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

arstechnica.com

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

#311

Post by lapinot »

nvy wrote: post #170
lapinot wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. You…

Thanks for lecturing me about the web. As is pretty evident in this subthread, there are definitely people here on hn that seem to be overly sensitive to self-proclaimed policing. Once again one last time: my response was calling the parent hyperbolic and actually imprecise. I couldn't have provoked this kind of reaction had i wanted to. TIL

> the rest of the faux-intelligentsia strive to find new things they can be outraged about.

Just wow. Which would be who exactly in this subthread? The amount of fact reversal to get to this conclusion is quite amazing.

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

#312

Post by rimunroe »

ck425 wrote: post #178
infotainment wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don’t, it “just works” (to the degree MMS can work at all) — which means iMessage is perfectly positioned.

Ah so do "free texts" in the USA include MMS? That might explain the continued usage. In the UK MMS often aren't included, if anything they're charged stupidly high, so you'd never send a pic via text message.

yes

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

#313

Post by rezonant »

I think this is kinda technically a win for Beeper. I would've expected another 100% lockout to be Apple's priority. They were instead only able to block 5%, which sounds like a heuristic being applied, and possibly not even an intentional block of Beeper (in the sense that some anti-spam service may be identifying some Beeper users).

They can certainly escalate with protocol changes, but they still have to contend with older Macs, iPhones and iPads which are out of the support window losing access-- so if they want to update the protocol they either have to issue out of band patches for these devices or cut them off too.

This is assuming you can actually iMessage on iDevices that are out of software support -- maybe our iOS friends can let us know.

EDIT: This take seems more plausible (that this is intentional by Apple): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38648030

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

#314

Post by wrboyce »

standardUser wrote: post #257
rewgs wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking for myself, I think iMessage is a good product, and it's one of the (many) reasons I use Apple devices as daily drivers. You make it sound like people only use iMessage because of the network effect/lock-in, and clearly aren't considering that perhaps said network effect exists at least in part because iMessage is just...good.

If the product is so great why doesn't Apple make it available on more platforms? The answer is because it's not a product, it's a marketing tool. And a very successful one based on the widespread bullying it has caused.

Give me a fucking break, “bullying” for Christ’s sake!

They invented a nice thing, made it available on their hardware, and now people like yourself who refuse to buy their hardware for whatever reason are salty you can’t play on the platform so result to juvenile arguments like “I’m being bullied” to try and get your own way. It’s fucking ridiculous and you need to grow up.

EDIT: that should be “resort to”.

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

#315

Post by dkjaudyeqooe »

shreyansh_k wrote: post #31

This seems to be Beeper's insincere attempt at dressing up their grievances to appear as if they were in advantage of the [Apple's] customer. Apple has made it clear that they won't bring iMessage to Android. People who choose to invest in Android phones know they won't get access to iMessage. It seems a bit entitled behaviour for someone to feel like Apple should be forced to bring iMessage to Android for any reason…

> It seems a bit entitled behaviour

What's entitled behavior is big tech thinking it can dictate how and where we use technology and services. Why should we be roped into serving Apple's interests and ignoring own own? Beeper can pursue their own interests while benefiting users, that's hardly a negative.

I'm sure if Ford dictated how and where you drove your car you'd be outraged, but we should kowtow to the likes of Apple?

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

#316

Post by SpaghettiCthulu »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #16
aesh2Xa1 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has customers who want to use iMessage. Those customers are not able to use iMessage to securely communicate with Android users. That's pretty clear. If Apple's customers want to be able to use iMessage for such communications then (1) the Android user buys an Apple product, (2) a third party makes a cross-platform iMessage client, or (3) Apple open iMessage to other platforms. Apple is blocking on (2) and (3).

> Apple has customers who want to use iMessage. Those customers are not able to use iMessage to securely communicate with Android users Of course they do. There's Signal and Telegram and WhatsApp. My principal benefit of iMessage is its relative lack of spam. (And when I do get spam, it gets stomped out fast.) Apple Music blitzkrieging Spotify is bullshit. The lock on subscription payments is bullshit. I happen to th…

I am at a loss on this "spam" argument. I haven't received a single spam message on either SMS or Signal in the at least last year.

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

#317

Post by Jtsummers »

shiroiuma wrote: post #290
freedomben wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been discussed ad nauseam. In the US, not being a "blue bubble" can have a very high social cost and get you excluded from groups and communication opportunities. People just want to be able to communicate without ridiculous walled garden vendors throwing stupid road blocks in their way and making things artificially harder to get you to "buy your mom an iphone."

If Americans are this dumb, I don't see why they need any laws to protect them. Why would I want to be part of any groups that won't have me because I don't use an iPhone? Thankfully, here outside America, this isn't an issue: absolutely no one uses SMS or cares about this stuff.

> If Americans are this dumb, I don't see why they need any laws to protect them.

They aren't. The bubble color thing is an exaggerated claim and a lot of whining from a bunch of clowns. No one actually cares in the US except for a bunch of children (who are always prone to following trends for the sake of following the trend) and a handful of immature adults. The rest of the country doesn't know or care

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

#318

Post by orangecat »

joshmanders wrote: post #60
dataangel wrote: post #39

Earlier 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.

Now apply this logic to any other company product

Ok...third parties should be able to sell ink that works in your HP printer, or coffee pods that work in your Keurig, or tires that work on your Ford.

tell me if this sounds as ridiculous to you as it does me

It sounds not ridiculous at all. The only difference with Beeper is that there is some marginal cost to handling messages, but we all know that's not Apple's real problem with it.

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

#319

Post by wrboyce »

ck425 wrote: post #178
infotainment wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don’t, it “just works” (to the degree MMS can work at all) — which means iMessage is perfectly positioned.

Ah so do "free texts" in the USA include MMS? That might explain the continued usage. In the UK MMS often aren't included, if anything they're charged stupidly high, so you'd never send a pic via text message.

To give you another perspective, I’m UK based too and use iMessage daily to stay in touch with my family and close friends. Every now and then I’ll have bad signal (or maybe the recipient does? I’m not entirely sure…) and whatever I’m sending will be sent as an MMS. It happens so rarely it doesn’t really register, and I’d wager it costs me less than a quid a year (on EE, but I assume most MMOs have similar MMS pricing).

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

#320

Post by rezonant »

tshirthoodie wrote: post #270
JoblessWonder wrote: post #122

As I mentioned in the previous discussion[1], users are going to have to put up with the system going down... and I just don't see that happening. From the article: "It was losing messages during the outage and never being entirely certain they had been sent or received. There was a gathering on Saturday, and she had to double-check with a couple people about the details after showing up inadvertently early at the wr…

Apple's iMessage implementation loses messages all the time. It happens about once every month between my girlfriend and I. I have also had iMesages be sent to the wrong recipient. In one ongoing case, my aunt and uncle frequently receive each other's iMessages, suggesting it's related to their group carrier plan but it's hard to say. The extended family all knows to use SMS instead, which reliably goes to the intend…

I could believe losing messages. I cannot believe wrong recipient. One of these is a service reliability issue and the other is an insanely unlikely bug.

And what are the chances that the actual recipient ends up being the spouse of your expected recipient? Sounds more like they logged into each other's phones or something.

> suggesting it's related to their group carrier plan

Extremely doubtful it has anything to do with their plan. iMessage is over the top: only the first SMS activation message has anything to do with your carrier -- after that it's all sent through Apple's servers.

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