Apple responds to the Beeper iMessage saga: 'We took steps to protect our users'

You said > "They replaced the standard messaging app with a proprietary alternative"

Nope. SMS and MMS.

> Too little to late.

Thanks. I thought you were here in bad faith, now I know you are.

> In the US it's a de facto standard. People get punished if they use SMS/MMS/RCS.

Good grief! Beeper isn't the answer. A few months ago it was all about how anti-competitive Apple were because no RCS. Now RCS it "too little to late"? Why are you all so damned incapable of using alternatives? This is as self-inflicted "problem".

You're an Android user, right? Suffice to say that you are wrong. Messages.app, not iMessage is the default. It is designed to handle SMS, MMS and Apple iMessage service. iMessage exists for Apple-to-Apple messaging and for those iPhone customers that choose not to have a carrier messaging plan. This is not an opinion.

> I'm not here in bad faith at all. Adding RCS support won't do much to fix the division apples has caused between iPhone users and other phone users.

What? That is certainly a take. I can't say anymore for fear of causing offence. In all sincerity and candor - you really do come across as someone with a chip on their shoulder.

> It's definitely a step in the right direction. Forcing Apple to be more open with iMessage is a good thing for consumers.

> They should have been using RCS from the start and cooperated with and contributed to the standard. Now, yeah it's pretty late and won't fix the problem they have caused.

So RCS will "fix" most of the "problems they have caused" here. What's more the main barrier, as ever, has been carrier adoption. Google only really started to push for RCS after miserably failing to deliver a coherent messaging platform strategy and releasing Google Messages in 2019. Whats more, their suposedly "open" E2EE RCS implementation is only available for Pixel and Samsung users. The carrier RCS landscape is a mess globally, with little to no use outside of US carriers, who have either switched to Google (privacy concerns) or have recently (last 5 years) added support for Universal Profile. By the way, the GSMA are a carrier-only body. Neither Google nor Apple were involved in the creation of RCS. Not that it matters as adoption by GSMA members has been, if I'm being generous, laughably slow. Google are involved by virtue of their acquisition of Jibe. Remind me, who is responsible for this problem?

> Because in the US Apple users insist on using iMessage.

Why is that? See above...

Edit: The issue I, and it seems many others have with Beepers approach is the commercialisation of someone else's property. Like it or not, de facto or not, iMessages is a private API. Hacking it for kicks is fine. Commercialising it is not. Bragging about to one one the big tech firms is going to end in tears. The merits of iMessages being open are obvious, but it's seems to be a market in which Apple doesn't want to be in. The service exists for customers of Apple's products and is directly tied to hardware ownership.

Nope, it's a distiction. And an important one.

> There we go. iMessage is the default for Apple phones contacting other Apple phones.

TFTFY. To contact other phones, use SMS, MMS. Even better, talk to your iPhone friends and agree to use another service. What is wrong with that? Literally the rest of the world managed it.

> I don't see how. I think it's perfectly rational. I'm surprsied you disagree so strongly to be hoenst.

I disagree because every point you have made has be immature or wrong. Or both. blue/green doesn't exist anywhere in the world, and speaking with friends in the US, is a storm in a teacup. You bringing it up leads me to believe that your likely in your early twenties. Some advice; know-one cares outside your little circle.

> No, it really won't. It certainly won't do anything to fix the silly blue/green bubble divide they caused.

You said it, silly, and nor really big bad Apple's fault. They cannot solve for childish responses from people that should know better.

> It doesn't really matter if carriers adopt something that the manufacturer of most phoens in the US does not support.

It really does, if they want said manufacturer to adope their standard.

> OK, but that's almost half a decade ago now.

And it was going nowhere then. It's still not widley used.

> Another reason Apple should have been contributing to and working on the RCS standard instead of alienating anyone who didn't want to buy their hardware.

So Google restricting access to their proprietary implementation of their RCS service is Apples fault for not contributing to a standard that they were unable at the time to contribute to because they were not members of the standard body drafting the standard behind closed doors. That takes some mental hoop jumping. Are you smelling toast?

> Because iMessage is the default for apple phones and most phones in the US are Apple phones.

If that is genuinely the case, why isn't a problem for the rest of the world? Also, I gave you the answer. Google let Android users down. They bungled messaging on the platform massively.

* Reminder to future me. Don't respond. It's a waste of time. see https://xkcd.com/386/