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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

#521

Post by kelnos »

thethimble wrote: post #450
rezonant wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, if you break your iPhone on vacation and buy a phone that is not an iPhone so that you can still be contacted until you get home to your favorite Apple Store, you are also losing messages, assuming you forget to go through Apple's iMessage deregistration system. Really the design of iMessage is the problem.

Really? Doesn’t iMessage fall back to sms if the receiver doesn’t ack? At least that’s what the UX feels like.

I think that's if iMessage can't reach Apple's servers. Otherwise that wouldn't make sense; simply being without a cell/wifi signal, or having your phone off, for a few hours, would mean anyone messaging you would be sending a bunch of SMS fallback messages.

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

#522

Post by em500 »

HenryBemis wrote: post #483
brandon272 wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have recent experience talking to non-techie younger people recently about this very issue and none of them were aware of the security differences of SMS vs. iMessage. Teenagers know that blue = iPhone and green = non-iPhone/SMS and that blue offers significantly more features and functionality vs SMS (delivered/read receipts, group chats, stickers, rich media, memojis, etc), which is the overwhelming reason why bl…

Plus the cost. Over here in the EU, back in 2010 (?) SMS was an expensive thing, you would pay dearly for each or have to buy a "50/100/500 SMS package" or similar. So lowering the cost of 3G made it more economical if your friends had iPhones as now you could spend €20/month for '1GB' (which was mostly iMessage & web browsing at the time) and avoid spending that simply on SMS. (excuse the price inaccuracies if any,…

Back in 2010 iPhones were expensive status symbols in the EU, approximately nobody bought them to save money on SMS. In some markets the really heavy texters bought Blackberries for a while just for BBM, but that got killed pretty quickly by Whatsapp.

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

#523

Post by kelnos »

wrboyce wrote: post #350
jacquesm wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if something never ever happened to you it isn't true? That's a pretty self centered view of things.

I shouldn’t form an opinion based on my own experiences because it might upset you? That’s a pretty self centred view of things. I could’ve expanded, I’m pretty much de facto “IT Support” for a lot of the friends/family I’ve spent those years communicating with using iMessage so I can pretty confidently say it has never happened to any of them either. I could go on to say that if it was a widespread issue this wouldn…

That's not how experiences work. If someone says "I saw X" and you say "I didn't see X", that doesn't necessarily mean X doesn't exist, it just means you didn't see it. Sure, the person who saw X might have been hallucinating, but you don't have enough information to know either way.

It's a little weird to so strongly believe that a rare, intermittent bug (no one suggested it's "widespread") couldn't exist with a messaging service that gets a ton of traffic and has to support nearly a billion and a half people across the globe. May want to examine what biases lead you to having such a negative response to something like that.

Also consider that even if you have 1000 friends for whom you are "IT support guy", you've still interacted with fewer than 0.0001% of all iPhone users. You are several orders of magnitude off from a representative sample, especially if we're talking about a rare bug.

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

#524

Post by kccqzy »

kmeisthax wrote: post #432
mngdtt wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a user, I am very well served by remote attestation when it is used to stop cheaters in videogames or spammers in messaging platforms.

I know of no messaging platform using remote attestation for antispam - and, as far as those platforms continue to support web registration, they can't use remote attestation[0]. Even if they could, it wouldn't help. Remote attestation verifies that your client code is running without modification. What you care about with spam is keeping the spammers from registering large numbers of unrelated accounts, which doesn'…

Remote attestation does more than ensuring code is not modified. It definitely can be used to prevent spammers from registering a large number of accounts.

And no, web registrations as a must have is an extremely antiquated concept.

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

#525

Post by SkeuomorphicBee »

StressedDev wrote: post #472
vintermann wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You still face such problems as being left out of group chats.

Is this really a problem? I seriously doubt many people are going to leave someone out because they use an Android phone. I certainly won't because I like communicating with people and people are far more important than technology.

This is a problem, out of band communication is always a second titer and always overlooked, always incomplete. We as developers see this every day with documentation running out of date in relation to code. The same way the out of group communication falls behind the primary channel.

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

#526

Post by viraptor »

verwalt wrote: post #223
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most companies don't have network effect with lock-in, and especially those we depend to live our everyday lives: I can send money to my buddy who uses a different bank, I can send emails to gmail users from my yahoo account , I can also refuel my car at any station and not be tied to one brand. Imagine being locked in to any of those. There are of course a lot of companies with lock-in out there, but none with such…

The thing is: it is not locking in. At the moment through SMS and it will support RCS next year. And RCS will solve it all. If group chats and high quality media work, people will only complain about the one thing they hate most: The bubbles will still be green. But I am from Europe, we don't care around here and I don't like iMessage that much. Compared to Telegram/Whatsapp, it's slow at loading old messages, has sy…

> And RCS will solve it all.

If the deployment is anywhere close to how it went in Australia, RCS will be a bumpy road with many people turning it off to get messages delivered. My usual experience for months now is: send a message, get a "can't deliver" notification an hour later, resend by SMS, next message delivers through RCS and switches the conversation, repeat.

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

#527

Post by smcin »

8note wrote: post #385
jauntywundrkind wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why does everyone care so much? Happy to explain. First thought, why do you care so much? > Nor do I want it. Why? What about exclusivity makes the world better? Why shouldn't I be able to communicate well with someone using an Apple device? Why should someone using an Apple device not want someone to communicate well with them? Sure there are other systems. But switching costs are so high. Especially with iMessage…

They're using "buying an Apple device" as a spam filter, rather than using democratic means to put good regulations that are anti-spam.

Yes. They switched to that ~2020/1. You can no longer make a Genius Bar appt by browser on an Android phone; you used to be able to. Seems grossly unreasonable to assume "user has an Android phone" indicates "possible spammer".

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

#528

Post by hummerbliss »

unsigner wrote: post #479

These comments mention spam a lot as a reason to stick with iMessage. What kind of spam are people (presumably in the US) getting outside of iMessage? I’m in the EU, I get very little SMS spam (mostly for telecom’s clumsy attempts to find more ways to monetize me). I also have Viber, Telegram, and FB messenger, and the spam is virtually zero on Viber (less than an “offer” a month, and it’s from the likes of Coca Cola…

(from India). We have huge SMS spam. Significant spam for me ismarketing SMS from companies. They automatically sign your number up for example when you make a purchase/at POS. No opt-out - its eternal

We do have facility for DND with Deparatment of Telecom but seems to come up short as mine is in DND but receive several messages and calls through out the day.

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

#529

Post by hocuspocus »

vintermann wrote: post #510
Grustaf wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not just about market share. In Scandinavia about 90% of middle class people use iphones, but this whole blue-green bubble nonsense is a total non-issue. We have group chats in whatsapp, fb messages or sms, nobody cares.

> In Scandinavia about 90% of middle class people use iphones Whoa, citation needed there. I don't use one, and most people I know don't use one.

That's an exaggeration but I assume 70-80% in upper middle class would be realistic? At least in Norway and Denmark, maybe a bit less so in Sweden.

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

#530

Post by that_guy_iain »

thot_experiment wrote: post #198
madeofpalk wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iMessage is not SMS.

ok sorry mr pedant, text message to me means the default tied to your number way of communicating on your phone

Like whatsapp, signal, telegram, etc?
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