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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)

#241

Post by ComputerGuru »

harpratap wrote: post #197
0xCMP wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

One long press on WhatsApp to forward (on the same menu as copy, reply, and delete) as compared to a long pressed followed by “more...” to find forward on iPhone (and it was only “recently” added).

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

#242

Post by ComputerGuru »

sradman wrote: post #222

> As someone that has never embraced the mobile craze, I sorely missed the ability of texting (or “iMessaging”) from my PC, and came to absolutely despise having to drag my phone out of my pocket and text from its cramped display, constantly fighting autoincorrect and embarrassing myself with typos and misspellings. An alternative solution is to use a Bluetooth keyboard, possibly with multi-device support and device…

I did that, actually! Ran into some problems with the ux and lots of issues switching between soft and hard keyboards. I don’t know if the situation has improved since.

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

#243

Post by uryga »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #237
randomdata wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facetime was announced as an open standard to be. It is speculated that it never came to light because of a patent dispute[1]. [1] https://9to5mac.com/2018/06/06/make-facetime-an-open-standar...

Patent troll strikes again! Maybe we should call it patent fraud and make this kinda thing illegal? Patents should be for companies actually making products to get a market edge of sorts. Not a portfolio of things you never intend to build but instead berate other companies for cash over. Its okay if they are actually still in the process of building the thing but if your company has one single employee and 0 product…

[not defending patent trolls, just poking what seems to be a hole in the concept]

> Its okay if they are actually still in the process of building the thing

what should happen with a patent holder who sells off their R&D department, and thus stops "developing things"? should they be allowed to keep their patents? (to keep receiving e.g. licencing fees for the stuff they did develop; i think that's how it works?)

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

#244

Post by quantummkv »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #241
harpratap wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

One long press on WhatsApp to forward (on the same menu as copy, reply, and delete) as compared to a long pressed followed by “more...” to find forward on iPhone (and it was only “recently” added).

Indeed. Even little frictions like these can go a long way to curb such spamming behavior. As evidenced on HN itself.

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

#245

Post by dawnerd »

carlyfan wrote: post #238

For anyone who is interested in making an iMessage proxy and has time to spend: There is a legitimate way to interact with the iMessage system with a standard protocol. It requires you to have a host iPhone (no jailbreaking needed). What you need to have is a Bluetooth adapter with MAP (Message Access Profile) support. Your iPhone will treat all messages from the MAP protocol as if they are from the Messages app. Thi…

Does it support group threads? That’s one of the biggest limitations to Tesla’s implementation of this.

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

#246

Post by ta17711771 »

saagarjha wrote: post #208
Larrikin wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, whic…

As has been mentioned many times in the other comments, those force you to download something, perhaps make an account, make sure everyone has it…whereas 90% of the people might already have an iPhone, which might be better than the number for anything else.

> 90% of the people might already have an iPhone

85%+ of the world's on Android, think outside your social circle =]

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

#247

Post by ta17711771 »

jamescostian wrote: post #79
harpratap wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why, though? Does your average iPhone user actually care if the bubbles they see in their chats are blue or green? If so, why? They definitely do. Not sure what your age or demographic is, but young folks do care a lot about higher social status which is tied to blue bubble because of iPhone prices. It has nothing to do with privacy though.

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…

> 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"

Good, fuck those people, I probably don't want to associate with them anyhow.

I consider this line of thinking to be on the same level as face tattoos, and social media posts about meals multiple times a week.

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

#248

Post by sytelus »

monadic2 wrote: 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…

I'd read about an article how there is a significant "dark" black hat companies which do nothing but dig up into the open source codes to find the exploits. They invest big time to develop proprietary tools for autonomous scanning of latest vulnerabilities. Such exploits then get sold for millions of dollars. They do open source code scanning to everything from popular Python packages to popular Chrome extensions to Office plugins to Linux kernel to open source phone apps.

One might think that opening the source will lead to code reviews by many and fix security bugs. In my own experience with open sourcing few projects, I've not seen that happening. Vast majority of contributors aren't willing to spend a lot of time in reviewing security issues and fixing for you. In fact, virtually all contributors will send you patches that are often half assed and have security issues which you might unknowingly accept because all tests are passing, you don't have much time and in code reviews everything look ok. For things like iMessage, I suspect billions of dollars worth of important decisions are made by everyone from Jeff Bezos to the President of USA. In my opinion, open sourcing something like this would give a handsome payday to many black hat hacking groups including state owned agencies.

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

#249

Post by recursive »

bobthepanda wrote: post #230
Larrikin wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that that is irrelevant. What's the point in having anything other than a flip phone if you refuse to download apps. It's not a barrier to entry in every other case and it's never been a barrier to entry with my friends.

Why would you download an app for the basic functionality of a phone? Texting is an integral part of phones and I haven't met a person in the US without unlimited texting in years. I know a lot of friends who use WeChat to avoid things like international texting rates, but Americans talking to Americans generally do not need this.

> Why would you download an app for the basic functionality of a phone?

Having a blue circle is not the basic functionality of texting. People here are talking about fancy facetime stuff, like group names, and reactions.

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

#250

Post by monadic2 »

sytelus wrote: post #248
monadic2 wrote: 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…

I'd read about an article how there is a significant "dark" black hat companies which do nothing but dig up into the open source codes to find the exploits. They invest big time to develop proprietary tools for autonomous scanning of latest vulnerabilities. Such exploits then get sold for millions of dollars. They do open source code scanning to everything from popular Python packages to popular Chrome extensions to…

So you would prefer to keep open exploits around and approach with security-by-obscurity?

Somehow I think Apple can muster the resources to respond to vulnerabilities in exactly the same way you’re claiming they respond to open source exploitation. You may have a point with much smaller projects, but this is apple and they can easily outfund exploiters before there’s mass exploitation according to your analysis of increased attention.

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