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“It’s time for Apple to fix texting”

android.com

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Re: “It’s time for Apple to fix texting”

#551

Post by GekkePrutser »

dt2m wrote: post #77
altairprime wrote: post #59

Most businesses, consumers, and developers universally continue to ignore the primary reason that iMessage is a closed platform, rather than an app on every platform as iTunes is: Apple is using device serial numbers for anti-spam, supported by a fully-authenticated hardware and software stack that does not allow user modification. This permits Apple to simply “console ban” any Apple device that spams on iMessage. Th…

This is a great point which I haven't heard before in this age-old debate. But until Apple's dominance starts to wane, there's no chance in hell they will provide iMessage for other platforms unless forced by regulation. If push comes to shove, they can implement heuristics which run texts from non-Apple devices through a harder spam filter. Spam isn't non-existent on the iMessage network, and there already seems to…

Apple is already not even close to dominant in a lot of EU countries. As a result nobody uses iMessage here (I never get any, nor SMS). That never swayed them to open it up.

Re: “It’s time for Apple to fix texting”

#552

Post by smachiz »

Rackedup wrote: post #432
altairprime wrote: post #59

Most businesses, consumers, and developers universally continue to ignore the primary reason that iMessage is a closed platform, rather than an app on every platform as iTunes is: Apple is using device serial numbers for anti-spam, supported by a fully-authenticated hardware and software stack that does not allow user modification. This permits Apple to simply “console ban” any Apple device that spams on iMessage. Th…

That is just ridiculous. I don't get random spam on Matrix/Element... it even handles video calls and more... Do you get spam calls on your iphone?

The number of people using Matrix/Element is so small and relatively sophisticated that it probably has a super low expected value for spammers.

Not true for iMessage at all...

Re: “It’s time for Apple to fix texting”

#553

Post by bee_rider »

bentcorner wrote: post #350
radicaldreamer wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it doesn’t affect everyone and aesthetics are not equal to accessibility? I do agree that the green bubbles aren’t great looking but thats what they chose for iOS even prior to iMessage existing.

> Because it doesn’t affect everyone and aesthetics are not equal to accessibility? The thing with accessibility is that it does affect everyone. If you get woken up by a call and open iMessage in the middle of the night, being able to read the message accurately while blinking away eye gunk matters. Better contrast helps you read your text message if your phone is on a table across from you lying flat. There's going…

I turned on the "increase contrast" accessibility feature just because it makes the green background color on those messages look nicer. Just do it. It isn't like they check to to see if you are diagnosed with colorblindness or whatever.

Re: “It’s time for Apple to fix texting”

#554

Post by nr2x »

baby wrote: post #396
simonjgreen wrote: post #367

SMS to me is solely the channel for machines to force a bad MFA implementation on me and couriers to tell me something is on the way/nearly there/delivered. All person to person comms, without exception, iPhone or Android users, is via WhatsApp. Anecdata from UK.

Same, from the US

Really? iMessage is very much used in the USA.

Re: “It’s time for Apple to fix texting”

#555

Post by nr2x »

radiojasper wrote: post #122

I still don't get why people use SMS/MMS anyway? I've been using WhatsApp for ages now and so does everybody else in my country - and every country I've been in, apart from China and Japan. My friend who's from the US once said "I've paid for those text messages, so I'm going to use them!" But if I send him a text from Europe to the US, I pay 1 damn euro per delivered text. WhatsApp is free! Is there any viable reaso…

The USA is very much iMessage driven relative to rest of the world.

Re: “It’s time for Apple to fix texting”

#557

Post by GekkePrutser »

kriskrunch wrote: post #510

I setup a BlueBubbles server on a spare Mac and I installed the BlueBubbles App. Boom. iMessages on Android. Done. Messaging is already extremely fragmented. BB is only the eighth messaging app on my phone. Considering getting on Beeper to consolodate this madness. Matrix/Element was too rough to utilize as is. Almost everyone I text with is on iMessage in the US. 95% or more of my regular contacts. Many are often ou…

Yeah and there's also mautrix-imessage for those wanting to use element.

I know it's rough setting up but there's a really great ansible playbook that makes it easy to maintain. I really love having all my messaging consolidated and not having all those privacy-invasive apps on my phone. Having my chats all in one big database is another boon.

The playbook doesn't support mautrix-imessage but that's because that needs to be run on macOS.

Re: “It’s time for Apple to fix texting”

#558

Post by jabbany »

cmelbye wrote: post #512
jabbany wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fine to debate what exact policy is the best, but it's not productive to just dismiss all regulation as bad because some are inconvenient. FWIW, the only reason cookie banners are annoying is because the sites intentionally made it that way to bully you into allowing 3rd party cookies. EU regulations allow a site to not have banners if 3rd party tracking is opt-in. They could easily do it via a separate settings…

The problem is that it's insane to leave all of this for the website to implement correctly. It's a UX nightmare and it opens the door for a company to game the system, secretly ignore my privacy setting, etc. The EU solution is, of course, to turn a technical problem into a legal problem. Sue the company if their "Allow" button is too big or it doesn't work as advertised. It should be a consistent browser-based pref…

> The EU solution is, of course, to turn a technical problem into a legal problem.

As a regulatory body, what else can they do...? In fact, I actually see this as a good thing.

You should think of regulation as an abstraction, an interface, a contract, that defines only a desired outcome (in this case the idea that 3rd party tracking should be opt-in rather than opt-out or non-opt). The details are then left to private entities to implement.

In fact, had they defined it to be say a browser feature or any other specific implementation, it would be strictly worse. By legislating the abstract concept of 3rd party tracking consent, they are leaving open the door to innovation. The idea is that if someone can come up with a better way of collecting consent in terms of UX, while still guaranteeing the same level of consumer protection, then they should be able to outcompete worse implementations.

The law does not require banners per-se (instead requiring affirmative consent before tracking can commence), nor does it require any button size (instead requiring that features not requiring tracking not be gated behind the consent wall and that certain consent outcomes shouldn't be favoured as a part of the UI). What we have is only that way because innovation is not that fast and the motivation to innovate here isn't that high (yet) --- banners are easy enough to implement and not so egregiously bad as to turn away users.

Re: “It’s time for Apple to fix texting”

#559

Post by hot_gril »

kccqzy wrote: post #487
hot_gril wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cause it's not terrible. It still works ok the way it is, and people tend to use FB Messenger or something if they want a more complex group chat with Android users in it. Considering that they do this even if it's an all-Android chat, I don't think it's Apple's fault, as scummy as they act with SMS. Also, people don't care for metric cause it's not better. Basing your system around the physical properties of water d…

> It's a nice spread of 0-100˚F outdoors usually This is such a U.S. and Europe centric view of "outdoors" that I almost spit out my coffee. And probably a small part of U.S. and Europe at that. Ask people in the tropics or subtropical regions and they probably never experienced 0˚F in their whole life. Originally the lower defining point, 0°F, was established as the freezing temperature of a solution of brine made f…

I don't mean that one small region hits 0-100˚F. That's not very common in the US or Europe either. But across all inhabited areas, 0-100˚F is pretty representative (again noting the sub-0 extremes where you're not going outside anyway). And say your area is just 60-100˚F, that's still decent, certainly better than a 22 degree range in Celsius.

Re: “It’s time for Apple to fix texting”

#560

Post by tristor »

maxsilver wrote: post #534
tristor wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an incredibly disingenuous way to describe this. They support SMS as a fallback for iMessage. SMS is a ubiquitous and broadly supported standard. RCS is a boondoggle that nobody supported until recently when Google decided to add support for it to Android in yet another attempt at building their own messaging platform. There is no rational reason to take offense that iPhones don't support RCS. I re-iterate, t…

> RCS is a boondoggle that nobody supported RCS is the official messaging spec of the GSMA, they effectively set mobile standards. It's on 90+ mobile operators in nearly every nation on the planet. It's just as widely supported as, say, Voice-over-LTE is (another standard by that same group) SMS is the outdated standard that's been mostly unused on smartphones since 2018 and is only supported for backwards compatibil…

> RCS is the official messaging spec of the GSMA, they effectively set mobile standards. It's on 90+ mobile operators in nearly every nation on the planet. It's just as widely supported as, say, Voice-over-LTE is (another standard by that same group)

Nearly every carrier supports it via Google-operated infrastructure, the carriers don't actually want RCS, have been vocal about this, and it's why RCS had no uptake for over a decade until Google decided to force-feed it to everyone. https://jibe.google.com/ is their platform they provide to carriers, through partnerships (example: https://www.verizon.com/about/news/verizon-google-messaging-...)

RCS is hot garbage, and if you've actually read the standard you'd already know that. There are plenty of arguments that can be made in favor of a carrier-agnostic messaging standard that provides broad interoperability, but RCS is not it. This is not the way.

> No, it's not. SMS is the outdated standard that's been gone since 2018. RCS is the current ubiquitous and broadly supported standard, since 2019 effectively all modern smartphones and cell network use it.

This is absolutely false. 1. SMS is supported by /every/ carrier in the world, period. This is exactly why it's the perfect fallback, because it is guaranteed to be there and even work with pre-smartphone T9 devices. 2. SMS isn't "gone" since 2018 or since ever. RCS is not ubiquitous, it is literally only used on Android, is not supported by any feature phones, and Android only constitutes "effectively all modern smartphones" because the vast majority of people in the world can't afford an iPhone. Globally almost 80% of the market share is Android... in the West/OECD it's like 50%.

> No, that's a complete lie. Google added support for it, because they had to, it's an industry spec that practically every cellular provider uses.

Uh... no... what you are saying here is a lie. Google added support for it because they wanted to, just like they wanted to make every other one of their previous 10+ messaging apps. RCS has been a standard since 2012 (or 2013, depending on who you asked) and the GSMA Universal Profile has been available since 2016, Google didn't even start deploying RCS until 2019 within Android Messages, and did so by cannibalizing the Allo team (another messaging boondoggle).

There is no legal or regulatory requirement or otherwise forcing Google to support RCS. The majority of carriers don't want RCS, and it was basically completely unadopted until Google footed the bill to build out the infrastructure for it.

> There's no Google service for RCS.

https://jibe.google.com/

I'm not going to even respond to the rest of your message. Look, I don't want to be uncharitable, but you frankly don't know what you're talking about and everything you are saying is incredibly biased in a pro-Google way without any basis in fact or reality. Please go actually read the RCS standard. Please go actually learn how RCS is implemented. Please go talk to someone that works with carriers on building out telecommunications systems (hint, I'm one of those people). You are straight out wrong.

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