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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”

#711

Post by Cyberdog »

MBCook wrote: post #495
debesyla wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just wondering, why "Unfortunately"?

I’m not the person you replied to, but personally I really hate Google‘s tendency to create their own “standard” and then just shove it down everyone’s throat because they’re so ridiculously big and important. Speedy and WebP were two examples. RCS already existed (I believe) but basically every single carrier has dragged their feet on it to the point of doing almost nothing (at least in the US) so now Google is basi…

Yes, exactly, thank you. Nobody used WebP, and then Chrome used WebP, and now everybody has to use WebP because of Chrome's dominance, regardless of whether there might be better alternatives out there. They're trying to do the same with WebM but Webkit has held out on that one so far (not sure if FF has).

And then you have Cloudflare doing crap like automatically reconverting JPEGs to WebPs so when you try to download a JPEG you can use anywhere you end up with a WebP you can pretty much only use in a browser.

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

#712

Post by altairprime »

shireboy wrote: post #439
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…

The gist of the article has been a soapbox of mine for years. We wouldn't stand for "you can only send Gmail email to other Gmail users" (Fidonet people know), and shouldn't settle for similar with messaging. That said, this spam angle is an aspect I hadn't fully considered.

Google closed down their Jabber gateway because they couldn’t stop the endless flood of spam into their userbase. If they had instead required device identifier attestations to accompany all Jabber messages, they could have left that API open for everyone to use, and simply banned device identifiers used for spamming. I wish they’d done so, instead of just giving up and closing their doors to Jabber.

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

#714

Post by imbnwa »

username190 wrote: post #630
eek2121 wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say this like it is a bad thing. I used Signal, which is an open-source messaging app. If Apple were censoring messaging apps I would agree with your seemingly negative sentiment, however, as someone who has pushed out apps to the Apple and Mac app stores, I can say they absolutely do not do that. There are many reasons many IT folks actually prefer an iPhone over Android. The two biggest ones are privacy and sec…

> If Apple were censoring messaging apps I would agree with your seemingly negative sentiment, however, as someone who has pushed out apps to the Apple and Mac app stores, I can say they absolutely do not do that. Perhaps not in your country, but they've certainly done it before - censoring Telegram in both Russia[0] and Iran[1], for example. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/31/technology/telegram-apple... [1] htt…

Are you really suggesting governments requiring those apps be banned from distribution in their jurisdictions shares the context of the post you're replying to?

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

#715

Post by meepmorp »

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.

I literally have no issues when texting with friends who use android. Maybe it's because I'm old.

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

#716

Post by upbeat_general »

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 just wrong because as others have pointed out, you can have a fully virtualized macOS environment with no secure boot or any kind and iMessage will run just fine.

Also, since basically every device that receives message also receives sms, isn’t this irrelevant?

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

#717

Post by jvolkman »

atonse wrote: post #699
jvolkman wrote: post #681

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SMS/MMS, which is the only iMessage fallback today, is not E2E.

Not that I'm a proponent of keeping SMS around, but then what's the incentive to move to RCS? The actual "open" parts of RCS don't seem any better.

Apart from better media, typing indicators, etc., RCS allows richer metadata (like content types) and various side channels (AFAIK) that allow extensions like E2E to be added. SMS is just 160 characters.

I believe Google will share their E2E spec with others. They published an overview a while ago [1], but presumably they'd offer more to someone wanting to actually implement it.

1: https://www.gstatic.com/messages/papers/messages_e2ee.pdf

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

#718

Post by meepmorp »

bagacrap wrote: post #95
firloop wrote: post #89

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 i…

No, Google isn't trying to ship another messaging app. It's trying to improve the interoperability of Android and iPhone when using phone number texting. Your experience in iMessage when texting with an Android user would be improved.

I have an iPhone and friends with android. I don't have any problems texting them, nor they me. At most, this seems to be a problem for android users, and I'm skeptical because I've never really had anyone I actually know complain. Maybe we're just lucky?

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

#719

Post by zaik »

pwpw wrote: post #703
hot_gril wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know what I'm talking about, and I'm detecting some arrogance. Also, it doesn't matter here, but where are you getting that WhatsApp and Signal use the same messaging protocol? Might be missing something, but I don't see that they both use XMPP, if that's what you mean.

What's app literally uses the signal protocol[0] for the exchanging of messages. [0] https://signal.org/blog/whatsapp-complete/

The Signal protocol is an encryption protocol and not a message exchange protocol.

I think WhatsApp is built on ejabberd for message exchange and possibly could be able to federate using XMPP.

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

#720

Post by tomxor »

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 permits Apple to simply “console ban” any Apple device that spams on iMessage.

This does nothing to protect users from non-Apple devices.

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