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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”

#921

Post by caseyohara »

kookamamie wrote: post #755
caseyohara wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More than 95% of my personal communication ... is in WhatsApp This is wild to me. I'm squarely in the middle of the millennial generation and I've never used WhatsApp and I've never known anyone that uses it. Nearly all of my personal communication is through Messages on my iPhone/iPad/Mac.

You must live in a very special bubble then, given that Android's market share is currently at 72 %.

72% globally, sure. iOS dominates where I live https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/united-sta...

I would estimate iOS has 99% market share among my social network, including nuclear and extended family. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a green bubble.

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

#922

Post by latexr »

partiallypro wrote: post #906
latexr wrote: post #669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is the whole point. It’s the point of the website but is not the point the person I replied to made. I replied to what I quoted, not the article.

Nothing you said contradicted my point. Apple forces SMS which nerfs videos, they choose that on purpose to inconvenience Android users. Android to Android works perfectly because they aren't using SMS, they are using RCS.

> they choose that on purpose to inconvenience Android users.

So you keep saying, but what’s the source for the claim? It inconveniences iOS users just as much since it only happens during the interaction of iOS and Android. I doubt Apple hates Android so much they specifically choose to inconvenience their own users to spite the competing platform. Seems to me a more likely explanation is that they don’t care enough or don’t want to implement the protocol.

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

#923

Post by acoard »

rat9988 wrote: post #870
KaiserPro wrote: post #855

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that Apple doesn't send MMS? because from my experience, it totally can. I know because I've got the bill for it. But to go back to the original point, I don't want google near my chat history. I don't really like Apple having it either.

Apple turns texts between iPhones and Android phones into SMS and MMS, out-of-date technologies from the 90s and 00s. But Apple can adopt RCS—the modern industry standard—for these threads instead. Solving the problem without changing your iPhone to iPhone conversations and making messaging better for everyone. At some point we should require people to tell us whether they have read the link or not so we can know if…

> Apple turns texts between iPhones and Android phones into SMS and MMS, out-of-date technologies from the 90s and 00s.

Your first paragraph is copied verbatim from Google's marketing material[0] without attribution. I just wanted to point out for anyone out there if you google that phrase you will find it verbatim repeated across the internet. I know this isn't an academic environment - who cares about plagiarism - but just to highlight it as part of media literacy. Your comment is part of a media/marketing campaign, it is not an actual back-and-forth dialogue that one would expect on HN.

[0] https://www.android.com/get-the-message/

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

#924

Post by paganel »

JimDabell wrote: post #914
paganel wrote: post #796

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You say this like it is a bad thing. It has been a bad thing for me because iOS decided to get me off Whtasapp and forced me using the much worse Apple message system without me having any say in it. I have a SE and a relatively older iOS version on it, can't remember exactly which one. I don't have internet banking and don't have very much of a financial presence online, and, as such, I don't care that much about…

> It turns out I cannot "reload" any of those offloaded apps if any one of them doesn't support my iOS version anymore. You can – unless the application publisher decides to disable this. It sounds like Facebook disabled your ability to install an older version of WhatsApp that supports the version of iOS you are running. All it would take for this to work for you is for somebody at Facebook to tick a single box that…

Got it. So it’s a shared blame between Apple de facto uninstalling one of the few installed apps I was using on a regular basis and FB not allowing their app to run on iOS versions that are approaching their estimated end-of-life.

Not sure how that helps users like me, but had you told me 20+ years ago that this was going to be “the state of the art” when it comes to app management (by two of the biggest tech companies in the world) I would have called you crazy. And I was a Windows 2000 user back in those days.

It’s also funny that, in a way, the WhatsApp app was the one that nuked itself. The “full storage” issue had been caused by some of my friends sending constant photos and videos of their cats (and one guinea pig) via WhatsApp, storage gets full, iOS decides to offload the WhatsApp app, I get left out of the app once I’m not allowed to “reload” it anymore. Again, crazy to think that this is the state of the art in app management.

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

#925

Post by howinteresting »

altairprime wrote: post #694
howinteresting wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, maybe expensive dongles should be a thing of the past and Apple should invest in machine learning a bit more. My Pixel does a great job filtering out SMS spam, with 2 false positives (both automated messages) and zero false negatives in the last month.

I have received a single iMessage spam message in ten years, total. You would have, statistically, received at least 240 false positives in that time assuming current heuristics technology. I don’t think heuristics are the answer if your goal is Project Zero Spam.

My goal is not project zero spam, my goal is interoperability and the end of expensive dongles.

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

#926

Post by mikhael28 »

Google just salty because cool young people want the blue.

Only old, ugly people use Android.

… believe it or not, this is how young people think. When I was single, it was rare to find a hot girl I was interested in use Android. Now, maybe my taste in women is questionable, but that was the reality - much easier to ‘trust’ the blue, instead of that sketchy, broke ass Android green.

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

#927

Post by MattSayar »

seb1204 wrote: post #460
RainaRelanah wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get like two spam SMS a year. And my SMS app always properly flags them as being spam/scams. This really is such a terrible excuse. It's also ignoring the root issue. Adding RCS to iMessages doesn't affect the spam. You'll still get it from both SMS and RCS. Apple not adding RCS is 100% due to keeping market share.

In recent months I get about 2 per week.

In recent weeks I get two per day. I don't know what's changed.

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

#928

Post by lumb63 »

jvolkman wrote: post #678
eftychis wrote: post #673

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And as you can see in my comment "what is Apple's motive for giving up their moat?" Edit: I am not sure I understand why the downvote. Also disagreement should not be expressed with downvote. I was stressing that my point (and Apple's I guess) is it doesn't make business sense what Google is asking.

SMS isn't their moat, though. They wouldn't give up iMessage. Supporting RCS (again, in addition to iMessage) would make their product better: it would allow higher quality media to be sent to and received from non-Apple users; it would allow for typing indicators and read receipts with non-Apple users; and (perhaps most importantly) it would allow - if Apple adopted Google's extensions - e2e encryption with non-Appl…

It results in a better experience for their users, but it would not improve their business. It would lower the barrier to switching from iOS to Android. A lot of people, myself included, only have an iPhone because of iMessage. I would love if my iPhone supported RCS. But that is at least in part because it would pave the way to me being free from Apple (not that I’d necessarily switch). And that hurts Apple directly.

It also hurts them because it decreases their network effect. If people do not encourage each other to move to iMessage because RCS is more available, fewer users switch to iPhones.

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

#929

Post by soperj »

altairprime wrote: post #704
soperj wrote: post #695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“I am concerned that the iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove and obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones,” Craig Federighi, Apple software senior vice president, wrote in 2013." They'll find another reason not to implement it on other platforms.

Consider whether Apple has changed their position about shipping key functionalities of their platform to non-Apple devices in the decade since then, in light of (for example) their purchase of and continued offerings of Android-friendly Beats products, their beta of Apple Music as a webpage in any browser, and their TV services app spreading to every smart television platform that competes with Apple TVs.

You can't even get their browser on another platform.

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

#930

Post by oneplane »

KaiserPro wrote: post #857
RussianCow wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US market standardized on mobile plans with unlimited texting a long, long time ago, so I think this caused people to mostly stick to SMS/MMS for communication since it was the path of least resistance. I don't know what the situation in Europe is like now, but in the past I remember it being difficult to find plans without very small SMS caps when traveling. That could be why Europeans naturally gravitated towar…

I still don't understand how SMS took off in the US. for a long time you had to pay to receive texts, which is madness. given that undercurrent of expense, I'm still not sure why the US hasn't moved to whatsapp/signal/other. The only thing I can think of is that mobile data is even more expensive.

If I'm not mistaken, a lot happens on Facebook in the US, including instant messaging.
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