this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2024
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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.