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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

#591

Post by joshmanders »

redwall_hp wrote: post #577
delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how many people buy iPhones just for being in their iMessage circles This is news only in the US. Literally everywhere else in the world (where iPhones don't have a supermajority market share), third-party apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, Line, WeChat, Facebook Messenger, etc have been used for the past decade, with no problems whatsoever. My own WhatsApp account has been active for a decade , with chats going back ex…

My experience is that third party applications are the norm in the US, too. Everyone I know uses Facebook Messenger or Discord, and that situation has been the norm for at least a decade (and Discord itself is nearing a decade of existence now). Facebook Messenger is easily the default multi-platform option. 90% of my Messages app is SMS threads, and the vast majority of my messaging activity is Slack, Discord and Fa…

I would probably go as far as saying that this is only the "norm" on HN or in crowds where they think people spend $1200+ on a device just for the color of text bubbles.

My teenager and his friends don't even use iMessage, they use Snapchat almost exclusively to communicate. Someone messages them on iMessage they read it and then respond on Snapchat.

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

#592

Post by Grustaf »

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.

In the upper middle class in Copenhagen it’s more than that, seeing an android phone is very rare.

Even in the metro you can go days without seeing one.

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

#593

Post by soerxpso »

rewgs wrote: post #102
dataangel wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not entitled, it's pushing back against a gigantic company exploiting network effects to create user lock-in, because that's easier than competing on the merit of your products.

Speaking for myself, I think iMessage is a good product, and it's one of the (many) reasons I use Apple devices as daily drivers. You make it sound like people only use iMessage because of the network effect/lock-in, and clearly aren't considering that perhaps said network effect exists at least in part because iMessage is just...good.

If iMessage is so good, why do so many people want to use Beeper instead? If I thought my Keurig were a good coffee machine, I wouldn't go out of my way to install a different coffee machine.

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

#594

Post by EricHolden12 »

You buy a first class ticket for an airline and you get access to the lounge in the airport with fast wifi and snacks.

Outside there are people with different tickets screaming to be let in because they know someone in there and it’s not fair that they can’t go in.

And Migicovsky is on the side trying to dig a little tunnel into the lounge.

iMessage is a perk of using an iPhone. You want to use iMessage? Get an iPhone.

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

#595

Post by danaris »

modeless wrote: post #149
joshmanders wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now apply this logic to any other company product, maybe even your own or the company you work for and tell me if this sounds as ridiculous to you as it does me.

We're talking here about literally the most valuable public company in the world and a product (iPhone) used on average dozens of times and several hours daily by nearly 50% of the US population. I'm generally a free market kind of guy but even I admit that at this scale it is OK to apply different standards.

Speaking as a life-long Apple user who mostly thinks the rampant attacks on Apple are basically the same as the ones people have been throwing for 30+ years, just with "Apple is dying, no one should use their stuff" replaced with "Apple is too big/tyrannical, no one should use their stuff"...

I agree.

But.

The solution to that is to get antitrust regulators to step in and use the force of the law to change things.

Not to cheer on a third party using security vulnerabilities to piggyback onto Apple's service and charge a subscription for it.

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

#596

Post by InCityDreams »

leonheld wrote: post #553
msh wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think saying its US only is oversimplifying, its at least also true in some european markets.

Which ones? I have friends (young and old) all over Europe and everyone uses WhatsApp. Everywhere I've been in Europe defaults to WhatsApp, even for business communication. Like, it's n=1, but still, my experience is quite broad.

EU: I'm trying to get everyone i know onto signal. Hard fight. I tried whatsapp for a month and it was so facebooky (that I also got rid of yeeaaars ago, after trying for a month) that I deleted it. Whatsapp is very common, though and I am gradually being pushed out of various communications (my doctor, for example, pharmacies). At least I don't have to bugger about with Teams which is the requirement for my kids' schools. Amicable divorce, but I don't have that on my phone, unlike my ex (who hates it).

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

#597

Post by filoleg »

hocuspocus wrote: post #584
filoleg wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeah, I suspect there is indeed something special about Kakao compared to LINE as well.

Out of my friends who moved to Japan, pretty much not a single one of them uses LINE aside from rare one-offs. But with Kakao? Hell, everyone I know who even traveled to SK uses Kakao on regular (not even talking about those who moved there) pretty much as the main app in general for so many different things.

EDIT: oh wow, this sent me down a pretty interesting rabbithole. Apparently 85% of people under 30 in SK had an Android as their first phone, with 53% of those people having switched to iOS since then[0].

0. https://www.counterpointresearch.com/insights/30-south-korea...

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

#598

Post by danaris »

ck425 wrote: post #127
infotainment wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

USA specific — Americans pretty much universally use SMS messages, which ends up being iMessage for Apple devices.

Huh. How does that work with multimedia? Do US carriers not differentiate between SMS and MMS?

To clarify:

On the iPhone, the Messages app handles SMS.

It also handles iMessage.

They are two completely different protocols, with iMessage's featureset being a superset of SMS's. If you are conversing with someone else with iMessage (either through an iPhone or another Apple device), Messages will automatically use iMessage; otherwise, it will use SMS. (If you prefer to use SMS, you are welcome to disable iMessage on your phone or other Apple device.)

iMessage goes over the IP network, not a side-channel in the cellular system the way SMS does—so you have to have either Wifi coverage or cellular data available; if you don't, as a matter of fact, it falls back to SMS within the same conversation, provided you are conversing with someone else who is identified by a phone number, and not just an Apple ID.

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

#599

Post by CivBase »

jonhohle wrote: post #241
CivBase wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. This is much more similar to MS and Internet Explorer back in 98. Interestingly enough, one of the outcomes of that case was IE for the Mac.

It required no ongoing infrastructure for people to use IE either on Windows or on Mac. iMessage requires servers, bandwidth, and operators.

Yeah, they're definitely not identical. But from an antitrust perspective I think the MS case is at least much more similar.

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

#600

Post by msh »

leonheld wrote: post #553
msh wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think saying its US only is oversimplifying, its at least also true in some european markets.

Which ones? I have friends (young and old) all over Europe and everyone uses WhatsApp. Everywhere I've been in Europe defaults to WhatsApp, even for business communication. Like, it's n=1, but still, my experience is quite broad.

At least in my experience most of the nordics is mostly iPhones and WhatsApp is somewhat rare.
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