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I just use WhatsApp desktop through safari on my iPad. Not that I need it often as it’s only used for half a dozen contacts who don’t have iPhones and iMessage.
 
Quick question if anyone can answer it, can you now use your Whatsapp account on different iphones via the Multi Device Beta?. So if you have 2 iphones and swap your SIM between them, will whatsapp work like normal on both devices.
 
What prevents them on clicking the 'universal' checkbox in Xcode? If code is already there? We are talking just iPhones and iPads and Macs - not the gazillion different Androids devices.

Make it a requirement to run 12.X and 15.X. Maybe i am missing something - but i thought that was the point of the universal feature?
 
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WhatsApp on web was so terrible J stopped using it

The company hass had years to make the app available on the iPad and hasn't bothered. "Love to do it" is just a smokescreen
 
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Agree

However here in Asia, everything runs on WA, so I still need it

As a software engineer I can appreciate how much effort it takes to go from a single device E2E encrypted system to multi device.

In Software 101 it would be a classic example how something that would cost them maybe one guy and 1-2 months engineering time in the beginning of the development to now 1-2 years with dozens of engineers, disruptions to the service, and a 100 service and support people in place, QA teams etc.

So the cost to implement this now vs starting out like that from day 1, is easily 10,000x

Of course in the beginning those 1-2 months can be the difference between life and death for a startup.

But it's still interesting from a software engineering perspective.
This is interesting and a nice to know, because from a far perspective: a company with billions of dollars per year, tons of other development endeavors seemingly harder (i.e more than a chat app) done successfully already, etc yet “they can’t find, hire and execute that single engineer time for the extra device?”

I know for example, from the game dev point of view, starting a single player game and midway trying to retrofit multiplayer support is, for me at least, next to impossible without a serious refactor that feels like starting from scratch as the codebase itself isn’t ready to handle unordered/missing/delayed flow of actions, all the predictions while the new info is on the way and then the correction when it has finally arrived, to name one thing.

But what would more specifically be the issue? Is it because of the encryption support? If it were unencrypted and/or the chat history non transferable would it had be done years ago?
Or is it just because of the default software’s 101 that it is too late and deep in the game with a lot of weight to carry with?
I totally understand that part but the iPad runs the same iOS code base as the phones, so the platform’s front facing client itself can’t really be it except for maybe custom UI layout handling purposes (if so desired). Any specific reason of why can’t it have the same “scan QR code” as the desktop and web versions?

I’m obviously clueless because else it doesn’t make sense of why they haven’t done it already, I believe, and I’m incredibly curious.
 
Ok what about the Apple Watch app? That i would like far more and seems to be the place that makes the most sense.
 
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Wait... am I reading that right or am I needing glasses ?
We "WOULD" love to do it ?

Then... just do it ?
What prevents your team from downloading Xcode and doing it ?
A good developer will take a week top and it will be done.
 
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Follow the money -either there’s not a big enough potential user base to justify creating an iPad app or there’s something keeping FB from making the good money on iPad user data that they make from selling iPhone user data.

They would have put one out years ago if the financial incentive was there.
 
‘We’d love to do it’ sounds like they got cockblocked by apple. Otherwise, they’d say ‘it’s coming’ and use this as marketing jump point.
No, it's Whatsapp's own basic requirement of a phone that cockblock itself. Other messaging apps like Wechat, Line, etc have no problems making an iPad client.
 
Wait... am I reading that right or am I needing glasses ?
We "WOULD" love to do it ?

Then... just do it ?
What prevents your team from downloading Xcode and doing it ?
A good developer will take a week top and it will be done.
Yup.
If they "would love to do it," why haven'y they done it?
 
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Follow the money -either there’s not a big enough potential user base to justify creating an iPad app or there’s something keeping FB from making the good money on iPad user data that they make from selling iPhone user data.

They would have put one out years ago if the financial incentive was there.
Actually, the incentive is huge as it allows many businesses to use Whatsapp Business on iPads instead of using a separate phone. And yes, whatsapp does make money from the whatsapp business APIs.
 
WhatsApp was already the most used chat app in the world before FB bought them. They never fully supported more than a phone because most of their user base only uses a phone to message. iPads are first world problems. There's also a desktop app, but it sucks.
You have a point. Whatsapp is old. Whatsapp was conceived in the days where most people only have one smart device, the one smartphone. The main requirement of a phone device + a phone number speaks for itself. This is both a plus and minus. It's a Plus since it's a low barrier of entry in many markets, resulting whatsapp's huge userbase today. It's a minus since it's an antiquated system when users have multiple devices.
 
What prevents them on clicking the 'universal' checkbox in Xcode? If code is already there? We are talking just iPhones and iPads and Macs - not the gazillion different Androids devices.

Make it a requirement to run 12.X and 15.X. Maybe i am missing something - but i thought that was the point of the universal feature?
Whatsapp uses a somewhat strict login system based on the phone number. They could do that but first they would need to allow for multiple master logins. Their multi-device stuff relies on a single master device running the primary WhatsApp app and the rest are child client devices that have a secondary login that is permitted through the master device, and they run a web-based (sometimes with a native UI) app that is designed as a client/child app and isn’t full-featured.

It still wouldn’t be hard at all, they just need an iPad version of their desktop client instead, which exists for the Mac.

Or simply whip out a web wrapper-app in a day or two. The web version itself is almost usable on the iPad but falls just short.
 
I don’t have an iPad at the moment, but when I had my iPad mini 4 (for five years), it was irritating that a iPad native app wasn’t available for Instagram and made me wonder if Mark Zuckerberg was withholding approval to do it out of spite for Instagram being much more popular/cooler than his baby, FB.
 
WhatsApp is total trash.

It's successful simply because it works on so many trash phones.
I'd suggest it's successful because it has such a high number of users. Because many people I know and groups I belong to use WhatsApp to communicate, WhatsApp becomes hard to bypass.

When Facebook paid a billion dollars for WhatsApp, they weren't buying the technology as much as they were buying the network of users.
 
You have a point. Whatsapp is old. Whatsapp was conceived in the days where most people only have one smart device, the one smartphone. The main requirement of a phone device + a phone number speaks for itself. This is both a plus and minus. It's a Plus since it's a low barrier of entry in many markets, resulting whatsapp's huge userbase today. It's a minus since it's an antiquated system when users have multiple devices.
The whole single-device limitation seems to come from the E2EE. There is a desktop app, but it relies on the phone app to be running and relaying the messages. Other E2EE chat apps have similar limitations. The one exception is iMessage, which must've worked around that in some complex way, at a cost: iMessage isn't very reliable. It's a little too common for one device to get messages out of order or for group chats to get out of sync.

Personally I'd rather use something where the server is the master and everything is always in sync because of that. And if I were to discuss something that needs hiding, I wouldn't even trust WhatsApp or iMessage.
 
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