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“It’s time for Apple to fix texting”

android.com

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Re: “It’s time for Apple to fix texting”

#81

Post by jacooper »

dt2m wrote: post #77
altairprime wrote: post #59

Most businesses, consumers, and developers universally continue to ignore the primary reason that iMessage is a closed platform, rather than an app on every platform as iTunes is: Apple is using device serial numbers for anti-spam, supported by a fully-authenticated hardware and software stack that does not allow user modification. This permits Apple to simply “console ban” any Apple device that spams on iMessage. Th…

This is a great point which I haven't heard before in this age-old debate. But until Apple's dominance starts to wane, there's no chance in hell they will provide iMessage for other platforms unless forced by regulation. If push comes to shove, they can implement heuristics which run texts from non-Apple devices through a harder spam filter. Spam isn't non-existent on the iMessage network, and there already seems to…

Well Apple is going to be forced anyway, the EU's Digital Markets Act will be enforced soon.

And fines are up to 20% of global revenue.

Re: “It’s time for Apple to fix texting”

#82

Post by AnonHP »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #34
throwayawya11 wrote: post #24

Maybe Google should enable push notification support again for Mail.app Gmail users too.

Or even just make Gmail’s IMAP support properly spec compliant instead of requiring third party clients to hack around its nonstandard behaviors.

Could you expand on the non-standard behaviors? Long ago I noticed that using tags in Gmail causes a mess because they seem to appear as folders on an IMAP client. I’d like to know what other issues exist with respect to its IMAP implementation.

Re: “It’s time for Apple to fix texting”

#83

Post by MattJ100 »

thiht wrote: post #73
lostgame wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss XMPP :(

XMPP sucked, you guys have to stop bringing it out over and over again. Not having a common experience between clients because of that stupid « X » sucked. There’s an impossible to solve mismatch between XEPs supported by the clients and the servers. XMPP is dead for reason, stop trying to bring it back

Because of the "stupid X", modern XMPP supports far more than it used to, and isn't stuck in the past like email and SMS.

There is a mismatch between iMessage (Apple) and RCS (Google's flavour of the month). To the point where there is almost no sensible interoperability between the two.

All XMPP does is provide answers to "If I want to implement feature X, how should that look on the wire".

Just as the XMPP Standards Foundation annually publishes the recommended baseline feature sets for XMPP clients, it wouldn't be hard for Apple and Google to follow that or (more likely) agree on their own baseline for interoperability between the two ecosystems.

As I always say when this comes up: the wire protocol is of least concern - it's not the reason these businesses don't prioritize interoperability. No protocol engineering can magically fix that.

Re: “It’s time for Apple to fix texting”

#84

Post by lern_too_spel »

altairprime wrote: post #72
lern_too_spel wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Attestation is service that can only be provided by the builder of the phone. Most commercially available Android phones provide this, and banks and DRM rely on it. https://developer.android.com/training/safetynet/attestation and https://developer.android.com/google/play/integrity/overview

That API is not useful for anti-spam purposes, as individual devices cannot be banned for spamming by their serial number. Quoting that page: > The API is not designed to fulfill the following use cases: > Contain signals for app-specific use-cases, such as device identifiers

That can be built trivially using this API. The app stores an identifier, which it knows has not been tampered with because of attestation. Giving apps access to a unique device identifier shared across apps is a privacy leak but can be obtained with the proper scary permission.

Re: “It’s time for Apple to fix texting”

#85

Post by altairprime »

dt2m wrote: post #77
altairprime wrote: post #59

Most businesses, consumers, and developers universally continue to ignore the primary reason that iMessage is a closed platform, rather than an app on every platform as iTunes is: Apple is using device serial numbers for anti-spam, supported by a fully-authenticated hardware and software stack that does not allow user modification. This permits Apple to simply “console ban” any Apple device that spams on iMessage. Th…

This is a great point which I haven't heard before in this age-old debate. But until Apple's dominance starts to wane, there's no chance in hell they will provide iMessage for other platforms unless forced by regulation. If push comes to shove, they can implement heuristics which run texts from non-Apple devices through a harder spam filter. Spam isn't non-existent on the iMessage network, and there already seems to…

Apple could easily charge $1/mo or $10/year for iMessage on secured devices, with automatic refund and prorated cancellation if no secured device is signed in within a given billing period; and then discount $1/mo if one or more Apple devices are signed in and active during a given billing period. They'd make a billion dollars a month off of secured Android users, without exposing themselves to any new spam whatsoever, and showing Android users that Apple users have a better experience. Win-win for platform marketing and cloud services revenue.

iMessage spam isn't non-existent because sometimes someone tries to spam, gets a few messages out, and then their device gets console-banned. The iMessage "unsend" feature doesn't yet exist in any released iOS or macOS, so it can't be used to hide the spam after the fact.

Re: “It’s time for Apple to fix texting”

#86

Post by danaris »

angryasian wrote: post #49
equalsione wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really is god-awful. RCS is a technology that benefits mobile operators, not users. Also, Google really aren't in a position to lecture anyone on this topic, given their N+1 approach to messaging services.

Its definitely a compromise, but Google is ultimately at the mercy of the carriers. We can sit back behind our keyboards and criticize but it is a way to get something going. I don't think carriers have any incentive to improve this area, and probably nothing would happen

> Google is ultimately at the mercy of the carriers

I mean...are they?

If Google were serious about pushing a new standard, and were willing to actually push it on the carriers, they have plenty of money, reach, and clout to make their point heard loud and clear. That would be triply true if it weren't a "new standard" that was yet another transparent attempt to gather more data from users.

Re: “It’s time for Apple to fix texting”

#87

Post by jdalgetty »

garciasn wrote: post #70
drcongo wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't matter to me, I have an iPhone. But regardless of personal experience, Google has tried and failed endlessly to make a not-shit messaging app for Android, and has now seemingly given up and adopted a terrible protocol, and is crowing about it like they're the saviour of messaging. They're not, they've just given up trying.

Exactly. They've positioned this as creating problems for iOS users; however, all of these items are frustrating for Android users, not the other way around. They're preaching to the wrong choir.

This

Re: “It’s time for Apple to fix texting”

#88

Post by egwynn »

frizlab wrote: post #58
egwynn wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> definitely sent/received SMS over wifi using my iPhone Are you certain? From what I understand about how SMS works, I don’t see how that’s possible. Apple’s own docs also appear to suggest that SMS-over-WiFi won’t work: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207006

Most operators do cellular over wifi now (because 4G/5G sucks indoor). Not all of them though.

I’m curious about how this works, can you link me someplace where I can read more about it? I tried searching for “cellular over wifi” but wasn’t about to find anything promising.

EDIT: I searched harder and found “VoWiFi”. It looks like this can support SMS and is supported by iOS. TIL.

Re: “It’s time for Apple to fix texting”

#89

Post by firloop »

Feels like sort of a non issue, even the bottom of the page pushes people to apps like Whatsapp/Signal. If Google wants better iPhone messaging - can’t it just ship its solution in the App Store? Not really sure why Apple must update iMessage for Google to get what it wants.

I personally love iMessage and use it and Signal primarily - I don’t like the idea of Google dictating its feature set, especially considering its horrible messaging track record.

Re: “It’s time for Apple to fix texting”

#90

Post by thefz »

boesboes wrote: post #4

Who uses sms anymore these days? I tried to go back to a non-smart phone, but it was impossible due to not having whatsapp. That might be a 'local' thing though, not sure. Anyway, they should just release imessage for android; that would piss off meta too, which is a win in my book ;)

Agree. SMS is relegated to 2FA and before today I did not even know that Apple had a special SMS application for its users.
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