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Tim Cook's response to Android texting compatibility: 'buy your mom an iPhone'

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101–110 of 208 posts

Re: Tim Cook's response to Android texting compatibility: 'buy your mom an iPhone'

#101

I don’t get why RCS has to involve carriers. Apple could implement iMessage without involving carriers, so it should be possible to implement a messaging protocol which doesn’t rely on them (but also isn’t proprietary). By involving carriers you’re making it harder (impossible?) to create a client to be used on devices not on the cellular network. I just don’t see the point.

> By involving carriers you’re making it harder (impossible?) to create a client to be used on devices not on the cellular network. I just don’t see the point. On the contrary, RCS allows you to text over Wi-Fi, which SMS does not.

Can I use RCS without a phone plan?

Re: Tim Cook's response to Android texting compatibility: 'buy your mom an iPhone'

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, there's plenty of evidence of women saying exactly this all over social media. Here's a WSJ article over it: https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-apples-imessage-is-winning-...

Teenage women, you mean. Typically adults outgrow this nonsense.

[deleted]

Re: Tim Cook's response to Android texting compatibility: 'buy your mom an iPhone'

#103
> Former marketing chief Phil Schiller famously said that porting iMessage to Android "would hurt us more than help us," and another former Apple exec said in an email that "iMessage amounts to serious lock-in."

Thank all that is holy that innovations like email came from government and academia, and were designed for federated interoperability from day 1.

I still remember all the adulation for Steve Jobs' "open letter to Flash". Only a few voices at the time warned that his criticisms were motivated more by Apple's need to position the App Store as a walled garden for entertainment that did not have to compete with free Flash game websites and Flash video streaming sites.

Re: Tim Cook's response to Android texting compatibility: 'buy your mom an iPhone'

#104
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He isnt. The illegality or lack thereof is determined by your level of market power.

That seems awfully woolly. What he actually said is “using market power to extend market power” is illegal, but without any kind of market power vendor lock-in is pointless.

Not wooly at all. The "abuse" of a "dominant market position" is illegal. Vendor lock in to raise prices above the competitive level or to extend market share is the abuse, and "dominant market position" is well defined through law and thousands of precedent cases in antitrust. (In Europe Hoffman-La Roche vs. Commission is one of the cases defining it.)

Re: Tim Cook's response to Android texting compatibility: 'buy your mom an iPhone'

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm actually fine with this, it easily lets me avoid irritating snobs that I was never going to be friends with anyway. :-) Although I admit that I've excluded people from group chats because they don't use Signal messenger, although not because of any snobbiness, but because of the lack of feature support, and because I HATE the way iPhones do " reacted to " type crap. Almost like we'd all be better off with a nice…

This is really funny to me because extremely non-snobbish people are talking about you behind your back, and all iphone users have seen this and can perceive how out of the loop non-iphone users are about it Its like being black in Oregon (who were excluded via the state constitution for 100 years, if you don't get the analogy), not everyone is going to be a prick about it, few to your face, but everyone noticed and…

iPhone marketshare is pretty high in the US, and a couple other countries, but it's not that far above 50% in those places, still.

If some people with iPhones won't talk to the half of the population without iPhones, why am I supposed to care what they think?

It's like in elementary school when people weren't willing to have conversations across gender lines.

Re: Tim Cook's response to Android texting compatibility: 'buy your mom an iPhone'

#106

He is right on multiple levels. If your mom is suffering the buggy, slow, bad UX of an android phone, be a good child and buy her an iPhone. It’s objectively better unless you are harboring some irrational grudge. The walled garden is Apple’s thing. They have no reason to interoperate with Android unless they are legally forced. And why are you sending SMS anyway? There’s a universe of messaging apps that are far mor…

Yeah idk why people are still texting. This must be a North American/European thing? In Asia and Latin America nobody texts.

Only US specific I think. In the EU, everyone uses WhatsApp, Facebook messenger or some other App depending on the country.

Re: Tim Cook's response to Android texting compatibility: 'buy your mom an iPhone'

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand, where is the interoperability issue?? I can send someone who has an android phone a text message. I can send them a photo, or a video. It would seem the two are completely interoperable. Does having your messages turn green really upset people that much?

> I can send someone who has an android phone a text message. I can send them a photo, or a video. You can, and the quality of the photo/video on the other end is horrendous. It's artificially downgraded. Android doesn't have this problem when messaging any other platform, because all other platforms use RCS (an open standard), which Apple chooses not to adopt because they benefit from the lock-in. It also breaks all…

> Android doesn't have this problem when messaging any other platform, because all other platforms use RCS

I broadly agree with you about this being an interoperability issue, but what other platforms besides Android use RCS?

Re: Tim Cook's response to Android texting compatibility: 'buy your mom an iPhone'

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem comes when you use your dominant position in one market (messaging apps) to strengthen or create a dominant position in a different market (mobile phone hardware).

It seems like a stretch to claim that Apple’s position in either market is truly dominant given a similarly sized competitor.

Not a stretch - one of the criteria of dominance is being able to make abnormal profits. The company's famous 200% markups that are triple that of everyone else in the industry is a strong sign. (Even if you disregard that its next-biggest competitor Samsung is 10x smaller in phone revenues.)

Re: Tim Cook's response to Android texting compatibility: 'buy your mom an iPhone'

#109

Thankfully, shit like this will soon be illegal in the EU when the Digital Markets Act hits. Hopefully they'll plug all the loopholes and actually enforce it. I don't understand how anyone can defend business practices like this, which are exclusively there for the purpose of platform lock-in.

It's not an issue anywhere in the world except the US, where apparently school kids can get bullied if their texts in group chats are the wrong colour.

Re: Tim Cook's response to Android texting compatibility: 'buy your mom an iPhone'

#110
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well not yet, but the EU is working on it; The Digital Markets Act states that major messaging services must be interoperable. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/nl/press-room/20220315IP...

So by this act, should I be able to send a Twitter DM to your phone number if you don't have a Twitter account? What does interoperability mean here? Can I send Instagram messages from my Signal app?

Please read the link that the OP graciously provided:

> EU lawmakers agreed that the largest messaging services (such as Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger or iMessage) will have to open up and interoperate with smaller messaging platforms, if they so request. Users of small or big platforms would then be able to exchange messages, send files or make video calls across messaging apps, thus giving them more choice.

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