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

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

#321

Post by amaccuish » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 10:47 AM UTC

est31 wrote: post #11

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…

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…

Yepp. We went through the exact same debate with BBM 10 years ago.

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

#322

Post by ubercow13 » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 10:51 AM UTC

Nextgrid wrote: post #276

ta17711771 wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 90% of the people might already have an iPhone 85%+ of the world's on Android, think outside your social circle =]

> 85%+ of the world's on Android I'm assuming the majority seems to be third-world countries because in big UK cities the majority of the phones I see around are iPhones.

And yet everybody seems to use WhatsApp even between iOS devices

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

#323

Post by erikbye » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 11:06 AM UTC

scatters wrote: post #313

saagarjha wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People do absolutely use SMS.

In the US, sure. In the rest of the world SMS is solely for human-machine communication - mostly one-time login codes.

Exactly. I'm in EU, can't remember last time I used SMS. iMessage and Telegram, however, daily.

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

#324

Post by whywhywhywhy » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 11:10 AM UTC

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…

Even in an all Apple ecosystem my family is using Zoom because we can't add multiple Facetime people to a call for some reason and there is no messaging explaining why.

Probably one of us running an old OS or something (All devices are recent) but whatever why should I waste my time debugging that with my elderly parents when Zoom just works.

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

#325

Post by whywhywhywhy » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 11:14 AM UTC

loosescrews wrote: post #104

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 think Google Duo and WhatsApp are the competitors to Facetime. Zoom is more of a competitor in the video conferencing space along with Google Meet, Skype for Business and Cisco WebEx. Regular Skype is more of a competitor in the all-in-one consumer messaging space along with Google Hangouts. Unfortunately all are proprietary and it was the previous generation, iChat and Google Talk, that were based on the open XMPP…

Would have agreed pre-covid but post-covid it's clear than Zoom is actually a great system for social calls too and the distinction between business orientated video chat and social isn't as harsh as it seemed.

I'm from a big social drinking country and our Friday bar visits are now just a link we can share into a group chat and people can drop in as they please, you can share things from your screen and it all just works great.

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

#326

Post by intellirogue » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 11:15 AM UTC

quiet_light wrote: post #202

klodolph wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It seems to have taken off already : > That's the case for many people these days–in fact, every week, over 10 million new people are signing up for Duo, and in many countries, call minutes have increased by more than ten-fold. https://www.blog.google/products/duo/4-new-google-duo-featur... . Disclaimer : Google employee but work far away from duo but use it daily with family and friends.

Genuinely surprised by this, because I have circles in WhatsApp, FB Messenger, Snapchat, Signal and iMessage, but I don't know a single person who uses Duo.

Perhaps a geographical thing and it's only popular in a couple of countries?

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

#327

Post by scarface74 » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 11:17 AM UTC

anoncareer0212 wrote: post #232

saagarjha wrote: post #206

Ok, so a comment on the actual content of the article rather than iMessage in general: I do the kinds of things that the author describes in the article (digging into private implementations of things) and I while I believe all of iMessage is a bit obfuscatory it's not nearly as bad as the author has described it. Really, it's one of the places where Hanlon's razor actually applies: the AppleScript bridge sucks becau…

I've been developing for Mac and iOS before the App Store was released, and have experience the author names - in broad strokes, your argument is valid, but it's not correct - errors slip in when describing the Applescript interface as just a reflection of Applescript sucking, describing his issue with Apple having _fragile_ private APIs when his conclusion is the problem is _private_ APIs, and reducing the problems…

Why do people act like having “private APIs” is something evil? The entire purpose of having published public APIs is that they should be something that doesn’t change without a deprecation schedule or warning while the underlying implementation can change without notice. This is software engineering 101.

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

#328

Post by Yizahi » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 11:17 AM UTC

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 ex-USSR SMS are dead, except on old "feature" phones. While in capitals a lot of people have iPhones it's share is not more than 50% and so iMessage never really picked up. Currently messaging it split between Viber (mostly older people) and Telegram (mostly younger people), plus some FB Messenger with FB friends. Whatsapp lost out market when it cost 1$ to install (yes, for many it was a decisive factor). iPhone users just install these apps too.

When traveling in Europe I usually see Whatsapp as a contact method.

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

#329

Post by whywhywhywhy » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 11:19 AM UTC

locusofself wrote: post #143

Oh man. Apple has us by the nuts. I love my iMessage. I've been on a macbook for ~10 years, but I just started working at Microsoft and thus have been spending a lot of time in Windows. Multiple times per day I think of something I want to send my wife, like a link to something I'm reading or something, and I look for the iMessage on the dock and of course there is no dock and no iMessage. I want iMessage for Windows…

Apple's refusal to support Windows in any real way and have inferior experiences with iTunes etc was absolutely fine when they had best in class solutions for all your work and home needs.

But in 2020 where their computing products have left so much to be desired this whole system just starts to fall apart. I'm forced over to Windows because they don't make a machine to fit my work needs and when I'm there in Windows I'm not thinking how much I miss iMessage and I wish I'd sacrificed performance and GPUGP just for iMessage, I'm thinking maybe I should stop using iMessage because WhatsApp works great everywhere.

Then now I've switched to WhatsApp well there's one less reason I have to buy an iPhone next time.

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

#330

Post by jedieaston » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 11:21 AM UTC

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…

The only problem is that any messages that the iPhone received while the middleman was out of range won’t get to your PC, but this’d still be extremely useful for quick replies.

I wonder if the iPhone will accept photos over MAP....