It’s really oppressive that Apple doesn’t let you install WhatsApp, Secret, Telegram, FB Messenger or any other communications app beyond their own.
While it’s all sweetness and light that Google got into bed with the phone carriers to develop this new “standard” tied to a phone number subscription that brings along all the retrograde privacy nightmares of Big Telecom since the bell system broke up.
The points you want to raise are crucial, but this is far from the hill to die on.
If the default chat app is featureful and universally supported, people tend not to stray toward non-default alternatives unless they offer meaningful benefits. Sure, this ship has in many ways already sailed, since those alternative apps have a lot of mindshare and network effects.
But if Apple added RCS to its default messaging app (or if Google were permitted to add iMessage support to its default messaging app), I would ditch everything else and just message everyone (including groups) using the default Android Messages app, relying on it to select the best non-SMS/non-MMS contact method for everyone, regardless of platform.
Sure, it would take a little more work to move messaging groups over, but the cool thing is that I could just do it myself, and not wait for my friends to download yet another messaging app. This is the problem I ran into when I wanted to get friends off of WhatsApp; I had to convince people to install something else, and not everyone felt like doing it. But everyone already has the default messaging app installed, so that problem just goes away.
> While it’s all sweetness and light that Google got into bed with the phone carriers to develop this new “standard” tied to a phone number subscription that brings along all the retrograde privacy nightmares of Big Telecom since the bell system broke up.
Just wanted to call this out as FUD. RCS existed as a standard long before Google was involved (nearly a decade?). I too don't love that it's tied to a phone number, but options for doing this well are limited, and building a second, parallel identity system has its own issues. RCS at least can be federated, and it'd be possible to allow phone users to choose their own provider. And in practice, phone number portability means you aren't stuck with the crappy choice of ditching your "identity", or sticking with a phone provider you hate.
Not sure how iMessage or WhatsApp or Google Chat or Signal is any better, though, as they're all controlled by a single company that requires you to use their identity system.
Bottom line is iMessage works really well and people like it. Same with FB messenger and Whatsapp. You want to move friends to something else? There needs to be a selling point much larger than just security.
Right, I mean, that's exactly the point. I can't force someone else to install a messaging app I'd prefer to use. But if we had an actually-good, cross-platform messaging standard that was implemented in the default, stock messaging app of both Android and iOS, I would not have to depend on my friends caring or not. I could just use it, and know that they will receive the messages.
For billions of people that default is WhatsApp and installing it is as much a part of setting up your phone as is plugging in a SIM.
You missed out the bit where you sign your soul over to Mark Zuckerberg.
I can safely know that any phone made today will have SMS/MMS capability, and nothing about WhatsApp/WeChat/Messenger/Telegram/...etc
And really iMessage is not so much better than the cross-platform alternatives that it's worth leaving some friends out.
" In another exchange, Apple executives discussed in 2013 whether releasing a version of iMessage for Android would make it easier to switch phone brands. iMessage is still exclusive to Apple products.
“I am concerned that the iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove and obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones,” Craig Federighi, Apple software senior vice president, wrote in 2013."
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/03/epic-games-v-apple-trial-app...
I'm on several text chains with a mix of iOS and Android users. It works fine.
1. No threading is supported. If you reply, it duplicates the message being replied to.
2. “Tapbacks” (reactions) duplicate the message being reacted to with “so-and-so likes message … message”
3. Photos are reduced to a size that fits in MMS (very low quality)
4. Videos look like postage stamps
5. The chat cannot be renamed or have a photo added
6. Members cannot be added or removed without starting a new group (conversation)
7. No message effects
There may be others, but this is off the top of my head.
> 1. No threading is supported. If you reply, it duplicates the message being replied to.
Threading (using "Reply") is not supported in mixed iMessage/SMS/MMS text chains. (I'm using iOS 16, so this may have been (unwisely) supported in earlier Message versions.)
> 2. “Tapbacks” (reactions) duplicate the message being reacted to with “so-and-so likes message … message”
You can now see iPhone tapbacks on Android phones in Google Messages. I'm not sure if it's on defaultly yet. https://www.macworld.com/article/610908/google-messages-andr...
The other things you list are limitations and side-effects of the standards used. They're valid, but I consider the experience "fine" without them. If the groups I text with cared about these we would probably use WhatsApp since everyone has that. Signal would be my preference, but it's hard to change people's habits.
I think the point I want to stress is that when everyone uses iMessage, it’s as easy as texting, but just about as good as WhatsApp/etc. from a feature/user experience point of view.
Agree that we can be friends. Hopefully my comment wasn’t seen as adversarial. I just get annoyed when I see the green text bubbles, because people try to use iMessage features and it’s just bad. Non-techies don’t realize it’s different because it’s the same app, but then wonder why photos aren’t high resolution, or things don’t work as expected.
I didn't realise it was still used in the US though.
MMS definitely doesn't work on my phone, though I'm not sure if this is a provisioning/settings thing or that the provider has abandoned it. I never really looked into it as I've never needed it. I just tested it once to see if it worked.
Okay, so let's say Apple implements RCS support. Should they support the version of RCS that the carriers want? The version Google implemented? Are they now going to be required to implement support for proprietary Google extensions? Will they have to run their own RCS servers because carriers don't support this version of RCS?
RCS is a fragmented mess. It's dead in the water. This noise is just Google flailing about after having binned yet another one of their messaging platforms. Personally I don't care what Apple does here. I still want SMS support for when I'm in an area with little/no data coverage and I'm still going to treat RCS with the same disdain I'd treat any unencrypted messaging platform.
They already have that, with SMS. Perhaps you only exchange messages with people in rich countries so don’t notice what is most commonly implemented by carriers?
If the issue is interoperability with Android users, fine. Google had successful messaging apps on iOS (I used a few) and they destroyed them through their own mismanagement. RCS doesn't solve that in the slightest.
> This... isn't really hard?
If you want E2EE the demand is now that Apple spin up its own Google-RCS servers and/or rely on Google's infrastructure. If you want Apple to rely on the carriers you don't get E2EE. Rather than work with the carriers Google fragmented RCS making implementation that much more difficult.
But either option is strictly better than the existing mess.
It's easy to say that if Apple bent to the will of the carriers the iPhone would never have been as good as it is. But look at RCS, Google had to stand up their own infrastructure because the carriers weren't cutting it.
It's not that RCS is not the right product it's that RCS is the wrong approach entirely. Even in the United States Android is wildly popular. They've had every opportunity to create a wildly popular messaging platform and have failed. Google killed their own products as a result of their internal culture. This isn't Netscape vs IE again, it's more like Mosaic vs Gopher (or AOL vs Netscape if you like).
I was going to write "as much as I'd like to see non-Apple devices brought into the iMessage fold" but then I realized that's not true. I don't care because I'd just use Signal. In fact I still use Signal with some friends that have iPhones. RCS wouldn't change that, it'd either be one more shitty carrier product to avoid or one more shitty Google product that's going to get killed in a few months.
Like SMS?
From the Wikipedia page:
RCS Business Messaging (RBM) is the B2C (A2P in telecoms terminology) version of RCS.
*This is supposed to be an answer to third-party messaging apps (or OTTs) absorbing
mobile operators' messaging traffic and associated revenues*. While RCS is designed to
win back Person-to-Person (P2P) traffic, RBM is intended to retain and grow this A2P
traffic. … RBM is expected to attract marketing and customer service spend from
enterprises, thanks to improved customer engagement and interactive features that
facilitate new use cases. *This was the primary reason for the development of RCS by
the GSMA*.
My take is that carriers should be dumb pipes. Voice, SMS, and data routing and that's it. Part of the reason RCS is already fragmented is because the carriers are trying to monetize it, you can bet your ass they're going to continue to drag their feet with E2EE – which is why Google's stood up their own separate RCS infrastructure.
The problem with RCS as a solution is that you're either going to rely on the carriers or Google and Apple to host infrastructure. Requiring Apple to implement support for Google (hosted) products is ridiculous as Apple already lists Google chat apps in their app store. Requiring Apple to host their own servers to interoperate with Google's services is also ridiculous because again Apple already provides software to interoperate with Google's chat services.
Requiring Apple to support RCS so their users can leverage carrier hosted RCS is also ridiculous because that's a fancy way of saying Apple should be required to monetize their users for the carriers' benefit. Per the Wired article linked to MMS was created solely to extract money from their users (or as Wired put it to "collect a fee every time anyone snaps a photo"). I'm sure most folks who are old enough remember when SMS (which literally consumes no additional bandwidth) was a paid feature, does everyone remember when MMS cost even more than a plain SMS?
RCS may not be a cash grab by Google, but they certainly haven't had any luck in getting the carriers to implement customer friendly features. Another lowest common denominator "standard" like RCS isn't an improvement at all, especially not in the face of the freely available, cross platform messaging apps.
What does RCS theoretically bring to the group chat table?
File transfers? Google's gonna mine them or carriers will charge exorbitant storage/transfer/viewing fees.
E2EE? Carriers don't, Google does.
Tapback? Meh.
Typing indicators? Really?
International communication? You're gonna pay…
Interoperability.
Interoperability
https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/04/google-disables-rcs-ads-in...
Making people switch is possible (use Telegram to chat with me), making a group switch is impossible as there is always at least one person that doesn't want to install a new app or can't (phones with tiny storage.) Anything else is irrilevant in my country. There are probably some friends of mine using iMessage when chatting with somebody they know to have an iPhone. They still to have to use WhatsApp to chat with everybody else.
(Beyond that, I've found the usability of Matrix on both desktop and mobile to be atrocious.)
And if we want to be technical XMPP was before that and it was federated by some large networks, however briefly.
> It however turned out that although the content of the message is encrypted, there is still a lot of user identifiable data that is not encrypted and can be seen by potential attackers.[0]
[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266628172...
For better or worse, much of the fediverse is made up of small enclaves of hyper-paranoid tech weirdos who have often reinvented the wheel over and over, each in their own little group, which is a big problem for the casual person who wants to toss a server on a home server for friends and family.
And I say this as one of these hyper-paranoid tech weirdos. The network's growth is immensely stifled by the fact that people aren't keen on sharing, or building user friendly tools for the normies.
Is there a way to make an account with Apple that isn't tied to a mobile phone number? If so, I've never been able to find it.
Has Apple fixed the bug where it wasn't relinquishing your phone number and blackholing all iMessages which were supposed to be downgraded to SMS instead?
That said, I don't believe you need to use that phone number for messaging – an email address is used as the contact information when messaging with iMessage. This is especially important for iPads/iPod Touches and Macs, which most don't have a cell phone number.
They fully control those app's access to their store; Apple has full say over which communication apps you install on your iPhone, full-stop.
There are many reasons many IT folks actually prefer an iPhone over Android. The two biggest ones are privacy and security. Google, thus far, takes neither seriously. Google routinely sells your data (including location data, active timestamps for all apps, what you search for, the list goes on), and it routinely has malware show up on the play store. If Google could fix those issues and stop also murdering their various applications every year, maybe they'd be able to compete.
While it may sound like I have a hard-on for Apple products, I really do love Android, I just hate Google.
I've been downvoted to hell for it before, but I'll add mine to this list because I don't _think_ it's all that uncommon either: I don't want another PC to administer and support.
I've had a lot of Android phones over the years (started with the ADP1!). Taking my last one as an example--it stopped receiving updates way too soon. Once apps started breaking, I ended up updating it by putting LineageOS on it. But then my camera never worked right again because apparently there's a driver issue. One time I updated and my microphone stopped working in phone calls so I had to wipe the thing and install an older OS on it...
You know what that sounds like to me these days? _Work_. That's literally the same sort of stuff I'm doing all friggin' day. Between work and my kid I'm lucky if I've got a couple hours a day to portion out to chores around the acreage and maybe whatever I could do ostensibly for fun. The last thing I want is to be obligated to work more because my damn phone is being a PC and doing PC things.
The fact that it's not customizable, not open, and just generally an appliance _is a feature to me_. My five year old phone is still receiving regular updates. I install them, it keeps working. I can't mess with it (and and up breaking things) even if I want to. I don't have to think about how I want the phone to work because it just works the Apple way and if I don't like it I can just get a different phone. If anything ever does go wrong, I don't need to fix it because I _can't_, reimage the phone if that doesn't work then well you're screwed.
Basically, I treat it the same way I do a toaster. It does what it does, there's a single big knob that makes my options clear. If that knob can't make it do what I want then I either learn to live with it or find another toaster. It's never gonna cook a steak for me, and that's fine. I'd rather not have steak or use another device to cook my steak than shun the toaster and try and pan-fry myself toast every morning.
I pay a premium to get an appliance instead of a PC because I _want_ an appliance. I'm happy I can outsource all the decisions and work and keep the brain space free. Sorry if I'm contributing to the downfall of society and freedom or whatever, but I just don't have the time to do anything else anymore.
Part of my original comment:
> I don't have to think about how I want the phone to work because it just works the Apple way and if I don't like it I can just get a different phone.
That's a feature to me. I don't spend any brainspace when I'm using my phone on thinking about things that annoy me or things that could be better. Launcher sucks? Does it suck bad enough to make me switch platforms? No? Then it's not worth worrying about any further and so I won't.
When I used Android, knowing I _could_ fix those annoyances meant I _did_ fix those annoyances. That's just not something important for me to be spending my time on, but I know I will if put in that situation.
Perhaps not in your country, but they've certainly done it before - censoring Telegram in both Russia[0] and Iran[1], for example.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/31/technology/telegram-apple... [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/01/world/middleeast/iran-tel...
It has been a bad thing for me because iOS decided to get me off Whtasapp and forced me using the much worse Apple message system without me having any say in it.
I have a SE and a relatively older iOS version on it, can't remember exactly which one. I don't have internet banking and don't have very much of a financial presence online, and, as such, I don't care that much about security on my phone (hence the older iOS version).
Some time ago I had checked the "offload apps"in case of full disk" option or something like that, with the implicit understanding, from my part, that I could "reload" any of those apps once I would have made enough space available (usually by deleting some older videos and photos). One of those offloaded apps was Whatsapp.
It turns out I cannot "reload" any of those offloaded apps if any one of them doesn't support my iOS version anymore. Whatsapp doesn't support my iOS version anymore, hence I cannot "reload" it, hence I cannot use it anymore. Trying to install the exact Whatsapp "version" that used to worked perfectly fine on my phone is, of course, impossible. This is very unsatisfactory for me.
And back to the subject at hand, of course that Apple can't hold a candle when it comes to more mature messaging systems like Whatsapp (I haven't used Telegram and Signal). The "upload photos" experience in iMessage is day and night worse and less intuitive compared to Whatsapp. I also don't know if iMessage has any builtin groups and, even if it were to have, it would be of no use to me because more than half of my friends and acquaintances don't own an iPhone so they can't use iMessage.
You can – unless the application publisher decides to disable this. It sounds like Facebook disabled your ability to install an older version of WhatsApp that supports the version of iOS you are running. All it would take for this to work for you is for somebody at Facebook to tick a single box that allows their users to do this.
Not sure how that helps users like me, but had you told me 20+ years ago that this was going to be “the state of the art” when it comes to app management (by two of the biggest tech companies in the world) I would have called you crazy. And I was a Windows 2000 user back in those days.
It’s also funny that, in a way, the WhatsApp app was the one that nuked itself. The “full storage” issue had been caused by some of my friends sending constant photos and videos of their cats (and one guinea pig) via WhatsApp, storage gets full, iOS decides to offload the WhatsApp app, I get left out of the app once I’m not allowed to “reload” it anymore. Again, crazy to think that this is the state of the art in app management.
"Want to sideload apps? No problem, just pay us $99/year for temporary installation privileges!"
"Want to sell your app? Here, just give us 30% of your proceeds."
"Running out of storage? Here's a red-dot notification in your Settings app begging you to pay for iCloud."
I don't think any of these companies will (or should) get out of this antitrust litigation unscathed. The amount of control all of these platform-holders exert is unreasonable, and unless the government steps in we're helpless to stop it.
I'd argue Google competes just fine. If you hate Google, then use AOSP or an AOSP-derived OS; there's not a drop of Google, Apple or anyone code out of the box. Of course, I'd wager that 'privacy and security' don't matter as much to IT folks as brand-loyalty or ease-of-use, so it's all a bit of a moot point in the end. Arguing that either of these OSes is more secure than the other is a bad comedy routine; they're both being spied on by PRISM, they're both vulnerable to NSO Pegasus.
Hmm, as I understand it:
"Timestamps for app usage": notarization checks happen the first time you start a new app, basically like OCSP to enable certificate revocation: https://support.apple.com/guide/security/gatekeeper-and-runt... I dislike online validation and would prefer a revocation list. I also dislike syspolicyd's perpetual, repeated, and CPU-hungry anti-malware scanning. Installing Xcode or enabling developer mode allows pointless online checks to be turned off for scripts in Terminal at least.
"tracks spotlight usage": Siri suggestions https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/siri-suggestions... I usually turn this off.
"Find My": a feature that allows you to go to icloud.com and locate your iPhone if it is lost, and also creates its own ad hoc network for finding iPhones. Probably that involves location information. I usually turn this off.
What I'd like to know is: Is there any evidence that Apple is retaining this information and using it for other purposes, for example to build user-specific profiles for advertising the way Google or Facebook might?
Sure; all sorts of data leaves your iPhone in the form of encrypted channels to Apple servers, whether you have telemetry/analytics enabled or not. When you fully power-down your iPhone with Find My disabled, your Baseband modem is still sending and receiving information from nearby cell towers. Apple has created conduits specifically for harvesting and retaining this data, they wouldn't collect it all if this wasn't the case.
Oh, and if you still don't believe me, you should look into some of the more recent PRISM revelations (eg. how iMessage and Find My can be used by law enforcement), or the ways that the CCP uses the data Apple collects for them. There is nothing besides marketing that suggests Apple has a commitment to privacy or security.
That is not what I hear from people who work there.
> you should look into some of the more recent PRISM revelations (eg. how iMessage and Find My can be used by law enforcement), or the ways that the CCP uses the data Apple collects for them
I'd be interested in references/citations if you have them.
Egads, no. The abuse heaped on me by Apple pales in comparison to the spam phone calls and emails I get. If I start getting spam via iMessage, I'll be an extremely unhappy camper. It already happens with text messages and that's bad enough.
Anyhow, sure, if you want to give away your freedom to actually own your devices, just so you don't get spam... I guess that's your choice. I just don't want to be locked into a system where that's the only choice.
Regardless, iPhones also receive SMSes. If it's impossible to spam over iMessage, they'll just use SMS. If it becomes impossible to spam over SMS, then presumably Apple can implement similar measures for iMessage that don't require us all to have hermetically-sealed, locked-down devices.
Same folks who didn't realize that all messages show up in the same color, the blue bubbles only happen when you send. They're getting SMS spam.
> I just don't want to be locked into a system where that's the only choice.
Who's locked in? I can and have switched back and forth between iPhone and Android devices. My contacts are sync'd between them, calendar, mail, all of it just works either way. Only reason I'm back on iPhone right now is because the churn (and by extension, TCO) is significantly lower. If the calculus changes on that, I'll jump ship again, no big deal.
The cost to switch is not trivial for most of the world. And the cost of iPhones is high compared to the alternatives.
Why not?
> And the cost of iPhones is high compared to the alternatives.
Given that the discussion is about switching from Apple being hard, this seems like the opposite of the point you're trying to make.
Because iPhones and Androids of comparable quality are not cheap. And many people don't know how to move their data and photos among devices regardless.
> Given that the discussion is about switching from Apple being hard, this seems like the opposite of the point you're trying to make.
You said you switched back and forth repeatedly. I was responding to that, since I view it as a luxury not everyone can afford. And folks who've sold an organ to get a blue bubble may have some sunk-cost fallacy to overcome even if they're only going from Apple to anything else.
Doesn't seem that's the case. Folks have followed up confirming that the messages are coming over iMessage, and not SMS.
Nitpick, that's not an iMessage feature, but at "Messages" feature -- the app. The filtering applies to both iMessage and SMS.
What do people need ? Apple coming and killing their cat ?
Why do you present this as a binary choice?
Why do I need to suffer at the whims of your wants and needs? Why are you so hellbent on advertising your opinion in this binary manner? Don’t like iMessage? Use something else. Nobody is stopping you. Why do you feel compelled to bring the conversation back to this weirdly obsessed and diluted dilemma where you see a first party solution and start kicking and screaming incessantly
So use Android! I have friends with Android. We use WhatsApp abroad and SMS at home. The messages are green and I can't tapback. That's it!
Yes, I use Android, but would like to also be able to interoperate with iMessage. But I don't want to be stuck in a (for now hypothetical) state where I have to choose between using iMessage and being able to do what I want with my phone.
> We use WhatsApp abroad and SMS at home. The messages are green and I can't tapback. That's it!
SMS has ordering, latency, and delivery issues. You also cannot send media over SMS, and MMS has size limits for media that were set decades ago. Any video you send over MMS will be recompressed to the point where it'll be unwatchable. SMS also does not support group chats. MMS does, but delivery and message ordering issues are even worse there, and group chats are inflexible; for example you can't add new people to an existing group chat, or remove existing people.
I do use WhatsApp, grudgingly, for some people who refuse to switch to something else, but I'd like to reduce my reliance on things owned by Meta/Facebook.
I have multiple group chats running with mixtures of iPhone and Android users.
That is a personal choice, and I choose to not have spam on my phone. Several months ago I was subjected to a floodgate of good ol' fashioned SMS spam that lasted several weeks. There was no way to stop the spam because the phone was receiving it through the legacy SMS channel coming specifically from Android devices infected with Flubot; the bulk of spam now comes from unpatched Android devices because hardware vendors stop releasing security updates after a short cycle, or due to loose default app permissions set on the device. I ended up creating a support ticket with my mobile telco and soon I received the following reply from a human being:
What you have encountered is, as you may have guessed, not a legitimate SMS notification.
This particular message is designed to entice you to click on a link, and doing so would potentially expose your device to malicious software.
This malicious software is trying to target Android devices, so, if you are an Android user, you should take particular care with such messages.
Note that you may receive this message even if you do not use Android devices - the website link is simply being sent to a number of random telephone numbers in the hopes that an Android user will receive it, and manually bypass the built-in security protections and install the malicious software presented by the website.
In other words, if you use an iPhone, you can still receive these SMS messages (often claiming to be relating to a voicemail or parcel delivery), but there is no direct risk to your iPhone by simply receiving the SMS. Nor is there currently any risk to your iPhone if you happen to click on the link that is in these SMS messages.
If you use Android, you should avoid permitting your device to install any software that did not come from the official Google Play store.
Corporations, such as Google, make decisions for users without getting their consent nor without informing the users. If you sign into a Google account in a web browser on your phone, for instance, the sign-in will also silently and non-consentually sign you into your Google account across all Google apps installed on the device without informing you.
The corporations, good or bad or anything in between, must be bound by the code of conduct they ought not to be allowed to get out from: must request the explicit user consent first.
The problem here is that we are talking about a (possible, hypothetical) measure that blocks spam, but requires phones to be 100% locked down and unmodified from the factory. I categorically refuse to accept that sort of thing. If you will accept that, then you are a part of the problem.
In reality, though, there are plenty of ways to combat spam that do not require us to have locked-down phones and move closer and closer to a corporate nanny state. Your shitty telco is actually fully capable of blocking spam like what you've received, but they have chosen not to.
> Corporations, such as Google, make decisions for users without getting their consent nor without informing the users.
Sure, but at present I can wipe my phone and install GrapheneOS or CalyxOS or whatever, and Google will not be able to make any decisions as to what I do on my phone.
I get that they make other random decisions for us. Sure, that's inevitable. If I want to use Google Docs or whatever, they will make decisions about how my data is used, and what features are present in the product, etc. I accept that, and am ok with that. But if I'm sold a piece of general-purpose hardware, I expect to be able to do whatever I want with it.
> If you sign into a Google account in a web browser on your phone, for instance, the sign-in will also silently and non-consentually sign you into your Google account across all Google apps installed on the device without informing you.
Maybe if you use Chrome, but... I don't. So that doesn't happen to me.
It is a perceived problem specifically for you (and, based on the arguments presented so far, it appears to solely based on the personal dislike rather than on objective grounds). If you refuse to accept it, that is solely your personal choice, and I, for one, have no objections to you being able to exercise freedoms to make your own choice(s).
> If you will accept that, then you are a part of the problem.
You have neither moral nor any other right to inflict the sense of collective guilt upon anyone, including myself, who has an opinion distinct from that of yours. What is an adjudged problem for you, is a feature (and not a bug) for some, and is a conscious compromise for some others. I am in the latter category as I have consciously consented to the trade-off after weighing up pros and cons of alternatives existing at the time – it became my personal informed choice.
> In reality, though, there are plenty of ways to combat spam that do not require us to have locked-down phones …
Combating text message spam requires a non-trackable, universal digital identity which is a non-solved problem. SMS and RCS do not solve this problem as they both allow a digital identity to assume one persona exactly: the device owner's phone number. iMessage, o the other hand, offers a stop-gap solution and allows iMessage users to assume one of the many personas (either a default phone number or one of the email addresses registered with iMessage), and it allows the user to select the specific persona on their own volition. Countering spam is a bonus and optional feature that comes as a byproduct of the iMessage way of tackling the identity management, and is not a requirement. Allowing multiple personas in iMessage also allows the user to disassociate themselves from their phone number, change it however frequently they want yet allow their friends circle and relatives to stay in touch via another persona (email address(es) registered with iMessage) – a useful feature when the iMessage user moves to live overseas.
A successful and a badly needed replacement for SMS (the protocol) will have to solve the identity management problem (as well as a morass of present SMS and RCS security vulnerabilities) first before it can become a viable option. And only then, it will have to be pushed out in a centralised manner (e.g. become a mandatory requirement for all 6G or 7G networks) so that no mobile telco would have a chance to opt out from the text messaging protocol upgrade. The adopotion of such a standard will take years, though, as users won't instantly upgrade their devices overnight, so the interoperability between GSM and new style text messages for some time will look exactly like it does today between SMS and iMessage.
As for Google crying foul on not being to interoperate with iMessage, in reality they are shedding crocodile tears and are not telling you what they actually mean by that. Google wants to track every text message to a user across both major mobile platforms (Android and iOS) AND beyond, which is something they can't do today. SMS does not offer a unique transferrable digital ID (other than IMSI which gets incised out once a message hits the SMSC), therefore Google can't link the user to activities on their smartphone to wider activities across all of their devices and the web as mobile phone numbers are not typically used for web browsing and in general app use.
Apple controls the passage of the Rubikon (iMessage) that, once crossed, would instantaly allow Google to find a creative way to track users, so Google wants that (in the same vein as Facebook does). Yet, Google is being coy about their true intentions.
> I get that they make other random decisions for us. Sure, that's inevitable … and move closer and closer to a corporate nanny state.
I vehemently and vociferously object to corporations encroaching on our larger freedoms, and, regretfully, strict regulation and even stricter enforcement of the regulation appears to be the only way to accomplish it.
> Sure, but at present I can wipe my phone and install GrapheneOS or CalyxOS or whatever, and Google will not be able to make any decisions as to what I do on my phone […] But if I'm sold a piece of general-purpose hardware, I expect to be able to do whatever I want with it.
To the best of my knowledge, nearly no-one (apart from Librem) sells general-purpose smartphones today. Each offering comes with a host of pros and cons, yet none of them are neither marketed nor sold as the general-purpose computing hardware.
Also, the option of wiping an OS is not ubiquitous on Android platforms and some handsets have the hardware that stock and alternative Android distribution may or may not support. Therefore, there is no such a thing as a generic Android phone which is what the majority of Android users have. And no, since you are part of the HN congregation, you are not a representative selection of the Android user base.
Apple, on the other hand, sells a package that happens to have a smartphone (or a smartwatch, or a tablet) and an OS (as a conduit into the package), and the nicely wrapped package has well stipulated constraints that one either takes or leaves. Purchasing an iPhone is not mandatory in any jurisdictions that I am aware of, either, therefore an the act of puchasing one is also a personal and conscientious choice.
> Maybe if you use Chrome, but... I don't. So that doesn't happen to me.
Ha, the classic «it does not happen on my laptop!» remark.
Sarcasm aside, it is more insidious than that. I had to log into Google using my work Google account in Safari on my laptop, but because Safari syncs the browser cookies and local storage across devices via iCloud (it is another feature I have consciously consented to), the Google account cookies have made it into my phone via an iCloud sync. Next time when I opened Google Maps on my phone, it pulled the Google cookie + stuff out of the Safari local storage, and I was then instantly and silently logged into Google using my work Google account (I degoogled myself years ago in favour of paid 3rd party services and no longer personal Google accounts). Such a practice, apart from being blatantly deceitful, is borderline nefarious, so, with all due respect, I do not buy into Google's crocodile tears about iMessage.
If an identity can be verified via a presented assumed persona (supplied as a proxy for the identity in question) as a third party identity verification service call, locking down a device becomes redundant (although the hardware vendor will likely continue to do so for other reasons). It does not seem likely that the identity management is going to be solved any time soon though.
If Apple provides an anti-spam SMS filtering service it is completely orthogonal to how much they decide to handcuff their own users.
SMS is not a platform specific protocol and cell phone numbers have their own independent authority (however dysfunctional it may be). So unless you decide to block yourself from the entire world outside of Apple devices, it has nothing to do with being locked down. Locking down a platform from it's own users does not intrinsically benefit security or spam prevention, saying so is a false dichotomy, no matter how much Apple spins it.
But in the past five years, I have received so much call spam that I just don't answer my phone anymore. Imagine that, the primary use of a phone and it's all cocked up.
Imagine what happens to imessages if they leave it open.
Blame the cretins that spam people.
Since I'm on Android, I'm stuck using SMS a lot, since most people I know have iPhones. I do get some SMS spam, but not a ton, and most of it is auto-flagged and I never see it.
> Blame the cretins that spam people.
SMS and voice call spam is actually a solved problem, but carriers have been dragging their feet implementing the solutions (and have lobbied the US government to give them more time). Killing spam does not require our devices to be locked down. Carriers deserve some blame here too.
But I don't really care about blame, I care about outcomes. Blaming spammers isn't going to fix anything. Forcing carriers to implement the required technical measures to stamp out spam... that could actually work.
Another desperately needed measure is enabling law enforcement to actually fight spam at the root: follow the money. When the spammers can't monetize their spam, they won't have any incentive to spam and scam.
Uncooperative countries (e.g. India, just look Mark Rober's Youtube series where he and a bunch of associates track down and prank scam call centers or Turkey which is the German equivalent) should be sanctioned until they are compliant. Letting spammers, scammers and hackers operate in a foreign country unimpeded should be considered an act of war.
Forcing carriers or anyone to implement technological measures (remember the idea to charge people .5 cents to send out emails?) is a worthwhile effort but it's at the core a band-aid at best and the only thing it achieves is to marginally drive up the cost and complexity of service for everyone else while the scammers simply find workarounds.
I probably get more of those now than the “we’ve heard that you’ve been in an auto accident that wasn’t your fault” robocalls.
I wonder what different telcos does differently, because I have heard about some countries where you're getting flooder by these things.
And we have a loophole that allows politicians to legally spam whenever they want.
(i) Allow rich non-iPhone messages through for all people.
(ii) As (i) but only for numbers in my contacts list, or who I have replied to.
(iii) Don't allow rich non-iPhone messages. Use SMS.
But you don't own the hardware running iMessage.
With iOS, you live with what Apple lets you do, and that's that.
I'm not unsympathetic to Apple's difficulties and goals here (assuming this spam problem is actually the reason, though I'm skeptical that there aren't also self-serving reasons that would be sufficient for Apple), but I'm so tired of society's slide toward "security at any cost, and to hell with freedom" since the 9/11 attacks over 20 years ago.
(It's possible and likely that slide has been going on much longer, but I was a teenager in the 90s and not really aware of such things. But I think it's undeniable that the aftermath of 9/11 was a big turning point for the surveillance state and for average citizens being so scared of everything that they'd be willing to give up essential freedoms just to quell that fright.)