What's anti-competitive with what Apple does with iMessage? iMessage's lack of popularity everywhere else in the world is proof that competition is able to flourish. Apple is under no obligation to make an Android app, and it's silly to pretend not making an app for another platform is somehow anti-competetive.
The market simply chosing a preference is not anti-competive. iPhone and iMessage is able to compete on it's own merits without competition being artificially hindered.
> iMessage's lack of popularity everywhere else in the world is proof that competition is able to flourish.
I truly do not understand the reasoning behind this. A product doesn’t need to be popular world-wide for behavior to be anti-competitive. The reality is that the US market is heavily impacted, and the fact that this isn’t true in other geos has nothing to do with the impact here.
> Apple is under no obligation to make an Android app, and it's silly to pretend not making an app for another platform is somehow anti-competetive.
I think that framing this only as an obligation for Apple to make an android app is unnecessarily narrow.
There are many ways this could be solved:
- By not artificially degrading the non-iMessage experience
- By not want until 2024 to implement support for RCS
- By opening up APIs with appropriate restrictions to be consumed by other apps - the thing they do for most other native phone capabilities
Building a first party app is just one of a large number of possibilities that are less broken than the status quo.
RCS will help this. They’re embarrassingly and/or intentionally late to the party.
If I have a computer that's technically capable to interoperate and talk with someone else's computer, why should we intentionally restrict that ability?
The answer isn't to say that in other locations we have a different gatekeeper so all is well, the answer should be that Apple's gatekeeping should be broken, and then other gatekeepers' gatekeeping should be broken too.
We should all have one messaging client that can seamlessly use all the major protocols and services - in fact like we used to have over a decade ago.
There's plenty of cross-platform messaging apps available. There's a plethora of ways those two computers an interoperate, all the way down to the lowest-common denominator of SMS (and soon to be, RCS, which Apple took their time on). They all work great. Many of them dominate as a third party options on both iPhone and Android across the world.
> why should we intentionally restrict that ability
I don't believe software and hardware companies should be under obligation to support things they don't want to. Users can decide on whether the products meet their needs and decide whether they work for them or not.
If Apple had implemented RCS sooner, I don’t think we’d be having this conversation. While a lot of emphasis has been placed on the desirability of the blue bubble, I think it’s important to focus on why: interoperability is artificially bad, and basic things like sending a photo or video are broken in 2023.
Apple made the decision to blend iMessage seamlessly into the phone’s default messaging experience, and with the power of that default, they’ve weaponized the intentional interoperability failure.
Should they be under some obligation to support things they don’t want to? As a product manager, I say that depends on what their customers want out of the devices they’re buying. Apple does owe their users something here, and it’s reasonable to expect that a new device purchased in 2023 is capable of sending a quality photo to other devices. Regardless of obligation, I also think they deserve every bit of anger and bad press they get for the way they’ve played this.
It’s smart business, but that’s not the same thing as good for consumers.
> should be under obligation to support things they don't want to
Nobody is asking them to support anything though - Beeper developed their client on their own and isn't asking Apple anything. Apple is in fact spending extra resources to break interoperability, where as they could just do nothing.
It's just worse than the alternative that Apple provides for its own ecosystem of users. Any Apple user is free to opt for that more universal system if they want.
Well, Beeper has proven that we now have another one: iMessage.
Why not use the more modern, featureful & secure option instead of antiquated SMS? Why are you still defending corporate greed at the expense of user experience?
I pay Apple to manage my mobile device experience. That is literally why they demand and receive a premium over the alternatives. Why do you think Apple customers are some helpless and ignorant victim, and not people specifically placing their bets with a company that has delivered exceptional products at the expense of rather fringe philosophical views on "openness?" I don't care about "openness" nor taking down "corporate greed" in this context, I care about having a great experience using my own mobile device.
FWIW there was an era where I felt differently. I was very active in the early Android jailbreak community. It was fun and the freedom has benefits, but those are benefits that I've deliberately chosen to give up for the benefits of the other end of the spectrum. I wasn't tricked into giving them up and neither was anyone else: people are paying Apple for the experience Apple is trusted to deliver. The reason people trust them is because they deliver it. It's super simple.
> I pay Apple to manage my mobile device experience
> I care about having a great experience using my own mobile device.
But you can still do that - I don't see how Beeper changes that? As a happy Apple user you don't need to use Beeper, though might still get benefit from it if your Android-using friends can now use the same messaging app you do.
When you have market power, your behavior has to be held to a higher standard. Apple has huge amounts of market power in the US cell phone market. It is totally clear to any reasonable observer that they are using that market power to dissuade people from purchasing Android devices via the green bubble system.
> "Making a product that people like and use" is abusing market power?
This is a very one-sided framing of the situation and leaves out quite a few factors.
People aren’t just buying Apple products because they like them. They’re being forced to buy Apple products to stay in the “in” group. They face exclusion by peers due to Apple’s dominance in the geo and in certain demographics.
As I understand it, iMessage is not dominant in the EU, so the market conditions are quite unlike each other.
> They’re being forced to buy Apple products to stay in the “in” group. They face exclusion by peers due to Apple’s dominance in the geo and in certain demographics
So, uh, factors that have zero to do with Apple are evidence that it is… abusing… the… market…?
Are you auditioning for Apples’ defence team or something?
> So, uh, factors that have zero to do with Apple are evidence that it is… abusing… the… market…?
How does this have zero to do with Apple? It has everything to do with Apple, because it’s ultimately their product decisions driving user behavior.
Had they implemented support for RCS by now, this conversation wouldn’t be happening. They made the explicit choice to capitalize on their poor interoperability and decided to claim it’s for security reasons, which is pretty obviously bullshit.
The market simply chosing a preference is not anti-competive. iPhone and iMessage is able to compete on it's own merits without competition being artificially hindered.