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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”

#951

Post by 015a »

etchalon wrote: post #238
015a wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, you're asserting that the color choice of the bubbles ten years ago was unintentional? That whatever developer coded it had no instruction, Jony Ive & Steve Jobs were silent, and they used a random number generator to pick the hex code? And additionally, you're asserting that its impossible to change or improve? That its just such an intractable problem which we inherited, and changing it would be such a herculea…

I'm asserting that a decision was made that SMS messages were green. Then a decision was made that iMessage messages would be blue. I'm asserting this was not done with animosity. It was a decision by Apple's UX team to make it easy to visually identify the difference between the message mechanics and capabilities of the end-user. It is remarkably simple, effective and easily understood. If Apple chose to make it so…

I'm not asserting that Apple's choice of color is malicious; just that it needs to be improved.

Also, I'm not asserting that Green is bad. The issue is the shade of Green, and the a11y issues it creates. I don't know how you jumped on "entirely different colors" or "the same color"; Android's criticism in the original article is very clear, its an a11y contrast issue with the light green background and white text. That's it. Nothing else.

This issue is, seriously, a lot simpler than you're exploding it to be. Make it 10 shades darker; done. They even have an option in their accessibility settings to make it so. This is a simple change, any a11y expert (including, maybe, the MANY apple themselves employs) would say the way it stands today is bad, but their inaction conveys intention.

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

#952

Post by hjkl0 »

firstbabylonian wrote: post #871
blitzar wrote: post #805

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that default is WhatsApp and installing it is as much a part of setting up your phone as is plugging in a SIM You missed out the bit where you sign your soul over to Mark Zuckerberg.

Regular people don’t realise or care, they just want to be where their friends are.

Regular people don’t think giving up some privacy is the same as selling your soul…

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

#953

Post by MetroWind »

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…

Are we really at the point where letting a corporation decide what we can/cannot do on our own hardware is a good thing now?

Though the more I think about it the more I realize that we are indeed already at that point, and people really think that's a good thing. That's really sad to me.

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

#954

Post by alxndr »

zaik wrote: post #748
altairprime wrote: post #712

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google closed down their Jabber gateway because they couldn’t stop the endless flood of spam into their userbase. If they had instead required device identifier attestations to accompany all Jabber messages, they could have left that API open for everyone to use, and simply banned device identifiers used for spamming. I wish they’d done so, instead of just giving up and closing their doors to Jabber.

Do you have any good source on why Google decided to shut down their XMPP service? I'd really like to read about it. Not sure about the spam thing, after all they also provide a federating email service.

How much effort/development have they put in to the spam detection on Gmail?

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

#955

Post by inferiorhuman »

int_19h wrote: post #760
inferiorhuman wrote: post #659

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should Apple (or anyone) be on the hook for implementing proprietary extensions? Once you peel back the marketing schtick this is just demanding that Google be able to determine which proprietary services are included on an Apple product. That's ridiculous on its face. If the issue is interoperability with Android users, fine. Google had successful messaging apps on iOS (I used a few) and they destroyed them thro…

At the end of the day, what we need is interop, so Apple should be forced to either open the protocol, or adopt something that is already open. But either option is strictly better than the existing mess.

  But either option is strictly better than the existing mess.
Disagree. We have interoperability, just not with advanced features within the default messaging apps. To me that's not a big deal at all as there are other, popular, options. We should get out of the habit of relying on carriers to provide much more than dumb pipes. To that end SMS (not MMS) works just fine and RCS is just going to continue to get bogged down.

It's easy to say that if Apple bent to the will of the carriers the iPhone would never have been as good as it is. But look at RCS, Google had to stand up their own infrastructure because the carriers weren't cutting it.

It's not that RCS is not the right product it's that RCS is the wrong approach entirely. Even in the United States Android is wildly popular. They've had every opportunity to create a wildly popular messaging platform and have failed. Google killed their own products as a result of their internal culture. This isn't Netscape vs IE again, it's more like Mosaic vs Gopher (or AOL vs Netscape if you like).

I was going to write "as much as I'd like to see non-Apple devices brought into the iMessage fold" but then I realized that's not true. I don't care because I'd just use Signal. In fact I still use Signal with some friends that have iPhones. RCS wouldn't change that, it'd either be one more shitty carrier product to avoid or one more shitty Google product that's going to get killed in a few months.

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

#956

Post by muttled »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #767
komali2 wrote: post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you SMS people without a USA phone number?

For non-North American recipients from a North American phone number, you have to prefix with the country code[0]. So unnecessary if you're in the US and want to call Canada or Jamaica or wherever. But say you want to call someone with a UK phone number, you just send the SMS to +44- . [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_country_calling_codes

As a leftover artifact from growing up not allowed to call long-distance, I frequently think of things like "Is long-distance texting charges a thing? Will I get charged for texting my friend with a Mexico number? Does it matter if she's currently in Mexico or the US? Does sending a picture incur a fee even if an sms doesn't?"

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

#957

Post by muttled »

psyc wrote: post #391
dcormier wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s very ableist of you. About 1 in 12 males are colorblind. I’m in this group. I find white text on a bright green background very difficult to read.

This comment says almost exactly the same thing without the first sentence. This trend of everyone calling everyone else a something-ist can’t die fast enough.

I know it's awful that I thought of this, but I half-expected your second sentence to call him a label-ist.

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

#958

Post by nucleardog »

smoldesu wrote: post #911
nucleardog wrote: post #910

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On iOS, when Apple does the same, I don't really have a choice other than to go along with it. Part of my original comment: > I don't have to think about how I want the phone to work because it just works the Apple way and if I don't like it I can just get a different phone. That's a feature to me. I don't spend any brainspace when I'm using my phone on thinking about things that annoy me or things that could be be…

You're perfectly welcome to have good defaults, but how do those conflict with allowing people to use third-party messaging apps and letting people customize their phone? Your comment isn't a refutation of the argument you're replying to.

> When I used Android, knowing I _could_ fix those annoyances meant I _did_ fix those annoyances. That's just not something important for me to be spending my time on, but I know I will if put in that situation.

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

#959

Post by otterley »

kelnos wrote: post #436
otterley wrote: post #21

Apple, pointing to all the happy children in the iMessage pool: "nah, we good, thanks"

Which is why regulation needs to step in. The "free" market has failed. > happy children Are they, though? Sure, if you're an iPhone user and everyone you know is an iPhone user, things are great. But once one person uses Android (or, god forbid, a feature phone), your experience gets much worse. No more E2EE, no more read receipts, no more typing notifications, no more reliable delivery and message ordering, no more…

Anyone who cares about communicating with Android devices uses WhatsApp. This is a non problem for 99.99% of the population. Google’s just complaining about sour grapes since they can’t compete.

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

#960

Post by simonh »

anifru wrote: post #944
simonh wrote: post #849

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>or adopt something that is already open Like SMS?

Obviously we're talking about something more modern than SMS here.

The problem is none of the 'more modern' open alternatives to SMS actually seem any better.
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