Other issues are limitations by the OS, like Apple doesn’t let you change the group name for non-iMessage groups. Or Apple doesn’t let you replace the entire messaging app, so you’d need multiple apps to cover multiple channels.
The issues and OS limitations leads to things like kids bullying green bubbles (as silly as that sounds).
I don’t think Android users have a right to iMessage but I can understand the need to properly interpolate with each other here and it sounds like RCS will be just that when Apple adopts it.
I think that both Google took too long playing with new messaging apps and Apple took too long to actually want to make this experience better for Android-iPhone communication (which they’ve been pretty clear they’d only do due to pressure, since it helps them sell phones).
The pressure is great. Maybe we’ll actually have a good experience with RCS, but we will see…
That sounds silly, but it's important enough that Apple executives were talking about it ten years ago. See the link from the article at https://twitter.com/TechEmails/status/1589450766506692609
> In the absence of a strategy to become the primary messaging service...iMessage on Android would serve to remove an obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones
That's from Craig Federighi, who is now the SVP at Apple in charge of all operating systems. If it were a minor silly thing, you probably wouldn't expect it to be talked about at the highest levels at Apple, would you?
Why not? I’ve been in C-level discussions where dark purple versus a slightly darker shade of purple turned into a weeklong shit show.
If so, it may have been important!
Yes, this is a framing that works for every strategic decision in business.
The C-level of a random software company talking about US-wide market lock-in is unlikely to make it work in practice. Apple has a very real chance of doing it.
No, they are nowhere close to locking down messaging.
Honestly, I missed that and my comment came out sounding like a gotcha when it should have just emphasized what you were saying. Sorry!
SMS doesn't support the concept of naming a group. That's not an OS limitation.
There's broadcast SMS (where the phone sends the same SMS to multiple people) and MMS groups.
I'll believe it when I see it. Judging from Apple's past behaviour, I wouldn't be surprised if RCS messages will be shown in Comic Sans or something.
My friend sent me the Beeper Mini article the other week and said "Look, you can have blue bubbles now!". I immediately scoffed - even if it wasn't going to break in a few days, I will never lift a finger to support what Apple is doing with iMessage. Absolutely absurd, even more so absurd the way folks talk about it.
Green bubbles are not just "a broke Android user" even though the Apple masses like to spread that image.
Green bubbles are a sign of a technological badass, a power user who does things with their devices that Big Gray doesn't think they should be able to. It's the sign of a person who thinks lock-in strategies are gross and an anti-pattern, and is principled enough to vote with their wallet. It's the sign of a non-conformist, a free thinker who makes their own decisions, rather than following the group-thinking masses. A green bubble is the badge of honor that identifies a person who thinks differently.
In the end, Apple's strategy will probably win because Machiavellianism works, but that doesn't mean we can't give it a hell of a good run.
But I also hear all these stories about kids being bullied for having Android phones, and see Apple executives talking about locking entire families into the iPhone ecosystem using iMessage [1] on that basis.
To me, this is pretty evil, monopolistic behavior which needs to be regulated out of existence. I'm glad Beeper is bringing it to light. The fact that it doesn't affect me personally is unimportant.
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[1] https://twitter.com/TechEmails/status/1589450766506692609/ph...
The worst part is that the company knows about this and could simply end it by changing a single color in their app.
Moreso, there's no such thing as a default messaging app, just like there's no default phone dialer. The system handles telco messaging and calls.
But there's also no real limitations elsewhere as long as you aren't requesting SMS/MMS specifically. I can send an image to someone via Signal just as easily as I can via iMessage - they show up in the same lists.
This is different from cross-vendor standard protocols like email, where you may want a mailto: link to compose a mail in the app the user actually has configured. For mail you can configure a default application.
Anyone who knows more about this please correct me. This is purely from reading Internet forums.
Of course it was all jokey and no big deal but I still came away from that situation having learned that all this green bubble malarkey is very much real, and these were all grown adults (like, 30+ with children).
If you have all iMessage users, then you can do things like add more users to the chat, etc.
As soon as one Android user is in the chat, then you can't do that.
The other issue, for me, personally, is that I can respond to my iOS users from my desktop (where I spend most of my time), but I have to actually pick up the phone to communicate with my Android friends.
It's not the end of the world, as my Apple Watch tells me when I get texts from my phone, but it is a bit annoying.
You can't leave a green bubble chat. You can't send messages from your computer or non-iPhone devices (Apple has message forwarding, but it's unreliable). Pictures look awful, videos look worse. Read receipts don't work. Tapbacks/emoji/stickers/memoji/etc don't work. It's a drag to remember all these limitations.
I grudgingly got an iphone in 2019 for work. I no longer work there but now I'm locked into blue bubble chats with family. I've been trying to use Beeper to solve this it's not reliable enough yet.
(if RCS wasn't such a dog's breakfast, I might make more of an effort. Even when Messages supports RCS, the experience will still suck)
Pictures look awful,
https://support.twilio.com/hc/en-us/articles/360018832773-Tw...
> videos look worse.
Same as above.
> Read receipts don't work
MMS read receipts have been a thing since at least 2004. Wanna bet your carrier still doesn't support them?
Why should it be up to the carrier? I guess that’s why it’s so broken.
Apple degrade the user experience to spite their own customers. Quite bizarre.
Why can’t everyone in these situations just ask everyone to use one app like WhatsApp? If having good experience was important everyone would be on board.
Also it's not a "good experience" for everyone, not as much as just cutting that green bubble loser out. With no green bubbles, you get to use the default messaging app. With a different app, since you can't change the default on iOS, you have to have at least two apps, and many people balk at that.
Are Americans just too lazy to download another app?
Thats ignoring that some people (like myself) have philosophical reasons not to support Meta via WhatsApp. Just like others will not install Signal since it requires them to know your phone number (at least currently).
Then try a couple APAC countries, and people will ask why you aren't using LINE.
This has been going on for decades, ever since we saw AIM/MSN/ICQ and so on divisions country-by-country. In some cases it was simply who localized their app first.
More I think they are just really susceptible to marketing efforts by companies like Apple who tell them that it's a bad user experience to have multiple apps, and your own personal user experience is supreme, so people adopt and believe that. And for the people who don't, you can almost guarantee they have at least one "Apple fanatic" in their circle who will preach that gospel to them routinely.
Then there's the social status symbol of "Apple" that has become a big thing in the US. The killer on top is the invasion of the social sphere, partiuclarly with younger people, where you are bullied and isolated for not having an iThingy, and you've got a perfect recipe for Apple.
At some point I think it's got to come back around, but unfortunately that time isn't looking soon as it's trending heavily in the wrong direction right now. It's so bad now that "iPhone" has come to be a generic word for "mobile phones" and "iPad" a generic for "tablet." Just a few days ago I heard someone say something like, "Oh is that an Android iPad? aren't those just cheap knock-offs?" When this is the level of thinking in most of society, it's not hard for a company like Apple to manipulate to serve their ends.
Citation needed? Apple has pretty much marketed the exact opposite (e.g. the entire App Store concept)
Isn't Google using a proprietary version of RCS? That's not cross platform.
They have not restricted Android users to use third party messaging apps like Beeper. But Beeper isn't using their own infrastructure - they have reverse engineered third party API and are hacking them to work.
Apple's argument against iMessage being covered by DMA is that there are more popular third party products already running on Apple's platform in the EU e.g. WhatsApp.
See: https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/messages/icht8a28bb9a/...
On your iphone, in settings go to messages > text message forwarding and select the devices you want to allow.
It fails often enough that I can't rely on it.
"Oh no, our chat is acting weird because there is an Android user in here."
It's like hostages complaining that somebody left the door open and is letting in cold air.
And, to be fair, they didn't reject me per se, they would make slightly judgmental comments or observations. It just felt like it knocked me down a peg in their eyes and made it all the more difficult to make a real connection.
On top of that, switching to upgraded chats by switching platforms is not as easy as it sounds because you need to convince your friends to switch platforms. And that can be a hard ask, especially for friends and family that are less tech-savvy.
You could have people only message you via text, instead of iMessage, but doing that reliably is harder than switching platforms, unless you ask someone to disable iMessage in the messages app altogether, and no one wants to do that
> There are plenty of other cross platform applications for messaging that fit the quoted needs.
Absolutely, and I encourage people to use them. Unfortunately, I can't force people not to use iMessage.
It's not about bullying (I've no doubt that it happens, but it's never happened to me). It's not about social pressure, I couldn't care less if someone wants to make a big deal over me having a green bubble -- don't let the door hit you on your way out. What it is about is the fact that I can't change my family members' behaviors, and the consequence of their behaviors is that all of their messages to me get sent unencrypted.
I would like those messages to be encrypted. I can't force them to use a better messenger, so it would be nice if I could on my end make a change that seamlessly, with zero friction on their part, causes their messages to suddenly be encrypted. No, I'm not buying an iPhone, heck off with that garbage. But I would be willing to install a separate app if it meant that my family members on iPhones could instantaneously have their messages encrypted.
Barring that, I can keep subtly encouraging them to use any of the other much more secure messaging services available, but... I mean, I don't control their phones. They are adults and they make their own decisions. And Apple doesn't really help here by marketing the Messages app as if it's secure while leaving out the fact in its marketing that a huge portion of the messages it sends have zero security at all. I tell people that we should swap to something else, their response is, "I don't need to, iMessages is secure." It would be secure if you were using it. But when you message me, you're not using it, you're using SMS.
> If end users care about “upgraded chats”, they can simply use one of those and ask those whom they message to also use those apps.
Like everything else in security, this boils down to the fact that people are apathetic and the people who are security conscious have to try and bend to meet them halfway. Beeper would have been a way for me to bend and meet some of the iPhone users in my life halfway. I'm not buying an iPhone, I'm not giving my family members an ultimatum that I'm going to stop responding to their texts if they don't use the messenger that I want them to use; that would be wildly antisocial behavior for me to engage in. So they'll send all their texts to me in plaintext.
As anyone who's tried to use Signal can attest, there is nothing simple about asking people you message to use a different app. And security in specific is a really hard sell for getting people to switch.
This is what I keep hammering when I talk about this -- Apple's position on iMessage makes iPhone users less secure. For anyone in my life who is security conscious, we couldn't care less about iMessage, we use actually secure cross-platform messaging services that allow us to actually encrypt 100% of what we send to each other. Emoji reactions do not matter, the problem is that iMessage can't send cross-platform encrypted chats, and Apple's position is that it cares more about whatever weird platform-exclusivity lock-in it thinks its getting than it cares about making sure the messages that iPhone users send are actually encrypted.
The motivation here isn't complicated, I want the iPhone users in my life to actually be secure rather than pretending that they're secure.
I'll note that the same problem also exists for Android. I'm not singling Apple out here, in practice Android users also send all of their messages to me in plain text regardless of whatever proprietary garbage Google is trying to pass off as message security nowadays. The same problem exists there, I can't get them off of the default messaging app. But on Android, there's not the potential of an app I could install that with no changes to their OS or setup would cause their messages to suddenly start being encrypted.
Because of Apple's actions, this has led to android users being ridiculously ostracized and discriminated again[0][1].
It's not that there are not alternatives, it's that iPhone users are unlikely to switch to those alternatives, leaving Android users no choice but to continue to be discriminated against if they want to talk to the majority.
This a uniquely US thing. It's very strange.
[0]https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-apples-imessage-is-winning-...
[1]https://www.techdirt.com/2015/02/12/green-bubbles-how-apple-...
It's completely awful we're strong-armed into having 6 different chat clients that send text messages because of gate-keeping. Chat has been fully commoditized since about 2000 or so.
This is so true, I think about this a lot sometimes. As someone growing up in the 90s who was considered weird for finding the internet amazing, I'm online substantially less than many of those people who made a big deal about it back then.
In most of the world iPhones aren't nearly as dominant so nobody would use iMessage or they wouldn't be able to talk to half their friends, and there was a much bigger incentive to just ditch SMS-related systems entirely.
Can someone help me understand a big question about iMessage? What makes iMessage so special that it needs to run on android?
There are plenty of other cross platform applications for messaging that fit the quoted needs. WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram are a few examples. If end users care about “upgraded chats”, they can simply use one of those and ask those whom they message to also use those apps.
Am I missing something? What makes iMessage so special?