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US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In

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Re: US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In

#121

Post by ub »

pcmoney wrote: post #19
danpalmer wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Europe WhatsApp was huge well before Facebook purchased them. From my own experience, the product has barely changed since then, so I don't really feel like it's a Facebook product (yet), and so while I dislike using Facebook services WhatApp is basically fine for now. Almost everyone I know uses WhatsApp. Funnily enough my family are the only ones who don't, and use iMessage instead. This isn't an active choice t…

It is 100% a Facebook product. It is FB. I 100% guarantee all data mined from your WhatsApp account is linked either to your FB account or your shadow FB account if you never signed up. Sure maybe the "experience" hasn't changed from a UI standpoint but FB is weakening WhatsApp's end to end encryption and mining your conversations so under the hood the experience is radically different. There is a reason the founders…

You are making a bunch of assertions with no basis. WhatsApp's encryption hasn't been weakened. FB can't look at encrypted message content, neither can WhatsApp. A lot of people use WhatsApp because of the encryption guarantees, please don't spread unverified claims.

Re: US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In

#122

Post by georgebcrawford »

asclepi wrote: post #119
ariwilson wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read the article; the whole problem is Apple distinguishing between Android and Apple users.

Absolutely, but Whatsapp it isn't distinguishing any less between Whatsapp users and non-Whatsapp users. Messages doesn't entirely cut you off from people who don't bring money to Apple, and it doesn't require another app to communicate with them. It will handle and integrate it all in the same interface with iMessage, seamlessly switching in the background to make that possible. Whatsapp, OTOH, plainly refuses to le…

It's group chats that are the issue, not one-on-one conversations.

Re: US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In

#123

Post by irq »

damnyou wrote: post #117
dijit wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re going to have trouble convincing people because ultimately Apple and Google are hugely different. The non-Apple base have decided that Apple is just overhyped over-expensive gear which is only slightly more polished and a lot more locked down than whatever their favourite thing is. Apple users use Apple products because mostly it’s just honest. You get what you pay for, no hidden agendas, no up-sell.

Every single Apple device has a hidden agenda — to make Apple even more powerful than it is today, even more of a bully. All concentrations of power are bad. As a society we must always seek to reduce power imbalances, not perpetuate them

All for profit companies have that agenda- it is very much NOT hidden.

Re: US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In

#124

Post by amyjess »

1_player wrote: post #9

Is WhatsApp not used in the US? Honest question. I'm in EU, I moved to an iPhone a few years ago and I've yet to receive an actual iMessage, but my friends, local or international, all use WhatsApp. I just use regular SMS for more "formal" messaging, such as with my boss or landlord, or to receive OTP codes.

I've never met another American that uses it.

I use Facebook Messenger for talking to real-life friends and a couple of online friends, Discord for talking to people I only know online, Slack for work, and SMS for talking to my parents.

Re: US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In

#125

Post by mattmcknight »

Kadin wrote: post #64

I switched to iOS (via a used iPhone on a BYOD plan) primarily for iMessage. I was tired of being the odd man out, missing out on things that were being planned via group messages, etc. Nobody was going to switch to an entirely different mode of communication just for my sake, so the existence of theoretical alternatives doesn't really matter. (And I do try to use Facebook Messenger for group chats, so as not to lock…

Google's abandonment of Hangouts was phenomenally stupid, and it should itself really have just been an evolution of Google Talk. It's a symptom of something very wrong in the incentive structure and product portfolio management there where you have to roll out a new application to add a feature, and the various applications cannot interoperate. Perhaps the underlying issue is that none of these made money directly. For what it's worth, I still use Hangouts.

Re: US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In

#126

Post by Dylan16807 »

endperform wrote: post #118
damnyou wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course Google is also bad, but it at least allows sideloading and other app stores.

Which also opens up a nice new attack vector.

Talking about what non-google manufacturers do to some phones, and then about attack vectors while accusing someone else of having blinders on? You're firmly in moving-the-goalposts territory now.

Re: US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In

#127

Post by ohnope »

I honestly don't mind green texters in my iMessage groups, but when it becomes really apparent is when we forget about the android user and start adding reactions to messages, which come in as texts. Then it becomes really obnoxious. I've never seen people break out into a separate iOS-only group, but chats have definitely devolved into mocking the text-substitution for message reactions by recursively reacting to text reactions, which get absurdly long. And then it ends with someone sarcastically suggesting the android user buy an iPhone.

I feel that if I was a teenager and not an adult, this kind of frustration must result in regrouping iOS only.

Re: US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In

#128

Post by Infinitesimus »

throw0101a wrote: post #70

Lock-in doesn't last forever: just ask ICQ, MSN, and BBM. My sister used all of those things as she was growing up in the 2000s and 2010s. The flavour-of-the-day is now iMessage. She sometimes complains that I'm not on the system (supposedly handy to group chat with our mom), but I can't be bothered to follow the latest fad. We'll see how long that lasts. Maybe at some point the telcos and phone makers will eventuall…

I'm not sure the comparison is that neat. Everyone was on BBM until most people stopped using a BlackBerry.

iMessage will live on until most people stop using an iPhone in the US because iMessage is guaranteed to be present on your iDevice and usually works reliably enough for a vast majority of the population.

Re: US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In

#129

Post by mbowcutt »

Kadin wrote: post #64

I switched to iOS (via a used iPhone on a BYOD plan) primarily for iMessage. I was tired of being the odd man out, missing out on things that were being planned via group messages, etc. Nobody was going to switch to an entirely different mode of communication just for my sake, so the existence of theoretical alternatives doesn't really matter. (And I do try to use Facebook Messenger for group chats, so as not to lock…

> But really this is Google's problem, not Apple's.

I'm not sure we agree on what the problem is? If Google monopolized years ago, the story would play the same - only now it's the kid without Hangouts/Gmail. Sure, you're not locked into a physical device, but you're still locked into a service, and that's not guaranteed to hold true forever.

IMO we need a modern messaging standard that's vendor agnostic. SMS/MMS were good but feel ancient now. XMPP seems promising but there's too many extensions such that it's nearly unusable for the layman. I don't see an obvious solution, and asking the top vendors to collaborate on a common messaging protocol seems like a far cry.

Re: US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In

#130

Post by saagarjha »

asclepi wrote: post #97
Kadin wrote: post #64

I switched to iOS (via a used iPhone on a BYOD plan) primarily for iMessage. I was tired of being the odd man out, missing out on things that were being planned via group messages, etc. Nobody was going to switch to an entirely different mode of communication just for my sake, so the existence of theoretical alternatives doesn't really matter. (And I do try to use Facebook Messenger for group chats, so as not to lock…

> Nobody was going to switch to an entirely different mode of communication just for my sake Please elaborate. No iPhone user has to switch from the "iMessage" app to the "SMS" app to reach an Android user or include an Android user in a group chat. While it does indeed involve a different mode of communication, it's all handled seamlessly in the background from the same app. In fact, if it wasn't for the coloring, t…

> In fact, if it wasn't for the coloring, they wouldn't even have noticed, except if you exchanged other data than pure text, but I can't imagine this being a real deal-breaker for planning?

There are a number of things that iMessage does that SMS doesn’t support.

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