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Eddy Cue wanted to bring iMessage to Android in 2013

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Re: Eddy Cue wanted to bring iMessage to Android in 2013

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. They could probably monetize that better than hardware sales too, most likely via Apple Wallet payments and data. And the whole blue/green bubble pretentiousness would have never happened, which is funny because so many Android users still have no idea that's even happening to them or just assume they don't need to care about anybody that cares about that. (protip: its affecting your life and relationships)

I'm in Australia, and here iPhones have about 50% of the smartphone market, with the other half being Android of course. I obviously know many iPhone users, including my wife and many close friends. I know of no one who uses iMessage. Here everyone uses Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp (and to a lesser extent Telegram and Signal). Is this iMessage fascinating a US thing? Why?

I’m in Australia, and iMessage usage here is huge and I have to assume the reason you’re not aware of it is because you dont have an iPhone.

Everyone I know with an iPhone chooses iMessages for texts and group chats first, and only reverts to WhatsApp when someone on Android has to be involved.

Re: Eddy Cue wanted to bring iMessage to Android in 2013

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. They could probably monetize that better than hardware sales too, most likely via Apple Wallet payments and data. And the whole blue/green bubble pretentiousness would have never happened, which is funny because so many Android users still have no idea that's even happening to them or just assume they don't need to care about anybody that cares about that. (protip: its affecting your life and relationships)

I'm in Australia, and here iPhones have about 50% of the smartphone market, with the other half being Android of course. I obviously know many iPhone users, including my wife and many close friends. I know of no one who uses iMessage. Here everyone uses Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp (and to a lesser extent Telegram and Signal). Is this iMessage fascinating a US thing? Why?

Maybe as adults but the kids use the regular imessages and it creates two classes among the kids the ones that are in the imessages echosystem and the ones that are not. From a company that like to harp so much about diversity and inclusion I find imessages to be the most deviding tool in our kids life. It is disgusting and I hate it but at some stage had to buy an iphone for my kid exactly because of that, which is the reason Apple do it in the first place, to lock the kids into their products. At least I bought some crappy earphones instead of ipods, my small little rebelion.

Re: Eddy Cue wanted to bring iMessage to Android in 2013

#113
post #28

Not only did Apple miss an opportunity to own global messaging, Google could have done the same if they had designed Allo with SMS fallback similar to iMessage. I have no idea what they were thinking with Allo, but they blew one of the easiest layups I’ve ever seen.

Allo was doomed to fail.

RCS is the evolution of SMS, is standardized and should be what the industry uses. Carriers mostly adopted it I think, but as expected, the situation is a mess. Bell, for example, went with Samsung for their RCS infrastructure and for some reasons, they don't allow sending RCS messages to other carriers.

Google decided to bypass carriers entirely, but you have to use the Google Messages app to use RCS. So if you use another texting app, it won't work.

Again, the whole thing is a mess.

Re: Eddy Cue wanted to bring iMessage to Android in 2013

#114
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on location, IMO. I was an Android user for years (since the Nexus One!) and the vast majority of my contacts were on iOS. My lack of iMessage was a constant frustration and I would have signed up in an instant. But I'm in the US, which has a disproportionately high amount of iOS users. Across the rest of the world iMessage would be competing with WhatsApp and its existing network (something the e-mails in th…

Strongly agree. The US is weird in two ways: 1. iOS being uncommonly popular (in other words: the US is weirdly rich compared to even most developed countries) 2. People texting a lot (maybe other countries’ carriers used to just make texting too expensive?) Outside the US, people more commonly use messaging apps, and there is less peer pressure to be on iMessage as it is less likely for someone (in a certain social…

Adding on to what others have said, it's also that some non-US countries have much better internet infrastructure than telecom (which might've affected pricing, can't say for sure), so people flocked to internet-only messaging apps to avoid their telecom's faulty SMS/call handling.

Re: Eddy Cue wanted to bring iMessage to Android in 2013

#115
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i honestly don’t remember what period of time you are referring to. could you elaborate on examples from the period of time iOS was “fraught with very unexpected failure modes?” edit: i just saw your edit to specify iMessage the app.

I'm referring to iMessage specifically causing tons of unnecessary problems when switching from an iPhone to an Android phone. This was over 5 years ago so I have no idea what's fixed or isn't now, but I do still occasionally have problems when an iPhone user tries to message me as part of a group. These were all intermittent: Messages were lost or delayed for very long periods (going both ways), groups were complete…

Terrible, considering how text-centric social relationships have become. Reply delays on the order of hours are considered to send a strong signal. "Double texting" is a faux pas.

It pains me to think how many friendships and romantic relationships might have been crushed by this bug. Neither party will ever know why.

Re: Eddy Cue wanted to bring iMessage to Android in 2013

#116
> I am concerned [that] iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove an obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones.

We're an iPhone family, but damn is that lame. How about: make the best product. Don't coerce people into buying an iPhone.

It drives me crazy how fractured messaging has become. Here's a recent example. My non-technical aunt tried to send a group iMessage to my wife and me. For me, she used an email address tied to my iMessage account. But for my wife, she used her Google Voice #. Now what you need to understand is that iMessage allows you to associate one or more email addresses with your account, but only a single phone #, which has to be your carrier-assigned #.

So now she's trying to send an iMessage to my email address (which would have shown up in blue) and my wife's Google Voice # (which would have shown up in green).

Well, here's what apparently happened. iMessage handed this off as an MMS to Verizon. Verizon's MMS gateway sent me the message via email, as a text attachment. My wife got the message in the Google Voice app on her phone.

What an f'ing mess.

I've turned off "Send as SMS" and "MMS Messaging" on my iPhone so I don't make this same stupid mistake.

I'd use WhatsApp for everything, but, Facebook. (I tried Signal. I found it to be pretty sub-par for everyday messaging.)

Re: Eddy Cue wanted to bring iMessage to Android in 2013

#117
post #116

> I am concerned [that] iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove an obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones. We're an iPhone family, but damn is that lame. How about: make the best product. Don't coerce people into buying an iPhone. It drives me crazy how fractured messaging has become. Here's a recent example. My non-technical aunt tried to send a group iMessage to my wife and me. For me…

We're an iPhone family, but damn is that lame. How about: make the best product. Don't coerce people into buying an iPhone.

But iMessage isn't the product, it's a feature of the product. They think by not letting those features be available on other platforms they are creating the best product. You can't make the best product while simultaneously commoditizing your differentiators.

Re: Eddy Cue wanted to bring iMessage to Android in 2013

#118
post #92
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you likely miss a ton of group chats where there are no android (or Pinephone) users because you’ve been excluded because group chats don’t work fine.

....what? I am honestly having trouble parsing your meaning. My family mostly has iPhones, and we have several group chats with me in it on Group MMS. They work fine.

I have many iMessage groups, but it is an almost unspoken rule that you do NOT add a green bubble user to the group.

It downgrades to standard MMS which doesn't have all of the features, AND delivery is hit or miss.

With iMessage I can be fairly sure that all messages will arrive, with MMS groups... it's a shit show. There's been plenty of times where someone whose a green bubble will receive only part of the group messages, or none of them whereas the rest of us do. It all depends on the carrier.

Re: Eddy Cue wanted to bring iMessage to Android in 2013

#119
post #116

> I am concerned [that] iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove an obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones. We're an iPhone family, but damn is that lame. How about: make the best product. Don't coerce people into buying an iPhone. It drives me crazy how fractured messaging has become. Here's a recent example. My non-technical aunt tried to send a group iMessage to my wife and me. For me…

Cost of iMessage is built into the price of the iPhone and other apple products. Why would they pay to develop and maintain it for other devices? Apple doesn’t monetize their data like other messaging services/social networks. If apple charged $3/m for iMessage on Android would you pay it?

Re: Eddy Cue wanted to bring iMessage to Android in 2013

#120
post #116

> I am concerned [that] iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove an obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones. We're an iPhone family, but damn is that lame. How about: make the best product. Don't coerce people into buying an iPhone. It drives me crazy how fractured messaging has become. Here's a recent example. My non-technical aunt tried to send a group iMessage to my wife and me. For me…

> but only a single phone #

I believe you can have multiple phone numbers associated with your iCloud account if they are a physical number. This is assuming you have a phone that's capable of dual-sim or if you have a second iPhone linked to your iCloud account. The latter is what I do when to make myself available when traveling abroad.

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