Yes, people in the EU use WhatsApp, by Meta & Zuckerberg, and from what I've seen, often act as if that is some sort of mark of superiority.

Feels like you weren't able to have a proper discussion with those people. In many EU countries, using SMS made/makes no sense because SMS was/is super expensive as compared to WhatsApp. And using iMessage makes no sense because most people don't have an iPhone. From their point of view, it actually makes no sense.

Now if you tell them "well, where I come from everybody has an iPhone" or "SMS have always been free", probably they won't say "still, I'm better than you for no apparent reason".

I don't think that it is actually seen as a mark of superiority anywhere in the EU to use WhatsApp. Unlike apparently in some places it is seen as a mark of superiority to have an iPhone vs an Android phone.

If you go in a EU country where SMS were not prohibitively expensive in the beginning of WhatsApp (e.g. France), you'll see that WhatsApp has been less successful (at least in the beginning). WhatsApp was a killer app because it was free SMS, really.

Since when can WhatsApp interact with SMS users? They're so evil and predatory that they have entirely walled themselves off from that method of communication entirely.

They had a yearly subscription fee, but most people never got the request to pay it.

Nobody cared that it was incompatible with SMS, because everybody hated SMS because of the insane prices. In 2009 I got an iPhone 3G with an unlimited data plan, but I was still paying something like 0.20 or 0.25 Euro per SMS.

Well, you could argue that it's morally superior to be reachable by everyone, regardless of what brand of phone they use.

The ability to install a 3rd party messaging app also shows some technical skill.

Don't you think this is _maybe_ an overstatement? I was annoyed about this for years but reading your take is borderline satirical.

> For example, when a user purchases an iPhone, the user is steered to use Apple’s default email product, Apple Mail. It is only through a complex labyrinth of settings that a user can change her default email application away from the Apple “Mail” application towards an alternative like Gmail (Google) or Proton Mail.

> At least for mail a user can in theory modify the default setting. On the calendar front the situation is even worse. A user’s default calendar is Apple Calendar, and the default cannot be modified

That's pretty evil & predatory to me. The fact that it is by design (someone decided it needed to this awful) is why Apple is being evil here. And this is just one example.

There's more

> For example, Apple banned apps from its App Store that supported Google Voice because Apple sought to advantage its own services over Google’s

That's not what the parent is asking. The OP said it was the most evil ever done.

Big Tech does predatory and evil stuff all the time. That's not what's being claimed. The OP is claiming that this specific thing is the worst, the singular event that is above and beyond all others.

I use both iOS and Android.

> It is only through a complex labyrinth of settings

I have no love for the way iOS settings are done, but calling the setting for this in particular a complex labyrinth is some pretty blatant editorializing.

> A user’s default calendar is Apple Calendar, and the default cannot be modified

I don't think this is a true statement? My default calendar is a Google calendar. Actually switching to instead use my Apple iCloud calendar has been something of a chore.

Easy if you know where to look. If you end up in the wrong sub menu you might simply search the web for instructions.

Apple provides web pages where they explain how to use the iphone. There is a section called "mail" under "apps" that shows up in the search results. It really wants me to read the help in dutch, the "apps > mail" section has 14 pages that don't talk about changing the default app, in stead they explain how to use the various features of their own mail app (that is also configured by default)

I don't get why the help pages need a different menu structure.

One has to go to "personalize your iphone" which has 18 pages, changing default apps is towards the end.

Searching the Dutch help website for "mail" I get only 3 unhelpful search results. If i change it to US English it immediately redirects to Dutch again. lol?

Using the "English" for Latin America and the Caribbean works. There I get 5 pages worth of results. Changing the default app is on page 3.

Not impossible but it is not a simple prompt on launch of the app "Banana mail is not currently your default email client. Do you want to set Banana mail as your default app for sending email?"

I'm quite dense of course, if they are going to be like that I will NEVER create an email client for this platform.

The web and their TOS is full of good reasons to never create an app for iphone.

In a laps of sanity I created a pwa one time. I've explained to exactly one user how to add the option to add a web app to the home screen to the menu so that they can add a web app to the home screen. It was a really hard sell and it took a long time.

I of course had to laugh at myself for acting against my better judgement.

Imagine someone made a web app email client and tried to compete with the build in client. Then in the middle of the struggle apple jokes about discontinuing PWA.

Seems a pretty level playing field?

Actually, at the very top of the home page of the settings app is a search bar. If you type in anything reasonable (default, email, mail) then one of the first 2-3 results will be “default apps” or “default email”.

This is what happens when you install Gmail, for example. You're both under and over-thinking this.

EDIT: Actually, there already is a “Default Apps” section right at the top of the page of Settings > Apps. Yeah, if that’s a “labyrinth” then the assumed level of user intelligence is quite low.

Go try to sign into your open-standards-abiding calendar and notes accounts in the Calendar and Contacts bundled with nearly every Android phone on the planet and see how well that goes.

Compared to Android?

Yes.

I have no idea why iPhone users put up with this shit.

It's about 5 years old by now. Not having looked for something in a couple of years and being bummed out by that doesn't make Apple the bad guy.

You have been told that every new OS update brings new features and abilities, and Apple publishes an iPhone User Guide for learning about iOS features like how to change the default mail app (https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/change-the-default-ap...). It's on you to look.

I suppose it could be possible for apps to prompt the user to change the default, but I’m honestly pretty sick of that behavior on desktop (e.g. I have several browsers installed for various reasons and they nearly all bug me about being default) and would rather not see it copied to mobile OSes too (I don’t believe Android allows apps to show such a prompt either).

In the difficulty of non-iMessage compatibility, I have had people close to me say "Why don't you just get an iPhone?" with an incredulous tone.

Perhaps tech companies have had more evil things happen on their platforms, that for whatever reason they were slow to react to.

But

"Why don't you just get an iPhone" was a precisely and meticulously engineered line, pure social manipulation, that was intentionally orchestrated to be delivered to me through the mouths of the people I trust most in my life turned unknowing pawns.

That is why I consider it the most evil. Apple is by design purposely exploiting a core human function, close social circle communication, to trap people in their garden.

I went all in; for years I paid 100% to replace phones of friends or lovers who were still sending archaic SMS.

It’s the implicit camraderie between the speaker and listener in “A computer for the rest of us…”

Today, I don’t even have iMessage enabled on my disposable carrier number. It’s off off.

It's interesting how this seems like an incredibly American problem. In Europe everyone either uses WhatsApp or Signal and iMessage is hardly ever used.

Specific example: When on dating apps you see "green bubbles" as a red flag/un-dateable trait, it has done considerable harm.

Is that really the worst thing you've seen big-tech do? That's very fortunate.

What about Blackberry Messenger which was the mobile instant-messaging golden standard for years and BB exclusive for as long as it mattered in the market? Was that too long ago to remember?

Apple refusing RCS integration is a very clear example of hurting everyone in pursuit of profit

it's likely not the most evil, but I do think it qualifies as evil. it stands out by being inarguably willful, and having a very broad impact

I find harming hundreds of millions (probably billions) of friendships to be quite evil

Apple didn't integrate with RCS because RCS was a fragmented pile of garbage. It still is, but it's I suppose less fragmented now.

None of that "harmed" friendships, certainly not any real ones.

I know many MANY people who have lost chats with their loved ones (especially deceased ones) because there is no way to export and save their conversations.

I think this should be as easy as saving photos, which apple makes (somewhat) easier to export.

Back to email, it is pretty horrible to set up my local email server on an apple device. You have to go through these dialogs, apple servers have to be contacted (for "redirection"), and I usually barely get it working.

No escape hatches turns walled gardens first into a jail and then into a brig on a sinking ship.

You can't comment like this on Hacker News, no matter how right you are or think you are. It's not what HN is for and it destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I think you might be living in a bubble, if this is the "most evil" thing you have heard of a big tech company doing. Go read up on IBM's history, especially in the 30s and 40s. Or a more contemporary example, read up on Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. Or Amazon's mistreatment of workers in both corporate and warehouse settings. Or Meta scraping data off your devices without permission to train AI.

And, though I know some folks here disagree, plenty of people around the world believe what's happening in Gaza is a genocide, and Big Tech has materially contributed to making it happen. Or, if you want another example of human cost, talk about how resources for electronics are mined, or how electronics are manufactured.

Saying, "the most evil thing big tech has ever done is make some chat bubbles blue" puts a whole lot of human lives below the color of some chat bubbles.

You can think Apple did a really bad thing by doing that, that's fine. No complaints. But to call it the most evil thing ever done erases an incalculable amount of human suffering.

I wouldn't count the IBM thing because I don't see it as part of the vernacular "big tech" of today; however I do think it's the most evil so far in this thread.

The others? They are mostly aggressive competition, especially the MS stuff, and altogether I don't see them as more evil than Apple's exclusionary UX. What's at the bottom of it for me is that it harms users directly, e.g. what others said about kids getting shamed for having a non-Apple phone. The one thing not mentioned yet that would qualify for me would be Meta's product altogether with its impact on teenagers; and various gambling simulators like Roblox.

Nobody at Roblox is saying "We want to have children do nothing else except play Roblox from dawn to dusk, we lobby against schooling and extra-curiculars to increase Roblox time"

Apple however very intentionally made messaging people not on iPhones painful, and purposely made it out like androids were inferior. They purposely make it so you lose your group chats if you leave iPhone.

Thats why it's the most evil. It's a planned system to use peoples social connections as pawns to rope people into Apples ecosystem. This isn't hypothetical, or "C'mon of course they are saying that!". There are court documents that show it.

I can assure you, with all my money bet on it, that no one in a roblox exec meeting ever said "We need to focus on lobbying schools to shorten the school day in key markets." No one at roblox is fantasizing about roblox replacing -all- (I mean this literally, not just entertainment time) facets of a child's life with roblox.

Whereas apple explicitly had their goal "Get kids using iphones, don't port imessage to android, families will be forced to buy iphones and stay on iphones to maintain familial communication."

That is evil.

This is a textbook strawman. OP never said 'chat bubbles blue' as the reason why Apple has evil & predatory practices. You are trying to weaken the argument by finding the easiest target ("the strawman") and then attack it.

The lawsuit pdf has a bunch of examples of active harm Apple has inflicted on users, app developers & ecosystem.

Also, bringing up IBM, Microsoft or Facebook is "whataboutism".

Which lawsuit PDF related specifically to iMessage interacting with Android was mentioned in this comment? I see a comment about RCS.

Now, maybe you are right, maybe I narrowly interpreted RCS in iMessage to mean chat bubbles, and there's a wider interpretation. Even still, there's no possible way that's the singular most evil thing tech has ever done. The OP is free to be anti-Apple, more power to them, but like, let's be real about levels of evil.

> Also, bringing up IBM, Microsoft or Facebook is "whataboutism".

It's absolutely not whataboutism. The claim the OP made was about Big Tech broadly. Bringing in examples of Big Tech doing evil things is a direct and appropriate rebuttable to the argument that Big Tech doesn't do evil things.

This whole thread is the complete opposite of "thoughtful and substantive" and the "Converse curiously" from HN guidelines and I regret participating on it.

First of all, when Apple created iMessage, there was no possible way for them to predict that friend groups would use it as a reason to treat members of their groups poorly due to using Android phones.

Second of all, Apple did not deliberately make interacting with non-iMessage users in group chats "look like trash" in order to exclude them. Apple went out of its way to make it possible for iMessage to interoperate with the ubiquitous (in the US) SMS, with reduced features because SMS did not support the better features. If, instead, Apple had just made iMessage not interoperate with SMS at all, you'd be screaming about that instead.

Third of all, if people are leaving others out of chats, that's not Apple's fault. That's something for those families and friend groups to work out amongst themselves. "Hey, guys, I don't have an iPhone, and don't really have the money to get one, so maybe we could use GroupMe/GChat/WhatsApp/Signal/IRC/email/smoke signals/meeting in person/any of the myriad other ways of communicating instead?" A) "Oh, sure, that shouldn't be a problem!" (everything is solved) B) "What? No, we're not going to change anything just because it makes it impossible to actually include you in stuff. That's a you problem!" (turns out, the problem is your friends are assholes)

Apple cannot by any reasonable standard be held to blame for the way bullying, status-seeking teenagers treat each other.

The problem is not that iMessage exists, it's that it operates in opaque and unpredictable ways, mixing SMS and iMessage (and now RCS) communication in a way where even more tech-savvy users do not understand how it works (first-hand experience - had to explain to someone why their images are super compressed when they send them to me, but OK when they send them to their friend with an iPhone).

And now it's the same with RCS (Android-iOS). I send person A an image, the conversation switches to RCS. They use the "automatic reply" when I call them, conversation switches back to SMS. With person B, the switching between RCS and SMS is even more unpredictable.

That sounds like a terrible user experience ?

>“iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove [an] obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones,” was Federighi’s concern according to the Epic filing.

Among other statements. Apple was very aware of the social effects of iMessage, and leveraged it to force people into getting iphones.

Tech companies have done lots of evil shit. But never, not once, has one ever crossed the line into turning my friends and family against me (however slightly) because I didn't want to lock myself in Apple's cage, however comfortable it is.

Yeah, you can call my friends and family shitty, but the reality is that the are regular non-tech people, explaining the situation to them is impossible, and iMessage Just Works(TM).

But your position that it is somehow uniquely evil just reads as a coping mechanism—a way of not having to blame your friends and family for being shitty for you.

I know plenty of "regular, non-tech people" who understand perfectly well that a) different computer systems do not work properly together, and b) if you choosing to use a particular computer system excludes someone because they do not have access to it, that's rude, discriminatory, and generally shitty behavior.

SMS not having the same features as iMessage is a technical issue, sure.

Apple not providing iMessage on Android was a business decision, no question.

But people being exclusionary and obnoxious to each other over group chats is a social issue, and should be treated as such, and not blamed on either the technical or business side of things.

Just think about your logic.

If some teenagers see green bubbles as some sort of challenge to their identities, it's probably a useful life lesson.

However making an argument that some key aspects of the iPhome were not designed for viral growth is disrespectful to Steve Jobs who, like many of that time, was very familiar with engineering platform growth - probably more and better than most.

"Communicate outside the home" is a pretty vast difference

> It's even generally using all the same network protocols.

This whole thread was about proprietary iMessage

It's genuinely baffling to me that people actually see things this way. When there is a social reason to be outside the house, I take that as a reason not to be staring at a glowing rectangle.

It's a bit silly to abandon all contact with the world just because you have to wait for the doctor, go grocery shopping, sit in the train, etc.

What is silly about going to do an errand without distractions? It's more efficient in my experience. I wont look up stuff in the store or answer texts that in reality can totally wait. I've yet to have something happen where not having my phone lead to me missing some big emergency or event.

Going out into the world is in fact the opposite of abandoning all contact, it's directly interfacing. According to your comment, you equated your world with access to your phone.

> What is silly about going to do an errand without distractions? It's more efficient in my experience. I wont look up stuff in the store or answer texts that in reality can totally wait. I've yet to have something happen where not having my phone lead to me missing some big emergency or event. > Going out into the world is in fact the opposite of abandoning all contact, it's directly interfacing. According to your comment, you equated your world with access to your phone.

I have a hard time believing this isn't a disingenuous take just for the sake of arguing. "Hey honey, while you're at the grocery store, could you pick up some milk?" "Hey, I'm finishing up at the doctor, any chance you want to meet for lunch?"

Are we really saying we can't understand the difference between a computer and a cellphone? Are we really unable to imagine any reason why communicating outside the home can be a useful ability? That the ability to do something doesn't mean it is the only way to do something, nor does it mean it has to be done that way at all times in all situations?

On the contrary, I find it liberating, and I hate the idea of people trying to compel me to maintain contact through those situations.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...

Are you saying Google should freely give away their products?

take a moment to think why amazon has no google services on their table and/or an amazon branded basic android smartphone, it would be super easy for them to do it (leave aside firephone .. for reasons).

How is this not monopoly abuse? if Lina Khan had any balls this is what she would have gone after.

edit: chatgpt explanation: https://chatgpt.com/share/686350ce-47dc-8008-8c30-14c6298d75...

To clarify what exactly that agreement does: it prohibits companies from developing competitors. It is nakedly anti-competitive, and no, business deals are not supposed to be that - there's a large body of law, sadly rarely enforced, saying so. Not every business practice is legal just because the directly involved parties agreed.

Apple didn't make SMS bad, it just was. Apple has since implemented RCS and it hasn't changed how I communicate with people from my iPhone at all.

Google should probably take most of the blame for repeatedly fumbling messaging on non-Apple platforms for the past 2 decades. Every time they had something that was getting any amount of traction it got quickly replaced with some stupid new, worse messaging app so a PO could get a promotion.

And you know, maybe they have a point. I especially think about Microsoft and MSN Messenger/Skype. How do you fumble away not one but two dominant messaging apps?

Why didn’t Google deliver an alternative to iMessage? Did they choose not to? Is it actually hard? Are they just too incompetent at making software that isn’t for running infrastructure?

Regardless of the merits of Apple's actions as regards technical interoperability I feel compelled to point out that this in particular is a cultural problem, not technical malfeasance. RCS users still appear as green bubbles and even if the lack of functionality has been remedied the stigma has not. People at my lunch table 20 years ago were drawing artificial distinctions between "MP3s" (portable DAPs) and iPods because the latter were expensive luxury products and the former were not. The same thing is at work here because owning an iPhone is a proxy for one's socioeconomic stratum. I own an iPhone and as soon as an Android user appears in an iMessage group chat some joker immediately makes a green bubble quip - no degraded picture message required.

People that define themselves by conspicuous consumption don't care about interoperability. They care about brand recognition.

So pick your poison, either you exclude them because of in-group signalling/conspicious consumption or exclude them because you want non-potato resolution, with Android users getting the blame for Apple's UX. Either way Tim Cook says the solution is to buy an iPhone.

What a ridiculous statement. Even with your edit it's still an utterly stupid conclusion to come to.

Off the top of my head I can think of way worse things tech companies have done. Cambridge Analytica scandal, Gmail scanning, the Google Shopping lawsuit, Amazon's product clone hijack, Facebooks mood manipulation experiment, Ring doorbell viewing, Uber spying, to name just a few FAR worse things tech companies have done.

Instead of shaming Apple (which won't be very effective IMO), we should aim to improve education. Teach users how SMS/MMS/iMessage work. Tell them that they can install universal messaging apps and so on.