> The only blocker is that Apple doesn't want it to exist.
This is my main source of excitement around this project. The existence of this project shows that there is no technical reason it can't exist. So, what is the reason it doesn't exist? Exactly what you said: Apple thinks it is in its best interest not to.
There’s also the fact that iMessages have a cost to them. An individual message might not amount to much, but millions of them? Apple is hosting the computing to manage the delivery of iMessages. Should they provide that free of charge to the world out of the goodness of their heart?
As of iOS 6.1 (2013), Apple said APNS had delivered over 4 trillion notifications already. A 2018 paper [0] claimed (with an admittedly-small sample size) that people receive on average 56 notifications a day (delivered, not necessarily interacted with). It's almost 2024. Even going off those old numbers, assuming 2 billion active devices [1], APNS would be delivering close to 41 TRILLION messages a year, and likely growing.
That's a lot of pepperoni, guys. Expensive pepperoni. Just some food for thought.
This is my main source of excitement around this project. The existence of this project shows that there is no technical reason it can't exist. So, what is the reason it doesn't exist? Exactly what you said: Apple thinks it is in its best interest not to.