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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)

#371
post #201

I wonder what happened to “Business Chat”. It was announced on WWDC in 2018 and I have seen no progress since. It’s a shame. The potential of it is huge I believe, but Apple has a different focus it seems.

I used it a couple months ago with Delta Airlines, and it was a great user experience. I wish all companies would use it.

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

#372
post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Duo came out too late, and Google has a reputation for changing things. Years ago, I tried setting up my family with google’s apps, and they kept changing, and it burned me and wasted my time. So years ago, I switched everyone to Apple, and haven’t wasted any time since. WhatsApp is really nice, but you need a phone for it, which some of the older grandparents don’t have. But they do have cheap iPads, so everyone use…

I find it astounding that the grandparents have iPads before phones. Most elderly people I know have cheapo Android phones or a few with "accessible" android phones target at people with sight or mobility problems (usually amounts to buttons and a skin with large icons). A few still have older Nokia phones, but these are the ones least likely to have iPads and more likely to have an old Windows 9x/XP computer hanging…

In my family, the grandparents live with their children and grandchildren sometimes, so they don't need phones (or at least only grandma or grandpa needs them, but not both).

But the younger set of grandparents all have their own phones, so it's only the very old that don't.

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

#373
post #254

"The looming demise of macOS as a developer platform". There's some sentiment these days on HN about this but personally I think it's hogwash. No platform is perfect, but macOS to me is as close as you can get to a developer's dream workstation / laptop. Remember all those years when we dreamed of a Unix with a proper UI? Well, it exists. Windows doesn't even come close. I'd rather go Linux before Windows as a develo…

WSL2 on my Desktop is competing with my MacBook as my favorite development environment. Remote-WSL on VSCode works excellently and allows me to do all my development in a seamless Linux environment.

For me, its the perfect balance between the power of Linux and the day-to-day usability of Windows

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

#374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We use it for the stickers.

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

#376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, whic…

> 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

You made the point yourself here. If the messaging platform the group prefers is iMessage then it's somewhat awkward when someone new to the group refuses to use it. Have you ever tried to get a bunch of people to switch platforms for a single group chat? When most of the people have a working solution already it's practically impossible.

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

#378
post #40
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…

IME there's a loss of a number of features when communicating without someone with "blue bubbles", that you come to take for granted, and that cause a bit of friction when you realize the messages/functionality you took for granted in your exchange aren't there. If I find myself chatting with someone with green bubbles, I find I tend to transition the conversation over to whatsapp.

It's not like a "relationship killer" or something, but I imagine it is a low-level contributor to my lock-in to the platform.

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

#379
post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iMessage is ABSOLUTELY brilliant if your family and friends are all on iPhones, which I'm pretty sure is fairly common in most Western countries. Regardless whether you agree with that, it is super practical for me and my family. It also means we don't have run other chat software like WhatsApp. The whole experience is just so seamless and well integrated across your devices. Everything from regular messages, voiceno…

> brilliant if your family and friends are all on iPhones, which I'm pretty sure is fairly common in most Western countries iOS market share is 60% in the US which is the highest worldwide, and only above 50% in a handful of other countries (UK, Japan, Oz, Canada)[0]. If you have any friends who are not rich, or are European or South American, there's a good chance they won't iMessage you but try to add you on WhatsA…

>If you have any friends who are not rich, or are European or South American

One: 55-60% market share in the US, by definition, is not confined to "the rich."

As to the other categories: my personal answer to "If you have any friends that aren't American" is "that's what whatsapp is for." I imagine for a lot of people the answer is that, or "I don't, actually."

Like, all the teenagers in my family. Their list of non-US friends is near-zero. Their non-US family are all on whatsapp.

They don't experience a gap.

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

#380

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…

Now you've got me curious. Are these people in the tech industry? What would their age range be, roughly?
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