Eddy Cue Wanted to Port iMessage to Android in 2013 According to Epic Deposition

[trifid]

He's not.

He is.

 

[WiseAJ]

Ok, I can support that. Although there is one quote from Eddy that I would not have wanted out there. Specifically his inability to recall any conversations regarding In App purchases and App Store Rules keeping things secure. That’s going to be a “Copy and Paste” quote, IMO.

He probably doesn’t recall because he was Asleep during those conversations.

 

[DeepIn2U]

If Apple opened up iMessage to Android users it’s highly likely I wouldn’t have to use Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp or Signal either!

I truly believe that the creation of a scaled down version of Messages for Android would lead to more adoption of it as a “standard” messaging platform and actually drive iPhone sales rather than hurt them. But then again, I don’t have a masters degree in Sales and Marketing from Berkeley… just a modicum of common sense.

I find it strange the article says “remove an obstacle to iPhone families” remove obstacle TO iPhone? How could offering iMessage on Android OS remove an obstacle for anyone going to iPhone ? The wording does not make sense.

to your point recall people clamoured for years about BBM to be platform agnostic. That didn’t help blackberry when they finally did for iOS and Android. Possible timing was an issue as that ended up not worth the bandwidth to even download when it was available.

 

[DeepIn2U]

Forestall had the right vision for iPhone. And was subsequently ejected by Timmy. What a shame.

Definitely a leader and visionary. Craig is funny and gets all the hype but he didn’t create the platforms he oversees!
graat thinkers and leaders don’t apologize for garbage being brought and done by others - Tim Cook never learned that. Jobs very much understood this hence why Forstall and him were friends.

I don’t recall jobs having a picture with craig. I could be wrong.

if developers incur costs maintaining an app on the apple platform, should apple also incur a percentage of those costs?

Ahem, Apple does - they create the SDK, use and supply incredible bandwidth for the upload, years of storage and push notifications.

Why? Why can't Apple offer great hardware and services and tools for others to drive the platform without taking a cut from everything?

by that reasoning …
maybe schools n government shouldn’t supply text books for kids to use, chairs, desks, lights heat water for schools kids attend. Oh those are expenses that you pay for in part in the western world by your taxes n government does as well from educational budget.
should your car manufacturer supply a showroom for you to look at your next car, to feel the fabrics to get that “tire kick” to see n feel quality of build before you decide to buy?
should your spouse provide you all the love affection trust n comfort without you giving 50 at least in return from you?.
you build or create something doesn’t mean you need to sacrifice for everyone else to use or enjoy it.

the App Store is apples house they made it n play fairly. It’s a nice big house, many covet it, jealous of it n many of those guests respect it, they bring over their food or drinks to share as well. But you don’t get to wear your shoes in their house to dirty up the floor you dig? Lol.

in other words their work n time has a cost to it, why should they continually increase that cost to maintain App Store documentation events to incentivize developers to come to & create on their platform, train etc giving developers opportunities, n have such costs for nothing in return??

 

[DeepIn2U]

He probably doesn’t recall because he was Asleep during those conversations.

im curious if you feel ok criticizing someones mishaps as a way to devalue their work when you haven’t walked in their shoes? I’ve probably done the same yet I’m learning not to, trying hard.

 

[DeepIn2U]

It is not about profitability at all. It is about offering mandatory services at extraordinary prices. App distribution, content distribution, payment and accounting services are all nice if you want or need them. Like the other guy in the thread who said he's thankful for all the payment stuff being handled for him for 15%.

But companies like Epic and Spotify do not need these services. And therefore they should be allowed to opt out. Apple could then offer different, more tailored, more attractive packages. Like fully integrated payment for 5%. Which would be more in line with industry standard rates. Also, the same built-in mechanism could be used to pay for physical products too (which you cannot do now), probably making Apple even more money overall than now.

The result: Companies paying for services because they find them wothwile due to excellent usability and app integration with industry-leading, high conversion rates. Instead of having to pay mandatory fees for something they do not want.

how did you come up with 5%?

More importantly although epic or Spotify in the current state may not need the overhead like a payment system or distribution system I’m sure they have no problems not incurring the cost in bandwidth for distribution the liability of maintaining that distribution or the liability of refunds of that distribution should complaints arrive and proof valid for refunds. I’m also curious if epic and Spotify feel very comfortable not having to maintain so many different devices, have to come up with training and documentation on iOS / iPadOS nor complain about the metrics provided to them, nor the unified set of tools fully supported by Apple.

epic has great experience with their game engine. I’m 100% positive how Epic works on their game engine selling it to developers etc along with reasonings for all aspects will come up in court and how it compares to Apple.

 

[Naraxus]

Uh....no thanks. He introduced a crap product and was too arrogant to admit he screwed up. He and people of his ilk have no business in leadership positions.

********. Tim Cook was the one who asininely decided to abandon Google Maps way before Apple's maps offering was viable. He pressured Forstall & team into an unreasonable deadline, released a beta product, and when it blew up in his face (as anyone with half a brain would have realized) gave some halfased "apology". Forstall rightly refused to sign it and Cook used it as an excuse to throw Forstall under the bus because he didn't want to upset that idiot Ive.

 

[DeepIn2U]

Wait, if I did not misread the article, is Eddie Cue saying things AGAINST Apple? As an incumbent exec, shouldn't he not say these things and act in a way that does not benefit Apple in the trial?

Now I think I’ve seen it all on these forums.

Cue has been criticized for his face, nose, pink shirts his dancing, web services having outages, etc but now you’re criticizing his character, nah his integrity as a person? You want him to lie (or do you call it a fib)?!?!

wow.

 

[BvizioN]

Forestall had the right vision for iPhone. And was subsequently ejected by Timmy.

On of "Timmy's" best decision.

 

[dsusanj]

Or would this proposed Android iMessage app be able to become the default messaging app on Android?

It could be the default messaging app on Android and handle both iMessage and text messages pretty much the same way that works on iOS.

This is what Signal does on Android where it has the ability to send text messages to contacts who are not on Signal.

 

[bsolar]

Saying Apple has a monopoly on Apple products is like saying Coca Cola ha has a monopoly on Coca Cola products.

The rationale is not completely baseless though and it actually was used to fine Apple by the Russian antitrust, as reported by MacRumors:

"Apple occupies a dominant position with a 100% share of the market for mobile apps based on the iOS operating system because it is only legally possible to install such apps from the ‌‌App Store‌‌"

Not sure whether a similar rationale holds water under US regulations, but I would be cautious before flat out dismissing it.

 

[_Spinn_]

Apple v. Samsung was awesome that it brought out early iPhone concepts

Somehow I missed them at the time so I had to go look them up. They are really interesting.

Check out these photos of all the different iPhone prototypes Apple created

The best look at Apple's secretive design process emerged out of its epic court battle with Samsung.

www.businessinsider.com

Now Epic v. Apple, the differing opinions and thought processes behind how Apple came about with their policies for the App Store.

Agreed. This backroom development of products is always fascinating to me. So far I've seen from this trial:

• Hearing about Apple working with Adobe to get Flash working but the performance was terrible.
• The original Stock and Weather apps in the demo by Steve Jobs were web apps that had to be rewritten as native apps before launch.
• The web apps vs. App Store battle.

It's really interesting that Apple started with web apps first and that's what Palm ended up doing with webOS 2 years later. I'd love to read a book on the early days of the iPhone similar in style to "Showstopper! the Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft". The release of the iPhone completely reshaped computing and it would be fascinating to have a behind the scenes perspective as it happened.

 

[wanha]

Forestall had the right vision for iPhone. And was subsequently ejected by Timmy. What a shame.

By many accounts, he was also unbearable for many of the other Apple executives to work with.

So I guess Tim Could have let Scott go... or Craig, Phil, and god knows who else.

It was an understandable move. Culture matters.

 

[wanha]

And there we have it. Jobs won't ever have a chance to be clearer, but it sure sounds like Jobs never intended for the App Store (or "Services") to be how Apple made money. Apple makes money by selling hardware which comes with great software included. They operate a store and an API that is supposed to make it easy for developers to make apps and for customers to receive apps, and they don't want it to be a money losing operation so obviously some small fees need to be collected, but at the end of the day, everything about the store should be in service of selling hardware.

And when the store gets in the way, alternative options should exist.

Apple never limited us to only putting music and videos from iTunes on the iPod - we could get them from anywhere, and Apple couldn't care less whether we pirated them or not. Their argument was that we could find the stuff on the iTunes store easier than via piracy, and so naturally it'd make sense for us to use it, but they didn't actually care. Jobs went as far as arguing against DRM and making everything about iTunes DRM free, so that everything would "just work". That was totally against the idea of them caring about making money via the store - only one person needed to buy it from iTunes, DRM free, and then they could distribute it however they wanted enabling piracy.

Apple gave developers an easy way to make money via iAds. Developers were free to use it, or not, and overwhelmingly they didn't.

In-App Purchases is the first time where Apple got super different about it - suddenly it wasn't about giving developers and users more and better choices. Suddenly Apple wanted to force everyone into giving them money.

Yeah, maybe the App Store was different, too, but I think that was intended to be short term, while Apple worked on their security model - if Jobs hadn't died, we would have seen Apple bring Gate Keeper from the Mac over to iOS 8 years ago.

To suggest Steve "would never have _______" (fill it in with whatever you like) is to suggest Steve was stubborn and unwilling to learn.

Yet even the briefest of glimpses at Steve's career illustrates that this isn't even remotely true. He changed his mind - often and repeatedly.

One one Steve's great gifts was that he had no ego around decisions - he just wanted to make the best possible one and he was willing to change his mind if it meant making a better decision.

 

[kk200]

Texting someone on an Android phone is the worst experience ever. Blackberry and Apple got it right... Google still hasn't. I've tried Google's app and plenty of 3rd party apps and they're all ugly interfaces. The junk keyboards on Android phones don't help the cause either.

Android emojis (I know plenty of people who use them) were also a joke until recently.

The crappy texting and typing experience in general always pushes me back to iPhone.

selecting text is always my pain on iOS. There are lots of good design in different Android implementation, to separate sentence to phrases and let you select the parts you want for clipboard. It looks awesome.

 

[NotTooLate]

The biggest problem I have with all of this , is the fact Epic are fine with Apple taking all the risks and costs to produce , compete and develop their iOS echo system , from HW and SW R&D to distribution and handling the regulation across the world , while effectively arguing that those investments are not their concern and Apple should not be compensated for it.

If tomorrow Apple will go bankrupt , Epic would not care one bit , they will just switch to the one who bankrupt Apple platform and keep doing the same thing , they should pay for the risk Apple takes and not just enjoy it as granted.

 

[Glideslope]

He probably doesn’t recall because he was Asleep during those conversations.

More likely Day Dreaming about his next Ferrari purchase.

 

[Nuno Lopes]

It’s lovely to read how things are created. I really believe this testimony.

The explanation of Cue around how they arrived to 30% markup makes sense.

Yet they may have not taken into account that back than and even more today, technology was and is in place for digital services to bill their customers directly and distribute directly. It’s now all the place and nowhere near the 30% markup.

Furthermore Bricks and Mortar never had an equivalent of in app purchases. They would sell a game/app or subscription and and that was it, end of story. In game subscriptions or further subscription payment would not go through them. take telcos for instance, stores can sell entry subscriptions, they receive their commission to get the customer in, and that is it. They cannot charge for renewals … that is don’t directly by the actual service provider … in the end a renewal comes from the service provider ability to serve and recognition, not the store.

The above is a crucial difference as it guarantees supplier independence. They have never allowed suppliers to sell directly through their products/app, unlike bricks and mortar. Within the policy, as far as I remember, even email communications on this matter would be considered a breach in policy. This is also does not happen in bricks in mortar

It would be interesting to understand how they arrived to this process considering that they were inspired by Bricks and Mortar to ascertain their markup.

So the comparison with bricks and mortar if not moot back than it’s now moot. The economics have evolved and Apple / Tim Cook is refusing to adapt given them incredible power over third part businesses.

That is why this is in court. What is in trial is not it’s origins but what is happening right now conditioning the market.

 

[timber]

Cue was right about this. Perhaps not so obvious in the USA but crystal clear all around the world.

iMessage ended up being just a SMS app and nowadays nobody uses SMSs anyway.

Which is really disappointing considering who owns WhatsApp. If somehow all those legal and regulatory probes ended removing it from FB that would be just great.

 

[flottenheimer]

Heck, even Steve Jobs promised on stage, at a keynote in 2010, to make FaceTime open-source and cross-platform.

 

[trainwrecka]

Forestall had the right vision for iPhone. And was subsequently ejected by Timmy. What a shame.

Jobs could juggle the personalities and had their respect to have the final say. Ivy and Forstall had radically different visions for iDevices, but Jobs bringing the best out of both set the iPhone apart. Everything is way to Ivy now. Normal users get lost.

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

There is no security model that accounts for malware tricking and abusing users. Look at the newest App Tracking Transparency - through the App Store, apple has rules about misleading text, promises about payment or other reward for enabling tracking, any sort of feature removal for the user denying tracking, and any third party hacks for tracking devices/users without the user opting in to tracking based on telemetry or fingerprinting.

_None_ of that is enforceable with light touch technical measures. Apple believes the App Store exists to give them the leverage to act as a user advocate on their own platform, to ensure that there is a positive app experience.

I look forward to hearing about the steps that the hypothetical future Facebook app store takes to prevent abuses by Facebook.

That's not true at all. Look at all the fake crypto wallets that just steal people's money that end up on the iOS App Store. Apple's App Store doesn't actually prevent this stuff from getting onto people's devices.

I'll go further though - I believe the App Store actually gives malware a greater boost than legitimate software vs just having everyone promote themselves on the open internet.

Apple makes it very easy to make your software look legit. Hand them $99/year, a description, and some screenshots and your software looks just as legitimate as anyone else's.

If you want to distribute your software via the open internet, though, you need to do more work. You need to buy a domain, put up a good looking website, and then you need people to actually like and share it. If people don't share your software, it won't be highly rated by search engines - legitimate software will show up above yours. What's more, you need to actually have a signature that Apple (or whoever) verifies or else Gate Keeper on macOS or similar services on other OSs will block you. When your malware is discovered, if you managed to actually get people to use it, that signature and your domain will be blacklisted.

Now you'll argue that wait, that signature stuff applies on the iOS store too, and it's kind of true, but it's easy to just get another dev account and upload again. If you're distributing via a website, you need to start over. You can't go through the same registrar again, and you can't have the same IP as before, and you need a new person to give you a new IP. You need to go find another one to get another domain and start working your way up the rankings again.

Apple shifted the requirements for distributing software away from having a good established track record and technical abilities and replaced it with just needing to hand Apple $99/year.

Legit commercial developers liked it because it made it easier for us to collect money for our software... but then we realized the app store sucks for discovery. Meanwhile, Stripe and others have popped up - getting paid to make software on any other platform isn't actually all that hard anymore.

Legit free software developers hate it because they have to pay Apple. No longer does great free software exist. You complain about all the adware and tracking? Apple is responsible for that crap. If Apple dropped the $99/year requirement, free software could simply be free.

And malware developers? Well there's actually no downside at all for them. The App Store is the best thing they could have ever asked for. It's much cheaper and quicker to distribute malware now, and it's a lot easier to just repeatedly upload it everytime it's shut down. Sure, the signature checking stuff, but that applies to all software distributed by any means.

 

[stevet]

1st - Who cares if Apple discussed porting iMessage to Android and decided not to for financial reasons? There isn't a law against that.

2nd - Can you imagine paying lawyers millions of dollars to ask those questions? What a waste in every sense.

 

[Mcckoe]

Apple is in a weird place, either they: open their APP store to all hardware, allowing free choice of Hardware to run Apple software; back away from the profiteering in the APP store business model and restructure to create a competitive market(at this point AppleTV/iPad/iPhones should have access to AAA game titles); or do nothing and continuously face anti-trust laws, until something finally catches.

Hardware wise: Apple is 3-4 generations ahead on raw power, about 1/2 a generation behind in gaming performance, and on Par with cost per manufactured item ratio. But, on software… They have the golden garden, which allows them to keep everything in check… the question going forward is how to merge the garden with the rest of the world, without losing the safety.

Scott believed in Open Market, Steve believed in Closed Market, Tim believed in Gated Market… In hindsight of course Tim’s more moderate approach would win out; most likely Scott’s would have been better long term, however I doubt Apple would have been as profitable in the process; Steve’s view would have lead to earlier anti-trust breaks, and possible forced software and hardware divisional separation. Tim and his Gated process has worked well, but… by its own nature, will eventually lead to forced anti-trust issues.

 

[trifid]

Apple is going the Blackberry route with regards to iMessage and it's not getting better at all. As Blackberry was dying they had the choice to open BBM messaging which was strong at the time, but instead chose to keep it proprietary in hopes that people would keep buying Blackberrys. We know how that ended.

Proprietary communication systems that are not cross-platform end up dying.

I'm not sure what the hell Apple is waiting for. There is an opening now with Whatsapp being under fire due to privacy issues, what are you waiting for?

OPEN UP IMESSAGE/FACETIME.