seamless and well integrated across your devices. Everything from regular messages, voicenotes, sending cute animojis to your wife, or doing a FaceTime with my 102 year old grandmother. I do that on a daily basis. And I can easily continue a conversation from my computer, or even respond from my Apple Watch when exercising.
I am still on WhatsApp though as there are millions of users worldwide, but I keep notifications off and check it only once a day.
iOS market share is 60% in the US which is the highest worldwide, and only above 50% in a handful of other countries (UK, Japan, Oz, Canada)[0]. If you have any friends who are not rich, or are European or South American, there's a good chance they won't iMessage you but try to add you on WhatsApp.
One: 55-60% market share in the US, by definition, is not confined to "the rich."
As to the other categories: my personal answer to "If you have any friends that aren't American" is "that's what whatsapp is for." I imagine for a lot of people the answer is that, or "I don't, actually."
Like, all the teenagers in my family. Their list of non-US friends is near-zero. Their non-US family are all on whatsapp.
They don't experience a gap.
I need all of Threema, Signal, Skype, iMessage and email just for my closest friends and family.
I also need Google Photos, Google Drive and OneDrive to share data with them.
Apple is the most anti-social platform of them all. I can't even use it to share photos with my wife.
I have never used FaceTime with anyone, because no one uses it, not even those who do have iPhones, because they all have to use something else to communicate with others.
It's really not, at least in continental Europe. Here in Germany Android's like 70% of the market and nobody uses iMessage or FaceTime.
It degraded a bit, however, with the time. Adding features is not to the benefit of the less young, whereas young tolerate UI getting more complex and less intuitive.
They could bind a windows iMessage install to your iPhone the same way Signal/whatsapp do.
Or make it part of an iCloud subscription.
Right, I'm trying to understand Apple's motivations, and this question applies not only to iMessage but their general approach regarding macOS, apps, app store, the proprietary/locked-down nature of their software and hardware.
The opposite of ubiquity would be "exclusivity" - and that does explain a lot. The reasoning must be that there is value in making their apps exclusive to their own OS(es). The same way you can't (easily) run macOS on any old PC, or the way their hardware doesn't allow users to repair or extend it.
I had a non-technical friend with an Android phone (full of malware btw). She didn’t care about Apple, never used any of their products nor need it for the “social status” or anything (her friends are all on WhatsApp so no issues with iMessage). I gave her an old iPhone 7 to try out, a couple weeks later she would never consider going back to Android ever.
I didn't see any benefits at all. Only annoyances.
I don't actually believe your story the way you told it. Was her Android a 50 dollar piece of Chinese junk or Samsung? Only way I could believe it.
Apple slows down old phones, no one gives 5 years of support.
Pixel might count, but they don’t guarantee more than 2 years of Android updates. The built-in processors are years behind what Apple provides, so it’s understandable.
Any that can be rooted
If I cared about security, you’re saying the phone that the FBI famously had trouble breaking into is a bad choice?
If I cared about privacy, you’re saying I should prefer Android — an operating system made by the literal inventor of surveillance capitalism?
Weird narrative here.
This is mostly a US phenomenon because in other countries people had already adopted other messaging apps due to higher text messaging costs and for free international voice/video calls
It’s a social product. You can’t discount its social appeal.
You also have to remember even the Mac by itself brought in higher revenue than all but the top 100 companies in the US and it’s only 10% of Apple’s revenue. The watch is a bigger revenue generator than the iPod ever was.
There is also the iPad that gets you another 10%. If just 10% of Apple’s revenue from the Mac puts it in the top 100, what does 30% do? If Apple created the “Mac company” it would still be the most profitable computer company in the world. It makes more selling Macs than any other company makes selling phones besides maybe Samsung.
But isn’t kind of silly talking about Apple being dependent on the iPhone when after two decades and billion of dollars, Google’s profit is still 90% from ads?
It made a few billions in revenue, that's far cry from trillions a tech giant is expected to make.
> You act as if it would be a great technical hurdle to make the Watch work with Android.
That's exactly my point. They shouldn't be making such closed ecosystem, their products will be more popular if anyone could use them. This is why they caved in on Apple Music and TV like services which are available on Android, Roku, Fire TV etc.
> There is also the iPad that gets you another 10%. If just 10% of Apple’s revenue from the Mac puts it in the top 100, what does 30% do? If Apple created the “Mac company” it would still be the most profitable computer company in the world. It makes more selling Macs than any other company makes selling phones besides maybe Samsung.
Nobody cares about "Mac Company" or "iPad Company". They don't have any clout. Hundreds of companies come and go from the top 100 but only a few can last for decades. Microsoft is still standing today even after a failed Mobile venture only because of the money they made during desktop era and still cashing in on that success. If iPhones stopped getting manufactured it's pretty much the end of Apple today regardless of their Mac, iPad or Airpods business.
> But isn’t kind of silly talking about Apple being dependent on the iPhone when after two decades and billion of dollars, Google’s profit is still 90% from ads?
Since when did whataboutism became a valid rebuttal?
Apple doesn't make trillions in revenue....
That's exactly my point. They shouldn't be making such closed ecosystem, their products will be more popular if anyone could use them. This is why they caved in on Apple Music and TV like services which are available on Android, Roku, Fire TV etc.
Why because the "open" ecosystems are doing so much better? Android manufacturers aren't exactly bringing in boatloads of money. In fact, Google isn't even bringing in boatloads of money from Android. It came out in the Oracle trial that Google had only made $23 billion in profit from Android from inception to the time of discovery. Google reportedly pays Apple $8 billion a year just to be the default search engine on Apple devices. It seems like Apple makes more on mobile from Google than Google makes from Android. That whole open thing doesn't seem to be working...
Nobody cares about "Mac Company" or "iPad Company". They don't have any clout. Hundreds of companies come and go from the top 100 but only a few can last for decades
You realize Apple lasted "for decades" - from 1984 - 2001 just from selling Macs. It lasted another 6 years selling Macs and iPods. Apple went public before Microsoft.
Microsoft is still standing today even after a failed Mobile venture only because of the money they made during desktop era and still cashing in on that success.
And Apple survived almost going bankrupt by selling desktops....
If iPhones stopped getting manufactured it's pretty much the end of Apple today regardless of their Mac, iPad or Airpods business.
We have an existence proof that Apple could survive just selling computers and one or two other devices --- they did so for almost four decades.
Since when did whataboutism became a valid rebuttal?
Apple is better diversified than most of the tech companies and they have been around for longer and pivoted better than any of the big 5.
I don't disagree with the ideological position but personally I find it harder to argue with the economics without having also created and operated a billion dollar services and hardware business.
Interestingly I can't find recent authoritative DAU/MAU stats for iMessage or FaceTime; the last time Tim Cook seems to have quoted numbers was in 2014: https://www.ubergizmo.com/2014/02/apple-handles-40-billion-i...
Unfortunately all are proprietary and it was the previous generation, iChat and Google Talk, that were based on the open XMPP standard.
I know people who are still angry about the Messenger app being split off from Facebook, but that’s nothing compared to the dumpster fire that is Google’s messaging app landscape. So if I want to make a video call to one of my Google employee friends it’s not going to be through Duo because it seems like they don’t have time for this shit either.
Who knows, maybe Duo will take off?
> That's the case for many people these days–in fact, every week, over 10 million new people are signing up for Duo, and in many countries, call minutes have increased by more than ten-fold. https://www.blog.google/products/duo/4-new-google-duo-featur....
Disclaimer : Google employee but work far away from duo but use it daily with family and friends.
Perhaps a geographical thing and it's only popular in a couple of countries?
I'm going to bookmark this comment for the inevitable sunsetting blog post three years from now. :)
I don't really think Duo would be the best option for Google employees to video chat with each other. They'd use Hangouts, because they all already know each others' G Suite accounts.
But Facetime is still superior on iOS and MacOs. When it comes to calls in apple ecosystem - it is a no-brainer.
I'm from a big social drinking country and our Friday bar visits are now just a link we can share into a group chat and people can drop in as they please, you can share things from your screen and it all just works great.
Google doing what google does and running like an headless chicken creating a new service every minute instead of creating one good one.
Last time I tried to launch WeChat, you had to surrender to it a disgusting amount of personal information to even launch the app.
You have some outliers like Telegram or Signal, but good luck getting all your contacts on there.
As a result I just have a dozen of messaging apps installed on my devices.
They said they would make it an open standard. People took them on their word.
https://9to5mac.com/2018/06/06/make-facetime-an-open-standar...
Because theres a limit to how many physical devices they can sell and would like to keep growing after they hit that limit.
Its why Apple Music works on Android and has a Javascript SDK
It may not have too many takers (I’m willing to bet that most people currently using Apple Music on Android devices are iPhone users with Android tablets), but it would help families or groups of friends who have that one person on Android, and those folks would bear a visible monetary cost that they could partially recoup by switching.
Remember how surprising it was to everyone when Apple announced a windows version of iTunes in 2003. Jobs resisted the idea, and then publicly acquiesced, standing in front of a slide that said “Hell froze Over”. Aside from the additional iPod and iTMS revenue, the halo effect of widespread iPod exposure likely sold a lot more macs than platform exclusivity would have.
One might think that opening the source will lead to code reviews by many and fix security bugs. In my own experience with open sourcing few projects, I've not seen that happening. Vast majority of contributors aren't willing to spend a lot of time in reviewing security issues and fixing for you. In fact, virtually all contributors will send you patches that are often half assed and have security issues which you might unknowingly accept because all tests are passing, you don't have much time and in code reviews everything look ok. For things like iMessage, I suspect billions of dollars worth of important decisions are made by everyone from Jeff Bezos to the President of USA. In my opinion, open sourcing something like this would give a handsome payday to many black hat hacking groups including state owned agencies.
Somehow I think Apple can muster the resources to respond to vulnerabilities in exactly the same way you’re claiming they respond to open source exploitation. You may have a point with much smaller projects, but this is apple and they can easily outfund exploiters before there’s mass exploitation according to your analysis of increased attention.
Your argument that somehow Apple will do better than these black hat guys is also flawed. Apple can higher N security experts but Apple will always unlikely to match in number of firms and state agencies who can hire M >> N in aggregate. Think of Apple running centralize effort with N people while whole world running distributed attack every day every hour with 10X more eyes and time on hand. Also it has been very well understood within security professionals that source code gets far more scruitiny from black hat then white hat guys.
Finally, remember that people don't update their systems for months and even years. You should know that Bezos iPhone was hacked by an exploit developed by a black hat firm which ultimately cost him $40B in divorce. Think about that for a second. A single software vunerability cost was $40 billion, more than market cap of many companies and GDPs of many countries. This is a guy who literally owns huge chunk of public and private infrastructure, has the best of the best security experts at his finger tips and he got hacked.
Probably one of us running an old OS or something (All devices are recent) but whatever why should I waste my time debugging that with my elderly parents when Zoom just works.
You can say the same about facetime: it is clearly higher quality than competitors in every experiment I’ve tried, but their refusal to interact with the wider software community means we all use zoom or skype instead for personal chatting. These are tools; they should be effectively free and universal.