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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

#191

Post by domano »

posguy wrote: post #186
js2 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been a while. I should probably re-install it and give it a fresh chance. My recollection is that the UI was sluggish and that the app was poorly integrated with iOS (e.g. I don't think it had a sharing extension).

Signal iOS is still underwhelming, on Android it has some really nice features that make it a good SMS client and SMS replacement, but alas no one (outside Apple) is permitted to do that on iOS. Element/Matrix might be of more interest, it syncs history instantly, has good room support (unlike Signal), bridges in Discord and IRC quite well, and has a ton of interesting native rooms from Mozilla Matrix, Pine64, Gitter…

Wow i wanted to switch to iPhone later this year, but i did not know this. I exclusively use signal as my messaging app and this means i will not buy an iPhone i guess! Thanks for preventing a costly mistake :)

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

#192

Post by andrewaylett »

null0pointer wrote: post #180
zanny wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matrix / Element should have a comparable feature set to signal for almost all use cases and supports traditional username/password.

Unfortunately Matrix still has the issue of key sharing between clients. If you want to read previously sent messages when you log into a new client for the first time you have to do the key sharing dance with one of your existing clients. For me it's a little annoying, but I find it an acceptable tradeoff. However I could easily see how for many people this would be a dealbreaker.

Key backup makes this a lot easier, assuming you've saved the recovery key in your password manager. But it's still one of those frustrating points where it defeats the purpose of the exercise for the provider to be able to recover an account (or at least the content and trust within an account) for someone who's locked out.

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

#193

Post by jonplackett »

endisneigh wrote: post #183
room500 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I prefer Android phones, but I don't want my choice of phone to impact the communication between my friends and family. The only reason I consider getting an iPhone is for iMessage. I would gladly pay a monthly fee so I could use the phone I want AND communicate freely with the people in my social circles.

You're in luck: https://www.beeper.com/ $10/month and you get your iMessage on Android.

someone needs to make a website hasbeeperbeenshutdownbyappleyet.com

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

#194

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

krrrh wrote: post #190
MomoXenosaga wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And WhatsApp was a start-up of less than 50 people that took over communication of entire nations in a matter of months. Who saw that coming? Biggest WTF since Napster.

It has to be the highest acquisition-dollar / employee of all time. I doubt anything even comes close. And isn’t it true that they were profitable on their $1 per year subscription scheme? I’d love to read a book about how it all came together. Especially something that dives into the speculation I’ve had that their relationships and zero-rating contracts with telcos in developing countries and how that could be leve…

Ah yes, when HN decided that poor people in India shouldn't have any internet, because Facebook was providing it.

To be fair though, the zero rating/internet.org stuff does appear to have made a massive difference to internet availability in developing countries, and it juiced FB's user growth numbers, as it was intended to do.

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

#195

Post by vetinari »

threeseed wrote: post #142
tw04 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are repeating RIM's mistakes. It fascinates me they haven't actually jumped on the services train, they just started charging a monthly fee for the walled garden while still focusing on selling product and called it a services play.

Apple's services includes AppleTV+, Apple Music, Apple Fitness+, Apple News+, Apple Podcasts+, iCloud Storage. And it represents 20% of Apple's revenue so pretty sure this "they haven't actually jumped on the services train" comment is just a little off.

I've got a free year of Apple TV with a new Mac.

Nobody in our household is watching it; it has no app for Android TV.

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

#196

Post by js2 »

jbigelow76 wrote: post #117
js2 wrote: 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.

> They think by not letting those features be available on other platforms they are creating the best product.

No, they don't think that. Their refusal to extend iMessage to Android, to not even provide an iMessage API that would allow Google or third-parties to extend iMessage to other platforms has nothing to do with creating the best product. It's coercion, just as I quoted Federighi writing.

Just above that line he wrote "to get users to switch social networks we’d need more than a marginally better app."

Well then, make it insanely better. I happen to disagree with him though. I think he sold Apple short. I think even a marginally better messaging app would be sufficient.

Ultimately what I would like of Apple is for them to provide the best experience on their own devices, but also to provide interoperability with their services for third parties to extend to non-Apple devices.

BTW, it's interesting to see that they are extending to non-Apple hardware with AppleTV+. They've even paid Roku recently to get an AppleTV+ button on the Roku remote.

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

#197

Post by vips7L »

endisneigh wrote: post #183
room500 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I prefer Android phones, but I don't want my choice of phone to impact the communication between my friends and family. The only reason I consider getting an iPhone is for iMessage. I would gladly pay a monthly fee so I could use the phone I want AND communicate freely with the people in my social circles.

You're in luck: https://www.beeper.com/ $10/month and you get your iMessage on Android.

> Beeper has two ways of enabling Android, Windows and Linux users to use iMessage: we send each user a Jailbroken iPhone with the Beeper app installed which bridges to iMessage

How do they make money doing this?

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

#198

Post by room500 »

endisneigh wrote: post #183
room500 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I prefer Android phones, but I don't want my choice of phone to impact the communication between my friends and family. The only reason I consider getting an iPhone is for iMessage. I would gladly pay a monthly fee so I could use the phone I want AND communicate freely with the people in my social circles.

You're in luck: https://www.beeper.com/ $10/month and you get your iMessage on Android.

Thanks for the link. It looks interesting.

I would be willing to pay $10 if the solution wasn't so hacky... Maintaining a system solely to run unsupported software (in a way that I would have to imagine is against ToS somewhere) is just too risky to handle a critical piece of my communication. I can't drop a message - especially if my excuse for dropping messages is "the laptop in the corner of my closet had to install a security update and restarted on me"

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

#199

Post by ihaveajob »

BenjiWiebe wrote: post #176
ihaveajob wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my case I don't care for the green/blue bubble divide, EXCEPT that I have a limited SMS plan and every time someone messages me it potentially costs me $0.10. That is not that significant until someone sends a series of short messages that could have been bundled into one, and I can't help but think "this person just cost me the price of a coffee". It's not even Apple's fault, but rather AT&T's confusing and expen…

Check out some MVNO's such as Red Pocket Mobile, or US Mobile. If you don't have heavy data usage, plans can be extremely cheap.

Thanks for the tip. I'm looking at it right now. I feel like such a fool :).

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

#200

Post by krrrh »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #194
krrrh wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has to be the highest acquisition-dollar / employee of all time. I doubt anything even comes close. And isn’t it true that they were profitable on their $1 per year subscription scheme? I’d love to read a book about how it all came together. Especially something that dives into the speculation I’ve had that their relationships and zero-rating contracts with telcos in developing countries and how that could be leve…

Ah yes, when HN decided that poor people in India shouldn't have any internet, because Facebook was providing it. To be fair though, the zero rating/internet.org stuff does appear to have made a massive difference to internet availability in developing countries, and it juiced FB's user growth numbers, as it was intended to do.

It happened to coincide with hyperbolic campaigns around net neutrality stateside and a lot of that language got overextended to really different situations. I spent a month in Myanmar in late 2016 and different providers had different zero rating on different services. The one I went with offered generous prepaid data plans and no phone service or SMS at all, just unlimited use of Line. I was tickled by this but there were a couple of old Israeli guys in the shop where we got our SIM cards getting massively frustrated that no one could explain how many “minutes” of calling they got on the various plans. None of the staff knew what they were asking. It was just a market at a very different level of maturity, more advanced in some ways, and weirdly pragmatic in others.
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