Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple partly halts Beeper's iMessage app again, suggesting a long fight ahead

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 665 posts

Re: Apple partly halts Beeper's iMessage app again, suggesting a long fight ahead

#161

Post by echelon »

qeternity wrote: post #35
echelon wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple customers have ample access to iMessage, after all. It's not really fair that Apple gets to build snares around owning the most successful and important platform in modern civilization. This isn't an automobile where there are 50 alternative manufacturers, this is the "everything" device that handles your bills, employment, connections to loved ones, etc. And there's only one other choice of vendor in the Uni…

> This isn't an automobile where there are 50 alternative manufacturers No, it’s exactly this. There are a ton of manufacturers all providing this product. It just so happens that Apple’s is one of the best, if not the best. And as has been mentioned, there are tons of secure messaging alternatives. It’s just that people prefer iMessage. This is not illegal or anticompetitive. Imagine if someone claimed they should b…

Apple or Google-controlled Android. Pick one.

Both tax everything in the world now. They're even becoming official government document providers. They're sinking their claws into all aspects of life and taxing and controlling them.

Re: Apple partly halts Beeper's iMessage app again, suggesting a long fight ahead

#162

Post by madeofpalk »

notnmeyer wrote: post #108
wolpoli wrote: post #6

MSN Messenger played a similar cat-and-mouse game with AOL Instant Messenger long time ago. Unlike MSN Messenger which used this publicity to grow their own market share, I am not sure what's the end game for Beeper.

attention? this has brought beeper _tremendous_ publicity. i think it’s naive to think that beeper didn’t expect this—its win-win for them no matter what. they could and so they did.

Win-win no matter what? An extremely likely scenario is that Beeper becomes completely defunct, and Apple has no legal or regulartory pressure applied to them. What's the win for Beeper here?

Re: Apple partly halts Beeper's iMessage app again, suggesting a long fight ahead

#163

Post by unyttigfjelltol »

madeofpalk wrote: post #151
josephcsible wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's nonsensical. Reddit has a monopoly on Reddit - of course it does. Any service online is under no obligation to allow for widespread interpoperation - that would be madness.

It's madness for monopolistic communications providers to refuse interoperability.

Re: Apple partly halts Beeper's iMessage app again, suggesting a long fight ahead

#164

Post by asfasfo »

ck425 wrote: post #116
asfasfo wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SMS is very popular in the US for historical reasons. Many users in other countries (like India) moved to products like Whatsapp because their cell phone plans charged per message but US phone plans have had free SMS pricing for years so we've never had a push here. iPhone is market leader in the US so iMessageis also heavily used since its default for SMS between iOS users.

Interesting. In UK it was common (and still has I think?) for contracts/deals to include lots of free SMS texts but even then most people have readily moved to WhatsApp, Messenger etc. In my mind texts quickly became like voicemails, something older people would use cause that's what they know but not something I'd want to use regularly if given the option.

The UK rolled probably rolled out free SMS texts later than the US; the US was one of the first markets that rolled it out. I don't know when whatsapp rolled out there but I'm guessing it pre dates unlimited SMS being ubiquitious.

iMessage has pretty much the same feature set as Whatsapp so US users don't really have a reason to migrate at this point.

Re: Apple partly halts Beeper's iMessage app again, suggesting a long fight ahead

#165

Post by nicce »

albert180 wrote: post #141
josephcsible wrote: post #126

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

Beeper is commercial app, and because of that it classifies as ”unfair”, unpermitted use of Apple’s private services.

They are making supporting argument for Apple, unfortunately, if any regulation happens.

Re: Apple partly halts Beeper's iMessage app again, suggesting a long fight ahead

#166

Post by [deleted] »

paulddraper wrote: post #47
wolpoli wrote: post #6

MSN Messenger played a similar cat-and-mouse game with AOL Instant Messenger long time ago. Unlike MSN Messenger which used this publicity to grow their own market share, I am not sure what's the end game for Beeper.

The end game for Beeper is a significant presence on the most popular OS on the planet. I don't think their interested in replacing iMessage directly, if that's your question.

[deleted]

Re: Apple partly halts Beeper's iMessage app again, suggesting a long fight ahead

#167

Post by bscphil »

stouset wrote: post #137
josephcsible wrote: post #126

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?

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.

You can run that argument the other way. It's desirable for there to be only one system of phone lines installed everywhere, where anyone with a telephone number can call anyone else. It would be desirable for there to be only one e2e encrypted "double-ratchet" messaging protocol, for the same reasons.

In the case of Bell, the universal lines already existed, the problem was that Bell owned them all and wouldn't let anyone else use them. That was a "monopoly" so there was an argument for breaking it up so that everyone could use the lines.

In the case of iMessage (and others), the creators are deliberately building out many different incompatible "lines", and not letting anyone else use those lines. And now people are coming along and saying because it's not a "monopoly", we can't do anything about that. But the real goal was the same in both cases - making universal communication possible. That's what we're all frustrated about here, and the fact that there are dozens of apps trying to wall off competitors is part of the cause of that. Apple is a target because iMessage is the largest such "private line" in the United States.

Re: Apple partly halts Beeper's iMessage app again, suggesting a long fight ahead

#168

Post by recursive »

thot_experiment wrote: post #15

Is it common for people to use texts in 2023 in your social circle? I think I've been texted once this year. I mean obviously people care about this to some extent otherwise this app wouldn't exist but in my experience when I meet someone they'll give me insta or discord, unless they're a tryhard and then it's always signal (blegh). EDIT: not sure i'm being downvoted? i'm genuinely curious because i never use SMS or…

Yes. I use SMS, and don't really use any of the alternatives. Everyone I know uses it too, and I don't really have a reason to try to push anything else, which would probably require installing an app.

Re: Apple partly halts Beeper's iMessage app again, suggesting a long fight ahead

#169

Post by madeofpalk »

unyttigfjelltol wrote: post #163
madeofpalk wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's nonsensical. Reddit has a monopoly on Reddit - of course it does. Any service online is under no obligation to allow for widespread interpoperation - that would be madness.

It's madness for monopolistic communications providers to refuse interoperability.

iMessage is far from monopolistic.

Messages on iPhone is interoperable with any other mobile device - it supports SMS!

Re: Apple partly halts Beeper's iMessage app again, suggesting a long fight ahead

#170

Post by nvy »

lapinot wrote: post #104
jrflowers wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Wth are you talking about? My comment had nothing to do with trigger warning or any kind of sensitiveness, which you seem quite eager to hit on. I guess i'm not used to this kind of americanization of the debate and i must've said something very wrong to say without realizing. Point is the phrase is completely excessive in this context, we're talking about exchanging text messages. Yes aim and gtalk was funny but the…

>My comment had nothing to do with trigger warning or any kind of sensitiveness

Yes it did. Here it is, reproduced:

>Couldn't you have said "compartmentalized", or "dominated by hostile silos" or anything else that doesn't involve comparison of the state of online chatting with wars that have killed humans? I agree things were nice with adium.

In this comment, you have nothing of value to add to the conversation. Your comment could be replaced with "adium good" and it would retain all its utility. Yet, you felt it was necessary to police the language of someone else using a benign and commonplace term ("Balkanized") because it offended your particular sensibilities.

Welcome to the internet. People say things you disagree with regularly. If the term Balkanized offends you, please do not visit 4chan, reddit, twitter, or mastodon.

Your comment quoted above is of the absolute lowest quality, adds nothing to the conversation, and serves only to drag the quality of conversation down into the muck where the rest of the faux-intelligentsia strive to find new things they can be outraged about.

Post reply on HN