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EU will require Apple to open up iMessage (2022)

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Re: EU will require Apple to open up iMessage (2022)

#211

There was a brief period of time where I was able to use IRC, Facebook and MSN from the same client: Pidgin https://pidgin.im/

It was not the client but all the companies using Jabber/XMPP protocol for their products.

Many clients including Empathy and Kopete allowed this at the time.

Re: EU will require Apple to open up iMessage (2022)

#212
post #86

If everyone's messaging has to be compatible with everyone else's then maybe we will finally only need one messaging app on our phones again instead of 5. Sounds great. I just want to be able to send messages without thinking about which app I need to go into to communicate with a particular person; that really breaks my flow when I'm trying to get something done. I don't give a shit about any features apart from pic…

You don't care about any features, apart from the features you care about. Just like everyone else.

To be fair, that was probably the same opinion you expressed when buying an iPhone. Nobody thinks about the consequences of who they can text when they buy a phone, and why should they?

Re: EU will require Apple to open up iMessage (2022)

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that SMS is nowadays a poor fallback, lacking support for a number of widespread features that are part of the EU's required baseline for interoperability.

Why is it a poor fallback? It supports less but mostly it’s a message size limitation. This seems like exactly what they want.

The DMA requires interoperability without a decrease in security - this explicitly includes end-to-end encryption, which iMessage supports. Since SMS has no standard for key distribution/discovery, it already fails at that hurdle.

It also requires that features such as group messaging and audio/video calling.

Re: EU will require Apple to open up iMessage (2022)

#214
post #86

If everyone's messaging has to be compatible with everyone else's then maybe we will finally only need one messaging app on our phones again instead of 5. Sounds great. I just want to be able to send messages without thinking about which app I need to go into to communicate with a particular person; that really breaks my flow when I'm trying to get something done. I don't give a shit about any features apart from pic…

I thought email already did all of this

Delta.chat (https://delta.chat/en/) has a decent enough UI for using email as an IM service actually.

Re: EU will require Apple to open up iMessage (2022)

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twenty two minutes ago you cared about groups, pictures and emojis. Email clients don't do emojis well or groups well, SMS doesn't do any of them, and IIRC Blackberry did everything in one program 15 years ago. Downvoted because this is the comment equivalent of the manager walking into a technical discussion of how something should work and demanding "just make it work" and leaving. Or commenting on a war topic "I j…

Users just want simple direct communications to work (yes, with more features than that, E2EE, image sending, and such; but those features are not the focus). Companies want to get users into a walled-garden where they can target them for financial and political gains. Democracy trying to push things away from the latter seems good. Do you agree?

What about this is a walled garden. SMS exists, this is an attempt to get green bubbles painted blue, and reactions to attach to a bubble. These are all visual changes and not at all required for functionality. Explain how this is such a problem that a government decided to focus any effort on this. It seems like they have nothing better to do.

Re: EU will require Apple to open up iMessage (2022)

#216
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you pull out of the EU you've now created a unified market of half a billion consumers that need a alternative to your product. That seems like a good way to kickstart a competitor.

Except EU is not a single market: there's 27 countries, speaking multiple languages, having different laws, so to serve the EU you need at least a dozen versions of your app. Also, EU has just decided that this half billion of consumers will be downgraded to the third world standard of living (google "Fit for 55"), so they won't really have much money to spend on tech toys anyway...

> EU has just decided that this half billion of consumers will be downgraded to the third world standard of living (google "Fit for 55")

"Fit for 55 is a package by the European Union designed to reduce the European Union's greenhouse gas emissions by 55% by 2030."

I call bullshit on your statement.

Re: EU will require Apple to open up iMessage (2022)

#217
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought email already did all of this

Most of my friends don't frequently read their emails and have such bad inbox hygiene that I would expect them to miss half of my emails.

Probably because every automated system has to send 10 emails per action, making me have 100 emails every time I look. Turn off the team wide email notifications and Id check it more often.

Re: EU will require Apple to open up iMessage (2022)

#218
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Isn't this going to kill features that only some apps have or offer? What if one day Signal, Telegram or WhatsApp... Okay, this is where I think we need to make clear who this requirement applies to. If we click through the first link, found in the first sentence in the article, to the actual source text[0] and run it through Google Translate, we can find that this requirement only applies to companies... >... whose…

Aren't there only, say, two or three companies that fit that criteria? The legislators may as well have called them out by name.

well this is the way legislation works, it's considered bad form to call them out by name so you choose some few characteristics that apply to them which has the side benefit that if in the future some other company comes along with those characteristics the same laws apply to them.

Re: EU will require Apple to open up iMessage (2022)

#219
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Isn't this going to kill features that only some apps have or offer? What if one day Signal, Telegram or WhatsApp... Okay, this is where I think we need to make clear who this requirement applies to. If we click through the first link, found in the first sentence in the article, to the actual source text[0] and run it through Google Translate, we can find that this requirement only applies to companies... >... whose…

Aren't there only, say, two or three companies that fit that criteria? The legislators may as well have called them out by name.

The point for the legislation is to force market leaders to open up and enable competitors, today and tomorrow. Calling them out by name works fine for today, but won't apply to the next TikTok/Instagram/WhatsApp/etc.

Re: EU will require Apple to open up iMessage (2022)

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What Id say is that today anyone who wants to sell a “smart” product has to write a proper clean iOS app that gets reviewed. Tomorrow I can guarantee they will immediately cut costs and ship out piles of sideloaded garbage Sure, it’s up to the consumer to choose, but they’re not going to write that on the package

>>Tomorrow I can guarantee they will immediately cut costs and ship out piles of sideloaded garbage Yeah except that's absolute nonsense because you could already do that on Android and yet I recall only one instance where a developer explicitly asked me to sideload an app(for Fortnite, no less). It's going to remain an incredible niche that will affect 0.00001% users at most.

Then what’s the point of forcing these companies to allow it? If it only affects such a small user base then money regulating it is clearly being wasted and should be used for something that will affect more people’s lives?

Clearly they believe that number is much higher.

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