Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

“It’s time for Apple to fix texting”

android.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

971–980 of 1001 posts

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

#971

Post by etchalon »

015a wrote: post #951
etchalon wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Th…

Apple has had an "increase contrast" option on iOS, which does exactly what you're asking for, specifically designed for a11y, within the Accessibility Settings panel of iOS, since iOS 8 I believe, potentially earlier. This increases contrasts throughout the entire iOS experience, and yes, makes the green bubbles several shades darker.

They are not "inactive".

(It's also important to remember that the "green bubbles" applies to messages sent, not received. Received texts, no matter to mechanism, are either black text on grey, or white text on near-black depending on Dark mode)

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

#972

Post by lern_too_spel »

altairprime wrote: post #893
kalleboo wrote: post #842

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are literally multiple internal Apple emails released through court testimony where Apple executives clearly explain how important iMessage is to lock-in to iPhone and how if parents can just buy an Android and install an iMessage app it would mean disaster. In none of these emails is spam or privacy or security even mentioned. The primary reason Apple is doing it for platform lock-in, plain and simple. They li…

You misunderstand. I don’t care about Apple’s desire for lock-in at all. I want Google RCS to implement, and make mandatory, secured device identifier attestation. I want to be able to block the actual hardware devices that spam me through carrier messaging. RCS could have offered that, and doesn’t. What a shame.

Why does RCS need to do that? RCS replaces SMS as the baseline interoperable protocol, not the iMessage protocol.

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

#973

Post by baby »

hot_gril wrote: post #932
baby wrote: post #837

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No the middle is not trusted, that’s the whole point of end to end encryption. Users can check security keys. Also yes some people are reverse engineering clients. If you’re claiming that the whatsapp clients are backdoored and faking the end to end encryption claim that would be a pretty big news

The middle is trusted for the identity exchange and not afterwards. This is fundamental and has nothing to do with what protocol is used. If you explain to me an e2ee messaging protocol with a centralized server that you think is trustless, I can always show you a leap of faith in there. The first time your client messages another on WhatsApp, it knows nothing other than the phone number and has to somehow go through…

Yeah that’s end to end encryption. Like any security protocol it is based on assumptions and trust comes from somewhere. In this case trust comes from verifying each other security keys, or more meta: knowing that the incentive for the server to cheat are low as they might get caught by anyone checking and it could kill the entire product.

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

#974

Post by h3mb3 »

ivoras wrote: post #205

This is a US thing, right? Haven't received an SMS from a real person (in other words, all SMSes I get are 2FA etc) for, at least 5 years, maybe 10. Even people who use iPhones don't send SMSes, MMSes or anything as obsolete (including RCS). Everyone just seems to use WhatsApp and Telegram (or if they don't know any better, Viber). Locale: Central Europe. So, why would anyone stick to the obsolete stuff? Are there re…

My assumption was always that, from the get-go, iPhone just had that much of a bigger market share in the US compared to e.g. Europe. I remember in Finland in the early 2010s most of the people in my age group (~20-25 years old) had Android phones while I've understood in the US I'd been in the majority. Not suprising that that situation lead to different networking effects in the US vs elsewhere.

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

#975

Post by rat9988 »

acoard wrote: post #923
rat9988 wrote: post #870

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 -…

I just copy pasted from the link you are commenting...

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

#976

Post by s3p »

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…

Since iMessage is restricted to those with an Apple ID, what's stopping them from releasing cross-platform apps that function only if the user has a valid Apple device? I think it's a business choice, not a spam one.

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

#977

Post by KaiserPro »

thomasahle wrote: post #941
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.

> Are you saying that Apple doesn't send MMS? because from my experience, it totally can. I'm saying you should currently use another app if you want to send images or movies, because MMS compresses media beyond recognition. I don't understand why Apple users are against a simple fix that would let them send these things from inside iMessesage instead? Why do you think this would let Google have more of your chat his…

I suspect it would let more people spam me.

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

#978

Post by bee_rider »

wilde wrote: post #880
bee_rider wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's weird -- my phone number is definitely in some spammer lists (I get so many calls) but I have never once received an SMS or iMessage spam. What kind of things do they send?

Pig butchering mostly. “I am going to play golf with my business partners tomorrow. Will you have time to join us Dave?” https://www.rrstar.com/story/business/2022/04/30/new-pig-but...

Ah, I've only ever seen that in emails. Annoying!

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

#979

Post by int_19h »

simonh wrote: post #960
anifru wrote: post #944

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How exactly RCS is not strictly better than SMS?

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

#980

Post by simonjgreen »

raxxorraxor wrote: post #804
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.

I think the argument about SMS being insecure is very real but exaggerated. We send password reset with capability URLs through non encrypted mail. Sure, the channel is most likely encrypted but anyone at mail service providers could easily take over a massive amount of accounts. Although the user would notice at least. Sure, there are tools to intercept SMS without the user noticing, but as a second factor an attack…

To be clear, I don't consider it to be bad for primarily security reasons, I consider it to be bad because it's inconvenient when it's the only option and forced. I would always prefer TOTP or a push based system such as WhatsApp or telegram or similar. SMS can be slow, and uses an application I don't open for any other purpose.
Post reply on HN