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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”

#531

Post by runjake »

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…

You can build a hackintosh, generate a serial number, and get on iMessage without any fully-authenticated hardware or even a legitimate secondary Apple device. Spammers use these setups to iMessage spam to great effect.

I think the onus is on Apple to open the platform.

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

#532

Post by quickthrower2 »

kelnos wrote: post #116
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…

I'd rather live in a world with spam than a world where corporations get to decide what I run on my devices, and cripple a bunch of critical applications if I decide I want to, y'know, actually do whatever I want with the hardware I own. I'm not unsympathetic to Apple's difficulties and goals here (assuming this spam problem is actually the reason, though I'm skeptical that there aren't also self-serving reasons that…

Yes. Or let the user choose in settings:

(i) Allow rich non-iPhone messages through for all people.

(ii) As (i) but only for numbers in my contacts list, or who I have replied to.

(iii) Don't allow rich non-iPhone messages. Use SMS.

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

#533

Post by sour-taste »

tristor wrote: post #493
maxsilver wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a complete non-issue. No it's not. iPhones intentionally don't support modern cellular messaging. There's nothing wrong with insisting they support LTE spec (RCS), like every modern smartphone does. > The majority of people globally don't even use built-in messengers, they use WhatsApp or a similar application, Completely unrelated. This discussion has nothing to do with iMessage / WhatsApp / etc. The probl…

This is an incredibly disingenuous way to describe this. They support SMS as a fallback for iMessage. SMS is a ubiquitous and broadly supported standard. RCS is a boondoggle that nobody supported until recently when Google decided to add support for it to Android in yet another attempt at building their own messaging platform. There is no rational reason to take offense that iPhones don't support RCS. I re-iterate, t…

> I re-iterate, this a complete non-issue. The way you are phrasing it is incredibly biased.

Again, no it's not. My family have iPhones, I have Android. Apples garbage SMS?MMS group messaging made it so that I missed a huge number of messages from them, photos were poor quality, videos were unwatchable. We switched to Signal a year ago and have been happy with it, but this impacted us for about 2 years. And I'm a tech person! The average user is going to have no idea what is going on. This affects a large number of people and saying it's a non-issue is dismissive.

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

#534

Post by maxsilver »

tristor wrote: post #493
maxsilver wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a complete non-issue. No it's not. iPhones intentionally don't support modern cellular messaging. There's nothing wrong with insisting they support LTE spec (RCS), like every modern smartphone does. > The majority of people globally don't even use built-in messengers, they use WhatsApp or a similar application, Completely unrelated. This discussion has nothing to do with iMessage / WhatsApp / etc. The probl…

This is an incredibly disingenuous way to describe this. They support SMS as a fallback for iMessage. SMS is a ubiquitous and broadly supported standard. RCS is a boondoggle that nobody supported until recently when Google decided to add support for it to Android in yet another attempt at building their own messaging platform. There is no rational reason to take offense that iPhones don't support RCS. I re-iterate, t…

> RCS is a boondoggle that nobody supported

RCS is the official messaging spec of the GSMA, they effectively set mobile standards. It's on 90+ mobile operators in nearly every nation on the planet. It's just as widely supported as, say, Voice-over-LTE is (another standard by that same group)

SMS is the outdated standard that's been mostly unused on smartphones since 2018 and is only supported for backwards compatibility. RCS is the replacement for SMS, and is the current ubiquitous and broadly supported standard, since 2019 effectively all modern smartphones and cell network use it.

> Google decided to add support for it to Android in yet another attempt at building their own messaging platform.

No, that's a complete lie. Google added support for it, because they basically had to, it's an industry spec that practically every cellular provider uses. It has nothing to do with "Google's own messaging platform" because RCS is *not* a messaging platform, it's literally just how all messages on all phones work in 2022.

There's no Google service for RCS. There's no login for RCS, there's no accounts for RCS. RCS is not an "app" or a "platform", it's literally just the native default built-in way all messaging from your SIM card works on all ~2019+ smartphones.

> There is no rational reason to take offense that iPhones don't support RCS.

You know what, your right. And by your logic, there's no rational reason for iPhones to support Voice-over-LTE (that's a GSMA push), so maybe every iPhone should drop down to 2G everytime a phone call comes in (but not an iMessage Audio Call, of course). And by your logic, there's no reason for iPhones to support Carrier Roaming (that's another GSMA pushed thing), maybe Apple should ignore that one too.

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

#535

Post by tcfhgj »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #507
tcfhgj wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matrix solved federated messaging already

Not fully encrypted yet though, not even if everyone opts into encryption. And if we want to be technical XMPP was before that and it was federated by some large networks, however briefly.

Of course fully encrypted

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

#537

Post by GekkePrutser »

alfalfasprout wrote: post #509
kelnos wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Defaults matter. I too have WhatsApp, Signal, Google Chat and a few others on my phone, but the fragmentation is annoying to deal with, and getting social groups (or even individuals) to move to a single consolidating messaging platform turns out to be much more difficult than I expected. If the default chat app is featureful and universally supported, people tend not to stray toward non-default alternatives unless t…

Perhaps you're missing the point though? Maybe your friends simply don't care enough to switch. Bottom line is iMessage works really well and people like it. Same with FB messenger and Whatsapp. You want to move friends to something else? There needs to be a selling point much larger than just security.

The problem with moving groups over to iMessage is that you'll always leave some Android users out. Here in Spain Apple has a minority marketshare so that makes iMessage a total non-starter. But even in the US not everyone has an iPhone.

And really iMessage is not so much better than the cross-platform alternatives that it's worth leaving some friends out.

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

#538

Post by sour-taste »

j1elo wrote: post #303

EDIT: ok I read other comments and learned that it's mostly a US-specific, cultural thing. I'm impressed that people in the US are still sending SMS, to be honest. Even with cheapest or free SMS, more modern chat apps became mainstream long ago in Europe, (probably) because they allowed to send photos and videos seamlessly, and messages didn't have length limitations. Original message follows: Could someone explain w…

If you friends an family use text you will too. It's simple network effects.

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

#539

Post by bckygldstn »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #36
lern_too_spel wrote: post #13

It's also time for Google to fix texting. Google Voice still doesn't support RCS despite people asking for it for many years. It would be great if someone just copied this web page and filled in Google and Google Voice everywhere it talks about Apple and iMessage, but I get the feeling that Google doesn't even care how embarrassing it is.

It's more embarrassing than that: For most of the time I used Google Voice, it couldn't even forward MMS . I used Google Voice as my primary number for years, and I had to tell people that I couldn't receive group texts or pictures, which always got me weird puzzled looks. And of course, now they've removed SMS forwarding entirely, and basically completely made the service useless/redundant. I'm glad I ported my main…

When I stopped using Google Voice a couple of years ago I still couldn't receive group photos, would only receive 50% of group texts, and (Swedish) accented letters were each replaced by a seemingly random selection of 1-4 ascii characters. Such a mess, I wish I'd never signed up.

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

#540

Post by inferiorhuman »

kelnos wrote: post #185
gumby wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd rather live in a world with spam than a world where corporations get to decide what I run on my devices, and cripple a bunch of critical applications if I decide I want to, y'know, actually do whatever I want with the hardware I own. It’s really oppressive that Apple doesn’t let you install WhatsApp, Secret, Telegram, FB Messenger or any other communications app beyond their own. While it’s all sweetness and li…

Defaults matter. I too have WhatsApp, Signal, Google Chat and a few others on my phone, but the fragmentation is annoying to deal with, and getting social groups (or even individuals) to move to a single consolidating messaging platform turns out to be much more difficult than I expected. If the default chat app is featureful and universally supported, people tend not to stray toward non-default alternatives unless t…

> But everyone already has the default messaging app installed, so that problem just goes away.

Okay, so let's say Apple implements RCS support. Should they support the version of RCS that the carriers want? The version Google implemented? Are they now going to be required to implement support for proprietary Google extensions? Will they have to run their own RCS servers because carriers don't support this version of RCS?

RCS is a fragmented mess. It's dead in the water. This noise is just Google flailing about after having binned yet another one of their messaging platforms. Personally I don't care what Apple does here. I still want SMS support for when I'm in an area with little/no data coverage and I'm still going to treat RCS with the same disdain I'd treat any unencrypted messaging platform.

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