Technology
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I don't understand why there's such a hard push for iMessage access on Android. The tinkerer in me finds this thrilling to follow, but the end-user in me is skeptical.
First, Apple being this hard-headed forces a marketplace for third party messaging apps. I don't want to see Apple (or Google, or Facebook) be responsible for the dominant messaging platform in the US. If iMessage is on Android, the lure of being able to immediately add 50% of the country to your phone becomes compelling and gets rid of the need of third party services for a lot of people. I'd imagine this would cause Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp, Viber, etc. to shrink.
Second, as an Apple user, I don't see the excitement about having iMessage. I have group chats with all iPhone-buddies and mixed Android/iPhone. iMessage isn't that exciting. The apps built around it and linked in Apple's Messages app are the actual useful parts of it -- Facetime to video chat and Find My to continuously show your friends on a map (great for traveling!). Maybe the games are silly fun from time to time?
I think the RCS adoption is what'll solve a lot of issues that Beeper is wanting to solve here. Apple is supposedly working with the GSMA to create an E2E standard (vs. relying on Vibe's proprietary encryption extension), we should be able to exchange higher quality media, and (I think) cross-platform interactivity around messages improves significantly.
I think the iMessage push is a US only thing, mainly because almost everyone uses SMS/iMessage for texting, and if you don't have an iPhone you're stuck with the standard SMS features.
In other parts of the world they use WhatsApp, Telegram, or other multi platform messaging apps, so no one really cares about iMessage.
Yeah, I’m in the US. A lot of folks I know distribute themselves over Discord, Telegram, Signal, WhatsApp, and in a few cases Viber. Most text conversations of mine are just exchanging numbers with people then immediately asking to use another service regardless of colors 😅
I could just be in a weird bubble though.
I've been on an iPhone for about 3.5 weeks now and iMessage is driving me nuts. It might be the reason I go back to Android.
This is dumb. I used that feature constantly. It's the worst thing about the switch.
Microsoft’s phone link app works with iphones messaging app now.
When I tried it, the integration was pretty awful. Photos were difficult, and it only showed messages from the current session, not from all time. Searching or replying to a message from yesterday wasn’t possible. Maybe it has gotten better?
Your second point is exactly why I got on the beeper waiting list ages ago. It has been a game changer being able to text from my pc for the last 6 months or so, and I’m hoping it comes back… mine currently isn’t receiving messages.
Beeper on desktop user here for over a year! It’s still working great and I hope it never goes away. I believe it uses a different system than the android version.
I think I’m in that unlucky 5% of users that apple is blocking. Mine quit last week.
Edit: I should mention that I can still send texts, but receiving is broken and no amount of relinking iCloud account/reinstalling/yelling at the top of my lungs seems to fix it.
Are you using Beeper on desktop? It's my understanding that they are using Mac Minis somewhere and Apple can't do anything about that
Beeper on Desktop works for me but it’s a long waitlist. But it still works as of this moment. All my chat apps are linked to it, it’s amazing
I feel the same way. The tinkerer in me was interested when it was first announced, then saw they wanted me to pay for it and immediately lost interest because I didnt think the app would make it to the second billing cycle. Apple blocked them even sooner than I thought! I wish north americans could move on from sms...
I used it for a bit. It was nice sending and receiving images from iPhone using friends that didn't look like blown up 50x50 thumbnails of jpeg artifacting
Plus, FaceTime is redundant many times over and Find My sounds like a privacy nightmare that I wouldn't give any permissions to anyway.