301–310 of 1001 posts
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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 whatsoeve…
Hell, they could charge a token amount for un -secured devices, which I imagine could make things prohibitively expensive for spammers. I would (grudgingly, because the whole thing is just stupid) pay 3 bucks a month or so to be able to message iPhone users from Android without dealing with unreliable message delivery and ordering, and photos and videos pixelated to hell. I have a ton of barely-recognizable videos of…
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Could someone explain what this is about?
The page complains that pictures or videos are poor quality on SMS/MMS, and they lack encryption, like if those were relevant amd not a thing from the 90's.
Also I am reading things like "Since I'm on Android, I'm stuck using SMS a lot, since most people I know have iPhones", and that adds to my confusion.
I guess the issue is that I simply cannot start to understand who would in today's context use SMS to chat. I too use Android and have a lot of friends with iPhones... we just send encrypted, good-enough quality pictures with whatsapp, telegram, or what have you. SMS or other cellular-based services are a thing of the past that nobody would use. So what's all the fuss about?
> iPhones make texts with Android phones difficult to read, by using white text on a bright green background. Wow. I can't really come up with anything creative to blame Google for this one. Whatever you want to say about Google's messaging mess and RCS - Apple seems to go out of their way to make it inconvenient to text with Android users. Also it doesn't sound like Google's asking Apple to give up iMessage - just t…
This point is a fallacy. Prior to the invention of iMessage - (iOS 6?) - all iPhone texts were this colour of green . It was the same no matter who you texted. This means Apple never intentionally designed the green bubbles to be more difficult to read.
> iPhones make texts with Android phones difficult to read, by using white text on a bright green background. Wow. I can't really come up with anything creative to blame Google for this one. Whatever you want to say about Google's messaging mess and RCS - Apple seems to go out of their way to make it inconvenient to text with Android users. Also it doesn't sound like Google's asking Apple to give up iMessage - just t…
These days it’s good marketing to blame Apple for everything. First, RCS is not a very modern or practical standard. It was created in 2008 by carriers (GSMA!!) for their SMS/MMS centric (at the time) platforms. So is it a good idea to adopt this more than a decade later? I don’t think so. Second, it’s really not Apple’s fault that Google has failed to come up with a messaging solution. Google has released 13 separat…
Is a standard from the 90s acceptable then? Do we say Apple shouldn't migrate to USB-C since it's old-ish? A standard being around a long time is a good thing, but when a better one comes along I don't see what excuse Apple has to not migrate (besides anti-competitiveness, which is a really good reason I suppose).
>Second, it’s really not Apple’s fault that Google has failed to come up with a messaging solution. Google has released 13 separate messenger apps since 2011!
The argument in the article could be made irrespective of Google. The article isn't saying "Apple isn't playing nice so use our stuff instead", it's a critique of an obvious attempt by Apple to build a walled garden around messaging. Google is arguing for a standard adopted across the industry, not one of their many messaging apps.
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Absolutely agree. Carriers have no rightful place in the discussion, they’re dumb data pipes and shouldn’t be able to nickel and dime customers on messaging quotas and features, as RCS is designed to allow.
Not so sure about that. We still call these devices "phones", with the expectation that any phone in the world can call any phone number in the world. With no other information than a phone number, you need to involve the carriers to deliver a message texted to an arbitrary phone number. That is why Apple need to fallback to SMS. They have no other means to deliver the message. If Apple and Google teams up without ca…
It's not like there's any real benefit to having the carriers in that conversation, you can already text from either device just fine. That would continue into the future.
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The puke-green text bubbles from android and calm-blue bubbles from iMessage always struck me as very intentional.
Before iMessage was released all text messages sent from iPhones were SMS/MMS. They were all green. If an iPhone recipient is unavailable via iMessage a text will fall back to SMS. So green bubbles are intentional, they indicate a text was sent via SMS.
This quoted bit is actually incorrect. All messages from android and from iMessage are in identical gray text bubbles.
The blue/green bubbles are for your own sent messages only
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I find it interesting how many HN'ers now don't think consumer protection is a good thing. (Actually, in hindsight it isn't that surprising. Tech companies only make the money they do because of the lack of consumer protections... so definitely in most HN'ers interest to keep the status quo.
European legislators are why I now have a cookie banner on every website I visit. It is hard to be enthusiastic for more of that. I could support basic antitrust actions that actually promote competition, but when it gets into actually writing technical requirements, the outcome seems less than ideal.
FWIW, the only reason cookie banners are annoying is because the sites intentionally made it that way to bully you into allowing 3rd party cookies. EU regulations allow a site to not have banners if 3rd party tracking is opt-in. They could easily do it via a separate settings page. They only chose the banner because they want you to keep tracking cookies on and the annoying banner results in a higher rate of people agreeing to be tracked at the cost of annoyance (which is somehow respun to be directed to the policy not the site owners). Imagine if every time you enter a business you were asked to sign a liability waiver. That's what cookie banners are.
(You do not have to have a banner if all the cookies you use are first party "essential for functionality" cookies)
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…
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It comes preinstalled, works, is free. Why would I look for a different messaging app? What does WhatsApp do that the preinstalled, free, messaging app doesn't?
Group messages to anyone regardless of platform. SMS is crap for group chats, and imessage doesn't work if someone in the group isn't using ios. Now, you absolutely might not care about those things, but millions of people definitely do.
SMS doesn't do group chats; I think you're thinking of MMS. I agree that it's not a great experience, though.
> Group messages to anyone regardless of platform.
That's the thing though; that's not true. WhatsApp might be available on both Android and iOS, but it only works if the person you want to talk to has it installed and has set up an account. That requires coordination. If I meet someone new and want to get in touch with them, I'm going to ask for their phone number (or email address). I'm not going to ask them which messaging apps they have installed so we can figure out which one(s) we have in common.
Sure, if later on I want to start a long-running group chat including this person, I'll absolutely go to the effort of finding a common chat platform that is not MMS, because MMS is terrible. But if I'm only doing 1-on-1 conversations, or just short one-off group chats, I won't bother.
(Interestingly, for some people, even though I have group chats with them on an alternate platform, I'll still message them 1-on-1 using SMS. Not sure why that's the case, and it's not universal. I guess it's just whatever we'd gotten used to, and saw no need to change.)