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Microsoft somehow brings iMessage to Windows – will it last?

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Re: Microsoft somehow brings iMessage to Windows – will it last?

#31

Post by rhaway84773 »

reaperducer wrote: post #21
afavour wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a little odd that the US is so iMessage-heavy when the rest of the world isn't but IMO relying on another proprietary protocol (i.e. WhatsApp) really isn't great either. I kind of think everyone is in an awful place.

It is a little odd that the US is so iMessage-heavy when the rest of the world isn't It's not odd at all. Lots of iPhones in the US because of high incomes, and high iPhone availability. Lots of non-iPhones in the rest of the world because of comparatively low incomes, and significantly less iPhone availability. I see no mystery.

I think the real reason is that in the early 2000s, pre-iPhone, texting was ridiculously expensive in the US and much cheaper in the rest of the world.

Also, Americans were using awful phones while the RoW was using much better phones like Nokias thst even in their non-communicator series made texting far easier thanks to stuff like T9.

So the rest of the world used SMS and texting far more than Americans Pre-smartphone.

When smartphones came out and WhatsApp was released, the RoW was far more willing to pay the dollars needed to buy WhatsApp (it wasn’t free before FB bought it) because they would easily save on their low but still not free SMS charges.

Whereas Americans were not as willing to pay for an app to do something they didn’t do anyways, and anyways by this time phone carriers in the US made SMS free for the most part.

As a result WhatsApp became entrenched in the RoW well before iMessage was released (2011), so non Americans continued using WhatsApp, even as Americans started using the free available iMessage instead.

Re: Microsoft somehow brings iMessage to Windows – will it last?

#32

Post by bmitc »

miroljub wrote: post #17
afavour wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a little odd that the US is so iMessage-heavy when the rest of the world isn't but IMO relying on another proprietary protocol (i.e. WhatsApp) really isn't great either. I kind of think everyone is in an awful place.

As much as I don't like WhatsApp for other reasons, at least it's honest in a way that you know that messages sent over WhatsApp will be sent and received using WhatsApp, and not some confusing half-backed combination of SMS and another App that you can't control. iMessage is not the only one at fault here, Google Messages (or how they call it today) is not better. It's the first thing I disable when switching to a n…

WhatsApp can also be confusing. It's a message client but yet is tied to your phone number. I recently logged into a backup phone that has WhatsApp on it. The reason WhatsApp is in the backup phone is because you cannot backup between iOS and Android. So I left it there. i recently got a new phone, so I tried to back up WhatsApp, but it claims no such backup exists, which is not true. So I log into the backup phone and see that WhatsApp has discontinues support for that phone or version of Android. That was a change that occured over just a month or so of not logging in, and I received no warning. There's no way to get around it. And I think that action is potentially what deleted my Google Cloud backup of WhatsApp. It's a mess, and I have potentially lost years of messages.

Re: Microsoft somehow brings iMessage to Windows – will it last?

#33

Post by cube00 »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #16

Ok. This does not happen very often, but: nice job MS! For once, a feature added to Windows is actually a feature that people may find useful.

To be fair implementing iMessage support is not entirely within their control, the joy of the walled garden.

Re: Microsoft somehow brings iMessage to Windows – will it last?

#34

Post by kube-system »

hcurtiss wrote: post #11
afavour wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you need to deactivate iMessage: https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage/

You can do that a dozen times and if other people pick up an old thread you participated in by iMessage -- you don't even see the message. It's just lost to the ether! You have no control over how those other people group text, and unless they pick up a new green bubble group text, you're just left out. Absolutely infuriating. Because so much of my extended family is on iPhone/iMessage, this issue -- alone -- has kep…

The feature in this article won't be of any use to you if you don't have an iPhone.

> The new version of Phone Link for Windows uses Bluetooth to link a user’s iPhone to their Windows PC. It then “passes commands and messages” to the Messages app on that paired iPhone.

Re: Microsoft somehow brings iMessage to Windows – will it last?

#35

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

partiallypro wrote: post #26
bmitc wrote: post #4

Having switched back to Android, it can be infuriating dealing with iPhone users. I get slammed with "messages" when someone reacts to a message and oftentimes, messages just don't show up or messages go to my iPad and not my phone. Apple makes this extremely confusing. The iPhone users never know of their message goes through or what they're actually sending to (my iCloud account or my phone number).

My biggest gripe is when iPhone users share video or images, they are grainy nonsense. If Apple just moved to RCS this would be solved, but they refuse simply because they know it handicaps their competitor. The react thing has largely been fixed by Google on newer versions of messenger. It's impossible to fix the video stuff. People outside the US don't get it. They say everyone should switch to Whatsapp, etc, but g…

> People outside the US don't get it

Oh we get it. It's like trying to get everyone off WhatsApp to Signal.

Re: Microsoft somehow brings iMessage to Windows – will it last?

#36

Post by smoldesu »

dento wrote: post #23
smoldesu wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on what, exaxtly?

Likely the new EU Digital Markets Act, which requires interoperabilty from messaging applications.

I'm more curious what they mean by "Trojan integration". Considering how Microsoft has been a trusted Apple app developer for over 20 years, that's a pretty heavy accusation.

Re: Microsoft somehow brings iMessage to Windows – will it last?

#37

Post by hackmiester »

miroljub wrote: post #17
afavour wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a little odd that the US is so iMessage-heavy when the rest of the world isn't but IMO relying on another proprietary protocol (i.e. WhatsApp) really isn't great either. I kind of think everyone is in an awful place.

As much as I don't like WhatsApp for other reasons, at least it's honest in a way that you know that messages sent over WhatsApp will be sent and received using WhatsApp, and not some confusing half-backed combination of SMS and another App that you can't control. iMessage is not the only one at fault here, Google Messages (or how they call it today) is not better. It's the first thing I disable when switching to a n…

If that's the configuration you want, it's more or less available in iMessage. You can either disable SMS fallback (and you will always use iMessage to talk to contacts with iPhones) or you can disable iMessage (in which case you will obviously always use SMS).

Of course they do not offer to split these up into two apps, which may be what you want.

Re: Microsoft somehow brings iMessage to Windows – will it last?

#38

Post by sneak »

afavour wrote: post #9
eertami wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having lived all over the world, but not the US, I don't think I've sent or received an SMS/text message once in the last decade (except for bad 2FA implementations). Apple's weird and semi-transparent (to the user) hybrid system of mixing a proprietary web protocol and SMS in the same app is obviously problematic, and the rest of the world moved on to other messaging services, but it's weird that the US is still stu…

It is a little odd that the US is so iMessage-heavy when the rest of the world isn't but IMO relying on another proprietary protocol (i.e. WhatsApp) really isn't great either. I kind of think everyone is in an awful place.

I don't have WhatsApp or iMessage; anyone who wants to communicate with me can use email or Signal. Signal lets me sign in with VoIP numbers, so it works fine for my uses, and is reasonably secure.

Re: Microsoft somehow brings iMessage to Windows – will it last?

#39

Post by hbn »

partiallypro wrote: post #26
bmitc wrote: post #4

Having switched back to Android, it can be infuriating dealing with iPhone users. I get slammed with "messages" when someone reacts to a message and oftentimes, messages just don't show up or messages go to my iPad and not my phone. Apple makes this extremely confusing. The iPhone users never know of their message goes through or what they're actually sending to (my iCloud account or my phone number).

My biggest gripe is when iPhone users share video or images, they are grainy nonsense. If Apple just moved to RCS this would be solved, but they refuse simply because they know it handicaps their competitor. The react thing has largely been fixed by Google on newer versions of messenger. It's impossible to fix the video stuff. People outside the US don't get it. They say everyone should switch to Whatsapp, etc, but g…

Apple hasn't moved to RCS because it's not an actual industry-accepted standard, despite what Google will trick people into believing. The version of RCS that's on Android is Google's own fork of RCS and is primarily routing messages through Google's own servers. And therein we have the reason why Google keeps pushing these smear campaigns about how Apple isn't "getting on board with the new standard," -- Google wants to become the new standard. If Apple did what Google wanted, Google basically gets to be in the same position they are with controlling web standards with the Chrome near-monopoly.
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