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WhatsApp Chief Confirms iPad App is a Possibility: 'We'd Love to Do It'

MacRumors said:


There could be a WhatsApp app for iPad coming in the near future, according to WhatsApp chief Will Cathcart. In an interview with The Verge, Cathcart said that people have long been asking for an iPad app, and that the company would "love to do it."

Whatsapp-Feature.jpg

Though Cathcart did not commit to a release date for a WhatsApp iPad app, the Meta-owned company already has the underlying structure in place for creating one. "We did a lot of work on the technology for supporting multiple devices," he said. "Our web and our desktop apps now have that. If I have multi-device on, I can turn my phone off or lose my network connection and still get messages on my desktop. That would be really important for a tablet app, to be able to use the app even if your phone isn't on. So the underlying technology is there."

Right now, WhatsApp is available on the iPhone, the desktop, and the web, but an iPad-specific app has been left out. WhatsApp is testing multi-device support that allows the desktop and web versions of the app to be used without an iPhone, functionality that paves the way for the iPad app.

WhatsApp parent company Meta has made Facebook available on iPad, but WhatsApp and Meta's Instagram app have never had native iPad availability, despite many users asking for the feature.

Article Link: WhatsApp Chief Confirms iPad App is a Possibility: 'We'd Love to Do It'
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How about M1 silicon versión on Mac, it seems more urgent
 
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BuffaloTF said:
Zero reasons to use Telegram. Get Signal.
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Signal suffers from the same issue with WhatsApp, i.e. being tied to one device at a time. I use both iOS and Android and Telegram is the only major messenger that lets me use both devices in an equal manner. WhatsApp has had some multi-device developments lately, but they’re still not quite there for true multi-platform use.
 
Roadstar said:
Signal suffers from the same issue with WhatsApp, i.e. being tied to one device at a time. I use both iOS and Android and Telegram is the only major messenger that lets me use both devices in an equal manner. WhatsApp has had some multi-device developments lately, but they’re still not quite there for true multi-platform use.
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While it’s certainly a big limitation to have 1 device at a time, Telegram is instantly a non-starter as there’s no E2E encryption outside of secret chats, and those are dubious at best with a doodoo encryption protocol in MTProto.
 
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sudo-sandwich said:
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.
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Does WhatsApp have group chats? Do they have sync issues and order issues?

If not, multiple device support is a trivial extension of that. iMessage has had sync issues because it tries to combine SMS and iMessage and sync and cloud storage all with one system.
 
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NetMage said:
Does WhatsApp have group chats? Do they have sync issues and order issues?

If not, multiple device support is a trivial extension of that. iMessage has had sync issues because it tries to combine SMS and iMessage and sync and cloud storage all with one system.
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It does group chats without issues. Yeah, you're right. It can be implemented as each device being a separate user in the chat, except displayed as one. In fact that's how I designed a similar app a while back.

Idk why it's so limited then.
 
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HiVolt said:
because they're mostly used at home
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Oh man oh man. I carry iPad more often than my phone to a point I forget to bring my phone to work, more than once. And I have to set a reminder for that.
Yeah, “mostly used at home”.
hagar said:
Zero reasons to use Messages. Just turn off your phone and go meet people.
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This. It doesn’t even need to be international travel. Just meet next door neighbours.
sideshowuniqueuser said:
Zero reason to be so paranoid. You're being tracked in a zillion ways anyway. Just get all the apps you need, and get on with life.
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Absolutely this. I’m being tracked by more than what I’d admit. Even if I throw away all electronic devices I’m still being tracked by satellites, plus I’d be able to move no more than a few inches outside of home.
 
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Seanm87 said:
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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This 100%

Fact is in the UK and a lot of Europe everyone uses WhatsApp. It doesn’t matter how good Signal or Telegram is, if no-one uses them (which they don’t) then they are totally pointless.
 
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They act like it's rocket surgery, while in reality it's literally just a different screen size.

In any case, use Telegram.
 
Shirasaki said:
Oh man oh man. I carry iPad more often than my phone to a point I forget to bring my phone to work, more than once. And I have to set a reminder for that.
Yeah, “mostly used at home”.
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Yeah, that's why I said mostly. All the people that I know that aren't kids mostly use them at home.

And usage patterns like yours of course do exist.
 
PsykX said:
I have followed a Telegram channel two years ago and did nothing more with it.

But out of curiosity, is there really a "nazi" reputation about this app? Why !?
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Huge problem with white supremacist groups making it their own. It was marketed toward them originally. Now, It is mostly about hate speech, racism and anti-vax. Its a real cesspool.
 
wanha said:
No, there's one good reason: when important groups you belong to use WhatsApp to communicate.
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Then there is the fact that Telegram is really only intended for uneducated rubes who circle jerk about racism and anti-vax conspiracies.
 
wanha said:
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.
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More like $19 billion.

Or ~$40 per user. Wonder why they did that. Was it because of the massive one-time $1 per user revenue stream?
 
riverfreak said:
Because you’re being tracked you shouldn’t care about being tracked. I’m no Vulcan but that seems … illogical.
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The real point is, you've gotta ask yourself, why am I being tracked? The real answer is you're just a number, they aren't tracking you they are merely tracking a consumer to know which targeted ads to send. You, yourself, are not actually being tracked at all. No one cares about you. It's just paranoia.
 
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Still waiting for an Instagram iPad app. Instagram is a beautiful and extremely popular photos showcase, so why not showcase them even more on the real estate of the iPad instead of tacking the phone shape onto it???
 
riverfreak said:
More like $19 billion.

Or ~$40 per user. Wonder why they did that. Was it because of the massive one-time $1 per user revenue stream?
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Thanks for the correction. Not sure why I thought it was 1 billion.

However, the reason for it remains pretty clear: Facebook bought the network of users.

There's huge value for the data of a billion users who skew young.

Facebook may not see the contents of the messages, but they see who is messaging who from where and when. Doubt a single person at Facebook thinks that 19b was wasted.
 
tubedogg said:
Where do you get "could be ... coming in the near future" from "we'd love to do it"? (emphasis mine)

I'd love to win the lottery. Does that mean a lottery win is coming in the near future for me? Given the current publicly available information, me winning the lottery and WhatsApp for iPad coming out have about the same chance of happening.
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The iPad app UI has already leaked more than a year ago. The only holdup for that is the multi-device functionality which is nowhere ready to be considered stable (yet they pushed it out for everyone and dropped the beta tag).
sudo-sandwich said:
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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The new multi-device functionality does not rely on your phone anymore.
 
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sideshowuniqueuser said:
The real point is, you've gotta ask yourself, why am I being tracked? The real answer is you're just a number, they aren't tracking you they are merely tracking a consumer to know which targeted ads to send. You, yourself, are not actually being tracked at all. No one cares about you. It's just paranoia.
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Depends where you live. In China, Turkey, Russia, and many other countries, it's not only for advertising.
 
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BuffaloTF said:
Zero reasons to use Telegram. Get Signal.
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Not true, while signal maybe more secure by default you can still use telegram secret chat feature,
and telegram has way more features compared to signal, so there is a lot of reasons to use telegram over signal.
 
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