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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

#581

Post by filoleg »

hocuspocus wrote: post #579
filoleg wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes me wonder, what’s the iMessage situation in Japan? Their smartphone market is also majority iOS, sitting at above 60% (while it is only a little bit above 50% for the US)[0]. Despite that, I am yet to hear about their version of the whole “blue bubble exclusion” controversy. It could definitely be just due to the japanese users not being super active on western internet, and not necessarily due to that con…

LINE absolutely dominates the Japanese market in instant messaging and beyond (it's a super app like WeChat or KakaoTalk).

Yeah, I was familiar with LINE and Kakao, and I like how similar the setup is for SK and Japan.

Thanks to your point, this way we can easily see that despite SK being android-dominant and Japan being iPhone-dominant, both are not heavily into iMessage and prefer their native super apps instead.

Which provides a solid data point in favor of those claiming that the iMessage proliferation and dominance don’t necessarily have a direct causation stemming from iOS/Android dominance in a given market.

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

#582

Post by joshmanders »

Zak wrote: post #543
Twisell wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well in Europe Android is dominating the market (but with a very fragmented experience depending on Android version). The result is that as an iPhone users I feel sometimes feel left out because different friends circles on Android turn to different secured messaging services (WhatsApp, FB messenger, Telegram, Signal, etc...). I firmly refuse to give my personal ID to all theses companies just to keep in touch so I o…

> as an iPhone users I feel sometimes feel left out because... I firmly refuse to give my personal ID to all theses companies just to keep in touch You're not left out because of what kind of phone you use. You're left out because you refuse to use messaging apps that are available for your phone.

And yet here we are, in a thread about a service abusing Apple's servers to make something available to the opposite crowd who feels left out because they refuse to use messaging apps that are available for their phones.

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

#583

Post by filoleg »

smcin wrote: post #527
8note wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

> Seems grossly unreasonable to assume "user has an Android phone" indicates "possible spammer".

I think you got it in the reverse order.

“User has an android phone” doesn’t indicate “possible spammer”. However, “spammer” typically indicates “user has an android phone.”

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

#584

Post by hocuspocus »

filoleg wrote: post #581
hocuspocus wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LINE absolutely dominates the Japanese market in instant messaging and beyond (it's a super app like WeChat or KakaoTalk).

Yeah, I was familiar with LINE and Kakao, and I like how similar the setup is for SK and Japan. Thanks to your point, this way we can easily see that despite SK being android-dominant and Japan being iPhone-dominant, both are not heavily into iMessage and prefer their native super apps instead. Which provides a solid data point in favor of those claiming that the iMessage proliferation and dominance don’t necessarily…

Interestingly enough in Korea, the iOS market share is fairly high among some demographics, especially young professionals with enough disposable income. Android (Samsung, at this point) phones are seen as an option for boomers or younger kids.

So in practice my wife uses FaceTime quite a bit with her siblings, and falls back to KakaoTalk when needed. Her iMessage usage isn't zero either, but mostly 1:1, group chats happen over KakaoTalk, since you know everyone will be there.

I don't know if similar patterns are seen in Japan.

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

#585

Post by joshmanders »

viraptor wrote: post #517
denkmoon wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Because Apple embraced texting by supporting SMS what? sms is a basic phone function, how is supporting sms "embracing" anything? If you, as an iOS user, don't want to use iMessage you simply go flip the toggle. If you "just want to text people", it's just that easy. Really.

Making iMessage which handles SMS, but by default transparently upgrades you to another protocol is the first two parts of EEE. Realistically, no normies flip that switch.

> Realistically, no normies flip that switch.

Got stats to back this up? I have 3 friends who use iPhone's that do have that toggle flipped.

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

#586

Post by dylan604 »

Sunspark wrote: post #484
dylan604 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Apple could also push out an update tomorrow that would end this once and for all by utilizing device attestation and leveraging Secure Enclave, but this would potentially lock out older devices, something they were willing to do when they upgraded the FaceTime protocol a couple of years ago, but they might not want to do that this time around. Just give it a couple more hardware generations to ensure the largest %…

Are you talking about the iOS 6 to 7 transition where the security certificates expired and Apple wouldn't issue a new one and said you needed to switch to iOS 7 if you wanted Facetime to work again? That was my last iOS device.

I don't remember that as I just upgraded the OS. Why would an OS upgrade be some thing you wouldn't do? Seems to me like you have bigger personal issues than some technical one with this situation.

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

#587

Post by dylan604 »

rekoil wrote: post #541
dylan604 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

at some point Serial Box will have a list of valid/invalid hardware serial numbers. or, someone will crack the code to generate valid codes. oh wait. i drifted off back to the 90s software cracking days.

Apple doesn't have predictable serial numbers anymore, they're all just random numbers corresponding to rows in a database. There's no way to generate them.

It wasn't a serious idea. The fact I mentioned it along side Serial Box should have been a clue. Maybe you're too young to know what Serial Box was, or the 90s cracking culture. Shh, the adults are speaking =)

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

#588

Post by whyoh »

vintermann wrote: post #562
whyoh wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signal is strongly focused on secure communication, so it never made any sense for it to support SMS/MMS. I think bundling different protocols in the same app is a bad idea in general. Besides the security and functionality problems, it just creates confusion. The whole iMessage/bubble-color mess wouldn't exist if Apple made it clear to their users that the iMessage protocol is different from SMS and incompatible wit…

Well imessage does the exact same thing. It doesn't seem to confuse the users. More basic protocols as a fallback mechanism can be a good idea, if you understand the risks (and of course, if you allow the recipient to use the better protocol! ) Signal always warned me very clearly if it was forced to send a message via SMS, and even pushed me to invite the recipient to Signal. It made sense to support it still, becau…

>Well imessage does the exact same thing. It doesn't seem to confuse the users.

What % of iPhone users do you think understand the difference between SMS, MMS and iMessage protocols? I bet most don't. But if iMessage had its own separate app, they would know it's an Apple-only protocol. And that would make them less likely to exclude non-iPhone users and more likely to use cross-platform alternatives. It's not like all iPhone are jerks, they're being mislead on how "texting" in the default iPhone app really works. That's what I meant by confusion.

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

#589

Post by danaris »

kelnos wrote: post #523
wrboyce wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mes…

But tshirthoodie isn't just claiming "this extremely far-fetched things happened to me".

They're explicitly claiming "this happens all the time."

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

#590

Post by soerxpso »

timmg wrote: post #556
cunidev wrote: post #539

It seems like the effort Apple is putting in stopping this is an indicator of how many people buy iPhones just for being in their iMessage circles. Which is only possible as long as Apple keeps snubbing RCS and making messaging painful to non-iPhone users. If, say, a random cheap Motorola with Beeper could keep them in the same groups as before, Apple would probably lose a (small) chunks of its clients.

The thing that bothers me is that Apple’s actions hurt iPhone owners. Making it harder for them to communicate with non-iPhones is a bad experience. Intentionally making their product worse to encourage lock-in is anti-user. I’m oddly surprised that iPhone owners are ok with this.

Most iPhone owners are unaware that it's intentional on Apple's part, and are lead to believe that other devices just aren't sophisticated enough to make the bubbles blue.
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