When Ma Bell didn't let people use third-party phones with their service, the government made them change their ways. Why is the government letting Apple get away with the equivalent?
I guess the EU will be closely watching with Digital Services Act
Apple partly halts Beeper's iMessage app again, suggesting a long fight ahead
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Re: Apple partly halts Beeper's iMessage app again, suggesting a long fight ahead
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
2001, when Adium launched. It pretty much had every messaging app that anyone was on. I used it exclusively for years. It supported all those things (or I should say if someone had multiple ways to get to them, Adium supported at least one of them).
Adium was a total lifesaver on Mac since there was never an official MSN messenger client there. Back then a lot of services also used XMPP but that has been readily abandoned - Slack used to do XMPP, doesn't any more. Google used to do XMPP, doesn't any more... I suppose one reason for it is E2E encryption.
That's also possible with XMPP and Matrix.
They just liked to get away with closing their fences
Re: Apple partly halts Beeper's iMessage app again, suggesting a long fight ahead
#143When Ma Bell didn't let people use third-party phones with their service, the government made them change their ways. Why is the government letting Apple get away with the equivalent?
Because Ma Bell was a regulated monopoly, and iMessage is not a monopoly. People routinely use WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, SMS, FB Messenger, etc.
Don't get me wrong, I love that these guys are poking the bear. I wish Apple would do something to let me send high-quality photos and videos to my Android-owning friends via "text". But I don't think the government has a place to force that issue. Plenty of alternatives exist.
Re: Apple partly halts Beeper's iMessage app again, suggesting a long fight ahead
#144A lot of people don’t understand the absolutely insane (and totally stupid) power of “blue text” in social settings, especially among teens. “Green text” is social suicide, largely because a lot of reactions and emojis and stuff don’t work. It’s also a status symbol… even though high end Android phones cost about what higher end iPhones cost and refurb iPhones are cheap.
The iMessage platform is probably the strongest lock in on iPhones. Break that and the phone market gets competitive again.
Re: Apple partly halts Beeper's iMessage app again, suggesting a long fight ahead
#145When Ma Bell didn't let people use third-party phones with their service, the government made them change their ways. Why is the government letting Apple get away with the equivalent?
Ma Bell had a monopoly. This is one messaging app on one brand of phone. Nothing stops you from using another phone, or multiple or other messaging apps. And messaging apps aren’t restricted by a “default” in quite the same way a web browser is. I have friends on WhatsApp and Signal and Instagram and I message them all without any appreciable difference in effort.
As long as iMessage doesn't support federation, Apple has a monopoly on it too. If not, then Ma Bell wouldn't have had a monopoly either, since you could say mailing letters was a competitor to telephones.
Re: Apple partly halts Beeper's iMessage app again, suggesting a long fight ahead
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
2001, when Adium launched. It pretty much had every messaging app that anyone was on. I used it exclusively for years. It supported all those things (or I should say if someone had multiple ways to get to them, Adium supported at least one of them).
Adium was a total lifesaver on Mac since there was never an official MSN messenger client there. Back then a lot of services also used XMPP but that has been readily abandoned - Slack used to do XMPP, doesn't any more. Google used to do XMPP, doesn't any more... I suppose one reason for it is E2E encryption.
I think their switch away from XMPP predates E2EE and some of them still aren't using E2EE, so that's not the real reason. XMPP has good E2EE now with OMEMO though.
Re: Apple partly halts Beeper's iMessage app again, suggesting a long fight ahead
#147[deleted]
Re: Apple partly halts Beeper's iMessage app again, suggesting a long fight ahead
#148Beeper CEO, from the article: "If there's enough pressure on Apple, they will have to quit messing with us." "Us," he clarified, meant both Apple's customers using iMessage and Android users trying to chat securely with iPhone friends. "That's who they're penalizing," he wrote. "It's not a Beeper vs. Apple fight, it's Apple versus customers." Not really sure how this is anti-customer. Apple customers have ample acces…
It's definitely a weird fight, especially when you consider Beeper wants to make money off of Apple's service without any compensation going Apple's way. It's hard for me to tell if the Beeper CEO is delusional or simply doing PR speak.
"Interoperability is picking apple's pocket by allowing people cross-platform secure communication in a way that's usable to them" is a take that is bending over backwards to lick corporate boot. I get that part of apple's marketing is extreme brand loyalty, but your communications with non-ios users being less secure harms you as an ios user too, and the loss to apple is one of control over its customers' behavior more than anything else
Re: Apple partly halts Beeper's iMessage app again, suggesting a long fight ahead
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not entitled, it's pushing back against a gigantic company exploiting network effects to create user lock-in, because that's easier than competing on the merit of your products.
Now apply this logic to any other company product, maybe even your own or the company you work for and tell me if this sounds as ridiculous to you as it does me.
We're talking here about literally the most valuable public company in the world and a product (iPhone) used on average dozens of times and several hours daily by nearly 50% of the US population. I'm generally a free market kind of guy but even I admit that at this scale it is OK to apply different standards.