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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)

#191
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.

Hi, I have an iPhone and part of the reason I bought it for those reasons. I also happen to care a bit about privacy and security :)

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

#192
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 the Netherlands people use WhatsApp and iMessage, in my about one year living here.

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

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 both…

Has it not taken off? It holds the #5 spot in "Social Networking" in Apple's app store, where it must compete with Facetime. I've been using it to talk to my mother for 4 years. She certainly doesn't care about Google's past messaging blunders; she just likes that it works.

I don't really think Duo would be the best option for Google employees to video chat with each other. They'd use Hangouts, because they all already know each others' G Suite accounts.

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

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google and Facebook may have a larger user base but it is not the in the same realm, e.g. I use iMessage to talk to my family, my close friends, parents from my daughter's preschool, co-workers, people I've only interacted with professionally - vendors etc - all it takes to connect is a phone number which is universal, and like you say it falls back to SMS. Compare that to Facebook where you have to add someone as a…

How about all the iMessage created "Liked", "Loved", "Emoji" messages? Each and every one of those creates a message alert on non-iPhones. It is by far the most spammy type of message one receives on an Android device (in the USA at least).

Anecdotally, any iPhone users don't know they're doing that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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

#195
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

The parent comment mentioned some of the reasons why it goes beyond the normal "lol you're too poor to buy an iPhone". SMS chats are majorly crippled compared to iMessage ones, and this is technical functionality, not just bubble color. You can't really change the people in an SMS chat, iMessage features don't work (in some instances hilariously: you'll get a text like "so-and-so liked this message" instead of a reac…

You can use Whatsapp or other IMs though, which is what the rest of the world is doing. No one really uses SMS anymore

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

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iMessage has read receipts, faster and more reliable delivery, higher quality images/videos. More than just the color of the bubble

Looks like you have never used Whatsapp!

Can’t send Live Photo’s. They get converted to regular or a crappy gif.

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

#197
post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has more to do with people who use whatsapp vs people who use iMessage. If all the people who use whastapp migrated to iMessage, the same problem will happen there.

It might, but part of why it happens is that the app makes it easy for that to happen and users are trained. Think how "redditors" talk vs how we do here in HN. We have clear rules about what this forum is about. Commenting "lol" -> "loll" -> "lolll" is not accepted. You'll be warned, marked "dead" , or outright banned. Moderation in a messaging app only happens at scale via UX.

Curious as to what you think is the difference in UX of iMessage that doesn't encourage people to spread random messages to others?

AFAICT iMessage allows people to freely forward messages to multiple contacts at no cost just like Whatsapp - https://9to5mac.com/2018/08/02/iphone-how-to-forward-imessag...

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

#198
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

The parent comment mentioned some of the reasons why it goes beyond the normal "lol you're too poor to buy an iPhone". SMS chats are majorly crippled compared to iMessage ones, and this is technical functionality, not just bubble color. You can't really change the people in an SMS chat, iMessage features don't work (in some instances hilariously: you'll get a text like "so-and-so liked this message" instead of a reac…

But people can just use LINE, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Instagram, messenger, etc and get all the features and more which in my experience as an android user is what actually happens than this weird shallow world of green and blue bubbles I've heard about on the internet.

Different friend groups may prefer different platforms, but it's pretty rare where someone new to the group refuses what the group is already using, which is almost never plain sms/imessage.

Google voice/sms is almost always for one on one friends where we don't share anyone in common or older relatives.

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

#199
post #11
post #3

If ever Apple needed to open source server and client code for a public good it is with imessages. Yes it has clear limits with a centralized server, but it is realistically how a lot of “secure” messaging happens and it’s very difficult to endorse being tied to expensive hardware. You can say the same about facetime: it is clearly higher quality than competitors in every experiment I’ve tried, but their refusal to i…

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…

I have noticed that many of my iPhone friends start using WhatsApp for group and personal chats as default. I don’t get why. I switch back to iMessage in those cases, which irritates people too. I think iMessage would be way more successful if it was available on other platforms.

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

#200
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, everyone knows this but you're not supposed to mention it. If you have green bubbles, you risk being a social pariah. Android use among teenagers, who are most susceptible to peer pressure, is >80%. Also I know several guys who switched to iPhones and suddenly had a much better sex life. It is what it is. Think of Apple buy-in like a tribal tattoo or rite of passage for young people. If Apple released iMessage f…

How do they manage the risk that some other chat system establishes itself? Whatsapp and Wechat had a chance because there was no open standard. I am convinced that history will repeat itself and Apple will become obsolete again because the PC of chat will eat their Mac Chat lunches. If their market share depends on peer pressure there will be nothing that sustains them once that pressure is gone.

You know iMessage will always be there - at least as long as iPhones are anyway. You also know there's no third party snooping - not the case with other messaging systems. Also there's no cookies or location tracing (like I imaging there are with Facebook messenger etc). Thats how I feel about it - rightly or wrongly, its as reliable and secure as the SMS system, but without the spam.
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