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Beeper’s push for iMessage on Android is really over
(www.theverge.com)
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this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2024
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The whole reason for Beeper to even exist is stupid.
It was never going to work, but they shouldn't have needed to try in the first place.
Beeper Mini, I can agree the reason for existing is stupid. Not Beeper as a whole. I greatly like having a one stop shop for all of my messaging platforms. It's a straight up fucking pain in the ass to have Messages, Messenger, Whatsapp, Discord, Telegram, LinkedIn, and more all having their own specific applications with separate lists of people in them. Gaim/Pidgin/Trillian/Adium had the right idea back in the day and if it isn't done at an application level like Beeper, then I would really like it done at an OS level where all apps of a communication/chat type have their notifications and interactivity bundled. There's going to be platform exclusive features that don't have parity that wouldn't be able to be part through or presented the same, but communications are such a base level function of these devices and the generally one-application-at-a-time type of display of phones makes the balkanization of communication mediums even more annoying.
I think Blackberry had the right solution with their Hub app. It was just a big inbox with a lot of integrations. It would show you all the conversations from different apps (including email) with all the typical filtering, sorting and searching. You had a single screen to see all your conversations nicely organized but clicking on a message would take you to the external app to send messages. It was super useful but of course apps had to provide some API for this to work and BB wasn't popular enough so at some point it just stopped working. Android could easily do this but I think they are just not as good at UX as BB was (seriously, BB OS10 had lots of great features iOS copied a decade later and more, it was really nice).
Yeah also iOS is getting RCS support soon so the whole point is moot. The whole blue bubble thing is a lot of people with way too much time on their hands to get worried about stuff that doesn't matter at all.
The bubbles are pointless. What matters is that apple will not send media like videos or pictures over anything but sms to android users, which means it gets transcoded down to 2.5MB max. This means that any media, which is a lot of what people send nowadays, looks like absolute trash going apple to android.
Its a sleazy, underhanded way to get people to buy into the apple ecosystem so they can stop getting tiny, grainy videos of their friends/family.
Just don't send shit from apple? If you want to send me shit, get a decent phone or don't bother?
Not sure why apple enshittifying their messages is supposed to incentivise me to do anything but ridicule them.
Or send over WhatsApp,Signal, Telegram, Facebook Messenger, Teams, damn Skype? Or any messaging apps
You just pointed out the problem. Instead of using the inbuilt iMessage that works wonderfully for everyone with an apple phone, they now need to install 6+ other apps to send uncompressed media. Signal for johny and sheri, teams for david, bill and fred, skype for Susie on and on.
It's no wonder I just get a thumbnail sized pixel fest of my relatives instead. Apple has very astutly leveraged "ease of use" and "monopoly action" to all but literally lock the majority of their users into an ecosystem that makes it worthwhile to buy into it to end the issue apple created.
It’s always android users complaining about this. Why should Apple care if its users don’t?
I’m an iOS user and I use iMessage with some people, discord with some people, telegram with some people and Skype with some people and it doesn’t bother me in the slightest to do so. It’s not even cumbersome to do so, the contacts show up on the same share screen regardless of platform.
If the people you are communicating with don’t care enough to send something to you in a format that works for you, that’s on them, not on Apple.
Demanding that Apple make an app for android so that you can use their service without paying for their product reeks of entitlement though.
Chat and messaging was interoperable for years, even between platforms. Go look up the history of XMPP. It was a shared protocol many different companies implemented before they realized locking down the messaging medium meant locking in users.
Chat working on whatever platform is incredibly basic and easy, even with modern features. Its is only monopolistic action that keeps these things from working together, companies engaged in capturing customers with bad practice instead of good products. In no way, shape or form is it "entitled" to expect apple/google/facebook/et al to not hobble human communication for profit, and to just use good, interoperable standards.
The fact that Apple won't, and at most has pretended to make gestures while an intense FTC has started filing lawsuits against tech giants, tells you that they fully understand the value this brings them as a company.
You’re asking them to do work and open up their chat platform to other devices that are outside of their ecosystem and they have no os level control over. The security aspect of this in itself makes this not something “incredibly basic and easy”.
On top of that, there’s literally no benefit for them to do it. There are plenty of third party options for chat out there, and again, clamoring for them to do this work and maintain a product while still maintaining security for no return is entitled and unrealistic.
People making this argument show themselves to be naive to how software development and business in general works.
It is not a secuirty issue to have interoperable chat platforms, with e2ee to boot. This is solved, open source, and usable by anyone. They don't have to "work on devices outside of their ecosystem" since they will all be following the same chat standard. That standard will work on other devices, because those devices in other ecosystems will also follow the same standard. This is the foundation of how the internet works, from email to the web. Chat is no different.
I spoke pretty extensively as to why Apple locks out other phones from their system, so Im confused about why you think I don't understand it. They do it to build up monopolistic power. They want user lockin, to control the social network that is "iMessage." Once they lock users into their ecosystem, it keeps them buying high profit hardware. It's very apparent why they intentionally harm human communication by opposing interoperability. It makes them money.
That makes Apple scumbags, flat out. The same goes for all the rest that won't offer interoperability. It's not a reasonable choice. It's not for safety, or security or any other buzzword. They make it harder for people to talk to each other so they can make more money. Period.
So your answer is "everyone I know with an apple device should stop using the thing that apple made sure works wonderfully for them and shift to another app to talk to me."
That's just not in touch with reality at all. What people actually do is keep using iMessage and sending shitty compressed media to android users. That's the problem people are actually complaining about, not some "bubble color" strawman.
It's a 40/60 split in the market. It's not like a friend group is likely to have only one android phone. Unless the iPhone users are avoiding people with Android phones.
Saying people should use a system agnostic message app isn't farfetched or selfish. It's the common sense solution.
You are absolutely correct. I’m an iOS user and have absolutely no qualms using anyone’s preferred message app (as long as it’s not WhatsApp, fuck fb).
People have always hated on apples Windows apps, the same is probably true if they have to start making android apps too.
It’s literally the correct decision for them not to make an iMessage for android, the only people demanding it are the people who aren’t buying their products!
RCS is not end-to-end encrypted, so their bubbles will remain green.
Google's proprietary extensions add E2EE, and Apple's not going to pull a Beeper on Google.
Google has been begging Apple to implement RCS for well over a year now. They wouldn't need to pull a beeper on Google since Google actively wants to help Apple implement their standard.
I'd count on Apple making the RCS bubbles green too, just to sow further confusion.
Yeah and anybody complaining about it at that point is just being a whiny child.
They have confirmed that they will be green
How is that going to help if the only RCS apps for Android are proprietary Google or Samsung apps?
It's actually not that RCS. Apple is saying they'll adopt RCS the standard which would likely be a big wildcard.
Yes, so which FOSS Android app will be interoperable with the new iMessage?
Propably when Google allows Android apps to access modem-level RCS message sending. Right now Google Messages do everything via Google's some sort of a proxy server.
A whole lot of mess just like always when phone operators do anything.
Imagine how cool it could be if every mobile provider would just provide data and free XMPP account with autoconfigure instead of RCS or VoLTE crap.
RCS is nothing like a proper network based messenger. It is too little, too late.
I for one will never use it.
I was using XMPP on my phone in 2010...which was years ahead of RCS even then.
RCS is still tied to a phone number... Why would I want another version of SMS?