I am entrenched in both Samsung and Apple ecosystems. You would be surprised at how close the Samsung ecosystem is to Apple.
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Apple Puts a Stop to Beeper Mini's iMessage for Android Feature
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That’s great that Samsung are trying. They are lacking their own operating systems though to do it properly
Maybe the hardware. But Apple has the combination of all 3 - hardware, software and services. Which allows for things like the following:
1) Use Siri to play music on Apple Music on your cellular watch. On your Samsung wear, you would be using google assistant to stream music from Spotify.
2) Apple, by virtue of having aggregated the best customers in the world, is able to incentivise developers to create apps for the App Store either first or exclusively. Meanwhile, Samsung still largely taps on the google play store, and I am struggling to find any meaningful differentiation in their own Samsung Galaxy App Store. On iOS, I have apps like lumafusion, ivory (mastodon client), overcast, fantastical, notability, lookup (a very nice dictionary app), and (once upon a time) tweetbot and Apollo. Whatever the best third party apps that Android has, I am willing to bet that they don't come close to matching the best of class apps that iOS is host to.
3) It's good to finally see Samsung commit to 4 years of software upgrades minimum for their line of flagship devices. Though I am recently seeing more people around me walk around with a green line on their Samsung phone screens, which I understand was caused by a recent software update, and one that Samsung is refusing to fix or acknowledge.
4) Apple, thanks to their video streaming platform, is starting to create content designed for the Vision Pro. This in my opinion is the true power of their ecosystem - how Apple is able to use their existing platform to give a leg up to any subsequent product that they release.
5) Samsung has folding phones, but not the influence to push developers to support their apps properly for such a form factor, it would seem. This is what happens when you don't own the underlying OS.
So it would appear to me that Samsung is only able to ape Apple's ecosystem on a very superficial level.
I continue to be impressed by how one company is also to stand up against Samsung, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Spotify (I may have missed out 1 or 2 competitors here), and this all goes back to Apple having total control over their ecosystem. We also see how the narrative has shifted over the past decade, from Apple constantly being one flop away from irrelevancy (Apple's low market share was often cited as a sign of an incompetent product strategy) to Apple having too much power, and government regulators being viewed as the only entity capable of protecting Apple users from Apple (total poppycock, in my opinion).
What I am ultimately trying to say here is that anyone thinking that Apple users are somehow being forced against their will to buy products like Apple Watches and AirPods is nothing more than looking for someone to blame for market failures when they should be blaming the competition for bad vision, inadequate corporate culture, and a lack of understanding as to what makes Apple unique.
This. I wish more companies were like Apple, we’d have a much more competitive market.
Entire world uses WhatsApp. They must be doing something right.
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Yet Apple is so insecure it needs iMessage aa a system seller.
That is exactly my point. I like Android more than iOS and if the other person has a contrarian choice, than due to Apple's shenanigans, it's virtually impossible to communicate.
Apple locking down iMessage to their own users is not going to get me to go out and buy an iPhone. I like Android specific reasons which iOS does not have and a messaging app is not going to change that[/QUOTE]
The drama.
Yeah, it is telling others to not try it. Next time maybe they don't just block your access and end your "business" with a keystroke. They send a lawsuit your way as well.
What a colossal waste of time from the developer of it. They are lucky they aren't being sued.
Apparently they are working at a fix that should be available in short time. Of course it's always a risk to build a business based on someone else's proprietary technology, but there is definitely a demand and I doubt they invested much: the potential is well worth the effort.
I don't think Apple has enough to win a lawsuit:
- Beeper is basically implementing the iMessage protocol through reverse-engineering, which means their implementation is not infringing Apple's copyright.
- Beeper is interacting only with Apple's public servers. They have not gained access to private or internal network infrastructure.
- I doubt there are patents at play protecting the iMessage protocol. That might be a possibility though.
The more interesting aspect is that it's now clear that an interoperable iMessage is not only technically achievable, but likely pretty easy to accomplish. This means Apple's motivation to avoid interoperability with iMessage is mainly strategical as opposed to technical.
So over at The Verge iMessage not being available on Android is treated as the worst thing ever in the history of mankind. Honest question: are there that many iOS users who refuse to use anything but iMessage? Don’t we keep hearing how iMessage is only big in the United States? I would love to know the percentage of Android users who have this terrible messaging experience because friends and/or family members have an iOS device and refuse to use anything but iMessage. My guess is it’s tiny.
For some reason some actually have an issue with the "bubble" not being the same color, let alone the lack of capabilities.
IMHO integrating RCS to allow more than basic text is enough and that's coming, requiring opening iMessage to third-parties completely is likely excessive at this point and it seems the EU actually reconsidered it too.
Seems this is mostly an issue with group texts amongst iPhone/Android users. I’m skeptical there are that many iPhone (or Android) users who refuse to use 3rd party messaging apps. And as others have pointed out, iMessage is not huge outside of the US.
As far as the bubble colors, I don’t believe for one second that teens are actually being bullied because they don’t use an iPhone. That’s just clickbait nonsense from The Verge and tech writers like Joanna Stern.
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no it doesn't if people choose not to use alternative messengers they hurt themselves no one else, this move hurts no one apart from them people who chose to do it to themselves.
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That's just push notifications and the literal sending of messages. Building and maintaining the client on another platform wouldn't cost "virtually nothing" — especially if you want one that isn't bare-bones and has feature parity with the iOS and Mac versions. How is that going to be paid for?
And, regardless, there is nothing at all wrong with having platform-exclusive features. Apple will be supporting RCS. There you go.
Apple will be supporting RCS like everyone was screaming for them to do. So media quality will not be an issue. The goalposts keep getting moved.
You‘re barking up the wrong tree, I‘ve been team „Apple fix Messaging already“ on here since 2015 by advocating for the inclusion of RCS in their app.
Beeper mini certainly is the absolute worst way to go about this though and they‘re rightfully shutting it down (reverse engineering, using another companies IP against their will, piggybacking off of their service and being so incredibly sleazy and monetizing all of that to round it off). Hope Beeper, the company, goes down by a thousand C&D letter cuts.
Just wait until RCS and be done with it.
That and any kind of media (pics, movies..) doesn't work when going between iPhones and android phones.
It should already be supported, but isn't so we have the media problem now.
As for RCS on iMessage, when it happens, if it ever does, that'll be a good thing, but I have yet to see a real timeline on that. Sure, they said they would do it, but I've seen things just not get implemented that were announced before...
Fair enough, didn’t mean you specifically. But people bandwagoning a specific issue because of pure anti-apple sentiment spurred on by intel and the like. These trillion dollar companies do not need me or you championing them… Is my main point.
Isn’t that an issue with the standard (that the Messages app supports)? Apple will be supporting RCS which should solve that issue. RCS not having feature parity with iMessage is not Apple’s problem.
How much of a problem is it? Are there that many Android users who can’t get media from iPhone users because they use the Messages app (and refuse to use any 3rd party messaging app)? I’m glad Apple will be supporting RCS but my guess is the numbers we’re talking about are a lot smaller than sites like The Verge would have you believe.
Once we get RCS on iMessage, it isn't here yet, nor even a rumor as to when we actually get it. "Will be" just isn't good enough for me.
I don't know how many, but it's got to be a huge amount since there is so much market share of both iPhone and android phone. I know I'm definitely one of them. I have both android and iPhone friends, and I have both an iPhone and an android phone so I can communicate with anyone, yet I still get munged media messages on my iphone and my android phone because they are directed to the wrong number. We seem to send a lot of media stuff in messages/imessages in my circles... And nobody uses Whatsapp around here except for recent immigrants.
I'm definitely more with Verge on this...
I don’t think anyone in this thread or on this entire forum has said that Apple users are being forced against their will to buy other Apple products. That is nonsense.
I don’t understand the animosity over iMessage on Android. If Apple did a 180 and launched an official iMessage app for Android, and users willingly pay for it, how can anyone feel that that’s a bad thing? How would Apple users be harmed by that?