641–645 of 645 posts
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I miss this a lot. Trillian and Adium were a couple of other clients that allowed this. It was really nice to have some choice among what client to use.
I fondly remember iChat from my younger years. XMPP was incredibly powerful -- I would kill for a single client app for signal, telegram, facebook messenger, whatsapp, and more today.
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/
For a brief period Facebook was the biggest XMPP server, it was fun using OTR[1] on Facebook messenger. I think Whatsapp is still using XMPP under the hood but the server is closed. [1] https://wiki.xmpp.org/web/OTR
The bigger they get, the less they want to interoperate.
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The solution I use to minimise this is Element One ( https://element.io/element-one ). This is a paid for service that operates bridges from Matrix to Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram. I then get to communicate with all those contacts in one place (I'm on Android so iMessage not a problem). I signed up the moment it came out and they had some teething reliability problems for a while, but it's been great for months now.…
Matrix comes up quite often here. Tell me why, even as a nerd, I want to run a server and get my friends and family to join to chat, instead of them opening the built in app and just having at. This is a non-starter.
It's the same every time. When Apple gets called out for monopolistic anti-consumer behaviour, an army shows up to defend Apple with a bunch of FUD. No, it won't hurt you or your grandma that you can choose app store, choose browser engine, choose payment provider, that you can charge with usb c, etc., and in this case that non-apple users won't be mocked with different colored bubbles and other limitations. Every co…
On the other hand, why is such a tiny, tiny fraction of people so insistent on invading the Apple ecosystem? I made my choice for Apple in part because of its relatively closed nature compared to its only meaningful competitor. But it was a choice. I used to be the biggest anti-Apple person, too. Until I used their products. The quality is just superior in every way that consumers actually care about. Hypothesis: a s…
I can easily afford an Apple phone, it's weird that you would even mention the price because they're not expensive compared to top end Android phones. But I wouldn't touch one with a 10ft pole.
I'm a power user who customizes everything and needs to do lots of nerdy things like use dvorak keyboard layout, ssh to my home server, use apps connected to services on my home server, use an offline password manager, "sideload" all kinds of shit that would never be allowed in their crappy dongle-addicted consumer-hostile "ecosystem", write my own apps, etc, etc. I prefer to have local backups/encryption keys, and as little cloud profile as possible.
I'm already irritated even just thinking about being forced to use an iPhone. "Quality is superior", HAAHAHA. I've actually worked supporting macOS stuff before. HAHAHAHA.
Yes I know I'm not the target market for Apple crap but Apple's success encourages other corporations to do the same bullshit.
I love computers, always have. I always thought Computers should make human lives better, more enjoyable and more connected, not be a mechanism to segment society and shovel more disposable dongles and earpods.
So I'm insistent on the government "invading" the Apple ecosystem because the Apple ecosystem is an anticompetitive cancer that infects other corporations, normalizing terrible behavior and creating arbitrary limits on the usefulness of computers where there should be none.
Of course it's more lucrative to milk your victims... That's why when corporations step over the line, governments need to step in. Yes I know how rarely that works properly.
Fuck Apple and fuck Apple apologists. They're ruining technology one dongle at a time.
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>Nobody is asking governments to regulate adding cool new features to the that participants can choose to implement or not for their users as they see fit. Isn't that exactly what you're asking of Apple? Apple already has SMS. You want them to adopt RCS because it has cool new features that are lacking in SMS.
I don't think so. I haven't read the EU documents and the article doesn't say, but you can do this without forcing a company to adopt anything. Let's say I propose this rule: Apple must publish the iMessage spec and allow other services to send/receive iMessages. That doesn't force Apple or anyone else to implement any specific feature, beyond allowing others to send/receive messages. WhatsApp or Signal could decide…
Just publishing the specs will not allow anyone to send/receive iMessages. It's built on a closed loop CA / certificate system.
Remember that Steve Jobs actually announced on-stage it would be an open protocol without actually discussing that with his engineers? The architecture is designed to be closed from the get-go, and opening up the iMessage ecosystem in it's current design is simply not possible without giving 3rd parties considerable access to Apple internals, affecting a ton of stuff beyond iMessage, and pose serious security risks.
Could Apple re-design a messaging system which would allow this and roll it out transparently to all it's users? Absolutely, but that would require a ton of engineering work, and won't be there tomorrow.