I’ve been using iOS from the iPhone 3G onwards and have gradually migrated my whole family from a plethora of assorted platforms (my sister was a Blackberry fanatic, my father didn’t want to let go of his Treo) to iOS. However, when it came to creating a “family chat” group, I went with WhatsApp precisely to avoid this kind of lock-in.
US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In
211–220 of 251 posts
Re: US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In
#212Seems like a US thing - I noticed in Europe most people use WhatsApp for group chats.
Re: US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are forced to buy apps from Apple if you want to use iMessage. Forced to use Apple's crappy voice software. Forced to use Apple's crappy TV box if you want to mirror your screen.
you aren't forced to use their voice software, and the major TV brands all have airplay built in now so you don't even need Apple TV... But yeah iMessage is on iOS though I don't see how you must buy apps to use it??
My biggest issue with Apple is that they force you to use Safari. The total inability to run an alternative browser is a no go for me.
Re: US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In
#214Seems like a US thing - I noticed in Europe most people use WhatsApp for group chats.
WhatsApp and Facebook messenger are the two that seem widely used in the UK. I know a few people using Signal and Telegram too.
Re: US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Facebook owns the communication end points and can do whatever they want with the message contents before they're sent encrypted.
Given their history, I would be surprised if they don't do some on-device metadata analysis.
Re: US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
yeah fuck americans am i right totally has nothing to do with the fact that it's a built in app where you don't have to do anything extra to set it up no-sir-ee it's the americans who are bad!
Effectively no human with a smartphone outside the US finds having to install an app to communicate with other people in a cross platform way a burden enough to stay with iMessage. Either Americans are uniquely lazy when it comes to installing apps on their phone, or this argument doesn't hold any water.
A false dichotomy. One third option: there are network effects at play in America that aren't at play in Europe. Consider the relative market shares of the iPhone. US: ~58%, e.g., Spain: 25%. [1] Thus, when one boots an iPhone in the US, roughly 60% of one's friends already have this functionality. And that market share likely skews towards self-selecting groups such as teenagers. Also note that sending an SMS doesn't have as significant of a historical drawback in the US as it does in Europe. There may be some limitations, but, again, given the market share, it's unlikely one is going to reach one's SMS limit texting grandma. Thus, because US people can be more accommodating in terms of messaging with other phones without a third-party app, it's a perceptively useless install in America. Pretty much apps like WhatsApp are only used by US people with Android devices for communicating outside of the US. Otherwise, it's unlikely a US person needs to do anything other than send an SMS, and, hence, the green bubble.
Re: US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In
#217It is interesting that the comments on the Twitter thread are "Just use WhatsApp". Which is basically iMessage but from Facebook. Comparing two, the vendor lock-in from Apple seems much preferable to the one with Facebook in light of the data scandals Facebook has and their ongoing effort to backdoor WhatsApp and integrate it with FB messenger etc. Also a group message is only as secure as its most weakly encrypted m…
Apple vs Facebook? I'll stick with sms
Your mobile phone operator likely has no problem just straight up selling your data.
And also it goes pretty much in the clear through the global SMS network.
Re: US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
>It's almost perfect All it needs is research-verified encryption!
Russian government needed to use it's leverage on a telco to break into political activist's Telegrams[2] about the same time some script kiddies easily broke into dozen of celebs' iClouds. [2] https://www.ft.com/content/74d5ce00-12dd-11e6-839f-292294709...
Using phishing and other social engineering to steal passwords is unrelated to breaking crypto.
Re: US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's even more stupid when you find out that Hangouts is still alive and well for Google Fi customers. I'm one and I haven't stopped using Hangouts, even though most of the people I know on GFi use something else because they read it was being turned off. The fact is, Google doesn't yet have a replacement for something they stopped developing years ago. It is completely insane.
Google has a nasty habit of making solid features/apps available for everyone, then building an in house device/service that can use said feature, then making that feature exclusive to their new service in an attempt to drive consumers to it. In the end they just piss people off and whatever they were trying to do fails. The latest update to chrome on Android in the last few days removed support for 90/120hz devices.…
Have you tried the android version of firefox? I really dig it, especially because the desktop plugins still work in it. :D
Re: US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In
#220I 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
I have. MMS always has problems, and can result in extra charges from mobile network if it’s an international number. iMessage or whatsapp gives me confidence that it’s using data only and I won’t experience any charges, I can use it via WiFi without a mobile network, it’s not tied to my phone number for when I leave the country and change SIM, and delivery of messages is confirmed.
I also prefer iMessage due to Apple’s stances on privacy, and integration with macOS.