I have seen this argument so many times and it has never made sense to me. There is so much quality software that is free and open and interoperable. It is more than possible to be both open in nature and of high quality, to me that is indisputable. Apple obviously has a financial incentive to be locked down, they're not locked down out of any sort of necessity or as a concession for the sake of quality.
In the case of Beeper Mini, the proof is in the pudding. You have evidence right in front of your face that an Android client for iMessage is possible, because one now exists. Does your iPhone suddenly feel lower quality to you?
> You have evidence right in front of your face that an Android client for iMessage is possible, because one now exists.
Sure, but I'm not the one who has to handle customer service for it.
Apple can have a test suite that encompasses every possible supported device (and OS combination). That's much tougher if they want to support Android.
> Does your iPhone suddenly feel lower quality to you?
No, but that's missing the point. If Beeper catches on, and all my Android friends install it, and some of my messages start getting lost, delayed, what have you, that's when I'd start to feel it.
> If Beeper catches on, and all my Android friends install it, and some of my messages start getting lost, delayed, what have you, that's when I'd start to feel it.
You realize that's been Apple's fault right, intentionally breaking Beeper?
Apple doesn't need to provide support for Android if they simply open their protocol and let whoever develops the Android client take care of that, as evidenced by Beeper Mini.
> If Beeper catches on, and all my Android friends install it, and some of my messages start getting lost, delayed, what have you, that's when I'd start to feel it.
In that case, you might be shocked to learn that before Beeper Mini you simply couldn't send iMessages to Android devices at all. Imagine that, ALL of your iMessages to them getting dropped and having to go through SMS instead...
> Apple doesn't need to provide support for Android if they simply open their protocol and let whoever develops the Android client take care of that, as evidenced by Beeper Mini.
Now they have to support an open standard/protocol, though. That's not negligible effort.
> In that case, you might be shocked to learn that before Beeper Mini you simply couldn't send iMessages to Android devices at all. Imagine that, ALL of your iMessages to them getting dropped and having to go through SMS instead...
But that's seamless; I've never had to wait or make that choice.
When there's some kind of iMessage failure, though, they sit around and don't send, until I get a delivery failure and "send as SMS" as the fallback. This is rare, but extremely annoying. Adding third-party services into the mix doesn't seem like it's going to reduce these instances.
> Now they have to support an open standard/protocol, though. That's not negligible effort.
Evidently not, given the existence of Beeper Mini without intervention on their part. In fact, they're actively spending effort on breaking a working implementation that took them no effort. And either way, they have trillions of dollars and some of the brightest people in tech under their belt. If your argument is that they're not capable of making that protocol work, you're wrong.
>But that's seamless; I've never had to wait or make that choice.
It's seamlessly giving you less functionality, sure. This is not a matter of opinion: Being able to send iMessages to Android users is a feature that iPhones currently do not have at all. Apple is choosing to not give you that functionality when they could be. With something like Beeper Mini, you as an iPhone user gain more functionality by being able to send iMessages to some Android users. Even if it fails sometimes, it is still functionality that simply did not exist at all before. This is only beneficial to you as an iPhone user because you now have functionality that you did not before. I don't know if that can be phrased any more directly.
> They're spending effort fixing a security hole in an internal protocol.
Then they're spending effort regardless, and your argument was that they shouldn't spend effort at all. If that is the case then it would be better spent opening the protocol in the first place.
> That's like saying Toyota doesn't offer "driving a Ford" as a feature.
Fun hyperbole, but no, there's an obvious difference and this is a reach.
> I don't give a shit? Sending an SMS to Android users is fine.
Good for you, but it's obvious that a lot of people do care. Look around in this very thread, even. Apple users complain that things like group chats and read receipts don't work with Android users. The whole fickle green bubble thing originates from this. Plenty of people do care about this functionality and are happy that this exists, iPhone users included. And if you don't care, then why would you be so insistent about not wanting it added?
In the case of Beeper Mini, the proof is in the pudding. You have evidence right in front of your face that an Android client for iMessage is possible, because one now exists. Does your iPhone suddenly feel lower quality to you?