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iMessage for Windows: A labor of love that will never see light of day (2018)

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Re: iMessage for Windows: A labor of love that will never see light of day (2018)

#161

Post by RC_ITR »

kelnos wrote: post #40
est31 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iMessage motivates people to people buy iPhones instead of Android when everyone else in a social circle has it. Why should Apple give up on that? What will Apple gain from making it ubiquitous? It would in fact disappoint many people as now they can't use their phone to distance themselves from the people who don't have that blue circle. Note that I'm arguing from Apple's perspective here. From my own I believe they…

> iMessage motivates people to people buy iPhones instead of Android Why, though? Does your average iPhone user actually care if the bubbles they see in their chats are blue or green? If so, why? Note that I'm talking about average users. Sure, there are likely a bunch of privacy-conscious users who believe in Apple's commitment to security and privacy and prefer iMessage on those grounds. But otherwise, why? > It wo…

99% of Americans don’t want to be funneled to WhatsApp or signal for group chat. They want it to live right next to their native texts.

Your group is likely different from the mainstream.

Re: iMessage for Windows: A labor of love that will never see light of day (2018)

#162

Post by Nextgrid »

collegeburner wrote: post #145
jamescostian wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 22 and live in a mid-sized city, and I've seen people trying to get into a relationship (or even something more casual, but not a platonic friendship) get rejected because of the dreaded "green bubbles" - and really, I'm not exaggerating. And not from rich people who have the latest iPhone either. In addition, I have been in friend groups that would exclude Android users because if you have even 1 Android user in…

High school senior here; I can second the prevalence of this experience starting in middle school. Oh and texting an i phone user sucks because those reactions come through like: Loved "blah blah blah" Please when texting us android plebians don't use those reaction things.

To be fair I am an iOS user and found the reactions an unnecessary and annoying gimmick.

It’s faster to just type the “laughing with tears” emoji and press send than to use the equivalent reaction.

Re: iMessage for Windows: A labor of love that will never see light of day (2018)

#163

Post by jakelazaroff »

VMisTheWay wrote: post #109
est31 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iMessage motivates people to people buy iPhones instead of Android when everyone else in a social circle has it. Why should Apple give up on that? What will Apple gain from making it ubiquitous? It would in fact disappoint many people as now they can't use their phone to distance themselves from the people who don't have that blue circle. Note that I'm arguing from Apple's perspective here. From my own I believe they…

If you have ever talked to an iPhone user, you will know performance, features, and quality are the last things on their mind. The phone must be pretty and have the Apple logo on it. They might repeat the marketing about privacy and security, but if the person actually cared about either, you'd never use Apple products.

> They might repeat the marketing about privacy and security, but if the person actually cared about either, you'd never use Apple products.

If I cared about security, you’re saying the phone that the FBI famously had trouble breaking into is a bad choice?

If I cared about privacy, you’re saying I should prefer Android — an operating system made by the literal inventor of surveillance capitalism?

Re: iMessage for Windows: A labor of love that will never see light of day (2018)

#164

Post by Answerawake »

klodolph wrote: post #105
toasterlovin wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, nobody uses WhatsApp, so it’s not a realistic option. Network effects are a thing.

The US is a big place. WhatsApp has plenty of users in the US. It’s easily the third messaging app I use, after LINE and iMessage. And the people I talk to on WhatsApp are US natives, it’s not like they picked up WhatsApp in some other country and brought it here.

LINE? Really? I have yet to see anyone use that unless it is to talk to friends in Japan or Korea.

Re: iMessage for Windows: A labor of love that will never see light of day (2018)

#165

Post by mmm_grayons »

ahmedalsudani wrote: post #90
kccqzy wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I, unfortunately, have sent spam messages via iMessage a long time ago. I did it by faking a Bluetooth keyboard that connects to an iPhone and starts typing out phone numbers and addresses fed from a computer. I did it to mass-send a message to about a couple hundred people.

That’s decent rate limiting.

Desktop macs have i message too, so a determined spammer could just make a bunch of mac vms. Getting a valid serial with an unconfirmed purchase date is a massive pain, though.

Re: iMessage for Windows: A labor of love that will never see light of day (2018)

#166

Post by lotsofpulp »

collegeburner wrote: post #155
spideymans wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They care because the green bubbles indicate a severely impaired user experience. For example, multimedia may not work, and even if it does, its typically very poor quality.

HS senior here. Maybe a little, but it's mostly status/class. It's the twenty-first century equivalent of wearing expensive clothes to school.

I don't see how it conveys status when used iPhones are cheap, and brand new ones start at $400 now. My lowest paid hourly employees all have iPhones, even the ones who don't speak English.

Re: iMessage for Windows: A labor of love that will never see light of day (2018)

#167

Post by aeyes »

pottertheotter wrote: post #156
aphroz wrote: post #141

It is really interesting to see the difference between countries, I travel between Asia and Europe and I knew that iMessage existed, but I thought people dropped it like SMS, years ago. Interesting to see that in a globalized world some differences still persist. I have asked around me to Iphone owners if they used iMessage and they almost never use it. It must be something specific to the US. Please do not downvote…

So people don't use SMS outside the US? I knew WhatsApp was big in other countries, but didn't realize no one even uses SMS not iMessage. What do people use in Europe?

In Europe: WhatsApp, no one uses SMS anymore because WhatsApp started getting popular when people still had to pay for each SMS sent.

I currently live in South America, same story: Nobody uses iMessage, everybody is on WhatsApp. Even businesses prefer WhatsApp over phone calls.

The biggest difference between Whatsapp users in Europe and South America that I observed has to be the crazy amount of people using voice messages to communicate. Why don't you call and speed up the conversation by 50%?

Re: iMessage for Windows: A labor of love that will never see light of day (2018)

#168

Post by briandear »

harpratap wrote: post #117
AnonC wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, WhatsApp does not bring the same features. WhatsApp is very different. You can react to messages in iMessage, which is just one among other features WhatsApp doesn’t have.

Yeah I mean there will little tiny things different on each app, but it's not a big deal breaker for many. Whatsapp is the biggest IM on the planet for a reason. People could easily ditch iMessage in favour of Whatsapp if they wanted to, but for some reason Americans don't do that.

I don’t use What’s App for the simple reason I like how my contacts are integrated across my Apple devices. From email, to “normal” phone calls, to Siri, calendar invites, and even directions “hey Siri, directions to Tom’s work” — it all works seamlessly. If I want to send someone a location from Maps, it’s seamless. If I am using something like Find My, I can easily send a message from there — or even create a Shortcut to send a geofenced message. And Memojis are just simply fun. When I am on the road, sending my kids a message with a talking robot really makes their day.

I also have big trust problems with Facebook products. Apple makes iMessage to sell devices, what does Facebook do with What’s App? There have been reports in the past that installed Facebook, Inc., apps were sending analytics from devices on other apps people were using, pretty much like a Trojan horse. I don’t want any installed Facebook related apps on my devices because Facebook lost my trust long ago. While supposedly What’s App is “secure,” the entire history of Facebook has been littered with “oops, you caught us and we are really really sorry this time.”

Re: iMessage for Windows: A labor of love that will never see light of day (2018)

#169

Post by the_snooze »

fao_ wrote: post #159
jamescostian wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 22 and live in a mid-sized city, and I've seen people trying to get into a relationship (or even something more casual, but not a platonic friendship) get rejected because of the dreaded "green bubbles" - and really, I'm not exaggerating. And not from rich people who have the latest iPhone either. In addition, I have been in friend groups that would exclude Android users because if you have even 1 Android user in…

Honestly this seems like a feature of the social circles involved. I can't really imagine being, or even wanting to be, around people who are so shallow they won't have someone in a group because they can't change the chat name, or at least, people who wouldn't be willing to move to other types of software to accomodate people in the group. It seems like basic human decency that when someone in the group says "I can'…

It’s often not malice or conscious choice as you seem to think. It’s that technical designs have effects on social dynamics. Here’s an example I wrote elsewhere:

> Social dynamics are subtle. For example, group SMS doesn’t support contact names. If you add someone to a group SMS, the other people only see a phone number unless they go out of their way to add the new guy to their contact list. Likewise, the new person has to add everyone else to see names. Decades of research in behavioral economics show just how powerful defaults are, so most people probably won’t bother to add names. Without names, the new person will have a more difficult time connecting with the group.

Re: iMessage for Windows: A labor of love that will never see light of day (2018)

#170

Post by klodolph »

jvolkman wrote: post #148
klodolph wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Google Duo much of a competitor? Hangouts is circling the drain, Allo is dead, and everyone I know is confused by Duo, including Google employees. If you made a list of the ways Google employees made video calls to each other outside work, I’d be suprised if Duo were in the top three.

What is confusing about Duo? It's a phone-number-based video caller. It's one of the simpler messaging apps that Google has made.

Duo: A simple app with a confusing name, released four years ago to compete with another app that Google made that did the same thing but more, and released as a matched set with a different app which also had a confusing name but is now discontinued. Forgive me if I’m getting old and can’t keep up with this shit. I make video calls through four different apps depending on who I’m talking to, and I just can’t be bothered to deal with Google’s constantly-changing messaging landscape.

I know people who are still angry about the Messenger app being split off from Facebook, but that’s nothing compared to the dumpster fire that is Google’s messaging app landscape. So if I want to make a video call to one of my Google employee friends it’s not going to be through Duo because it seems like they don’t have time for this shit either.

Who knows, maybe Duo will take off?

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