I have a Matrix homeserver running on an Odroid XU4 that sits under my TV. I also have bridge servers running for iMessage, Slack, and Hangouts (which includes Google Voice) that connect those services into Matrix.
Being able to see and respond to all my messages from all those services while I'm ssh'd into a weechat client is surreal and amazing. Going back to tapping out messages on my phone in iMessage or opening up the god-awful hangouts web client that shows my chat in a phone-sized window even on my 43 inch monitor feels like a joke at this point.
For now, that kind of setup isn't really accessible to a non-technical user, but even so it's the killer feature. Matrix has a few rough edges, but it genuinely feels like it's growing into something that is objectively better than all the other proprietary services out there.
I have made a similar setup with IRC. I have set up bitlbee with Facebook, Telegram, Hangouts and Steam plugins, bitlbee is connected to quassel-core and I use native Quassel clients on all my platforms to connect to the core (trough VPN if needed).
The only rough edge I have with this setup is that I lose video playback in client compared to say Messenger or TG. Maybe one day...
Ironically the native client constantly logs me in, even when I don't want to. I've never wanted to be Online or Available, but ever since they shipped the new "Friends" thing it's made quite difficult.
All three are the puppet bridges from here: https://github.com/matrix-hacks. The Hangouts and Slack bridges run on the odroid, same as synapse, and iMessage runs on an old mac mini I bought off of ebay.
The docs could be better, but I didn't find them too terribly hard to set up. If you decide to try it out and need any help feel free to ask around in #matrix-puppet-bridge:matrix.org
> Going back to tapping out messages on my phone in iMessage
...turns you back into a first class iMessage citizen. Meaning better security, more features, and a special color for the messages to signal all that to your recipients with an iphone.
* OP has an iphone and some kind of non-iphone messaging interface accessed through ssh which can somehow send messages to iphone users through iMessage
* OP prefers to use the non-iphone messaging interface to send messages to iMessage recipients (I'm assuming both OP and recipients are using a modern generation of the iphone)
I'm saying that-- as it stands today-- OP is accepting a decrease in security by sending to the iMessage recipients from the non-iphone setup instead of from OP's iphone.
Regardless of the security protocol of Matrix and regardless of which client OP is using, what I'm claiming will be true.
It's also trivial to refute-- if I'm wrong then the messages OP is sending from their custom box should show up with a blue background in iMessage on the recipient's iphone. Is that the case or not?
>It's also trivial to refute-- if I'm wrong then the messages OP is sending from their custom box should show up with a blue background in iMessage on the recipient's iphone. Is that the case or not?
The distinction that the iOS messaging app uses to set the color of the message bubbles is whether messages are sent over SMS/MMS or iMessage. Since they're sent over iMessage, the message bubbles will be blue.
But yes, adding Matrix to the mix does add more potential failure points, since there are now two messaging protocols involved instead of one. That's just the nature of bridging messaging protocols though.
Being able to see and respond to all my messages from all those services while I'm ssh'd into a weechat client is surreal and amazing. Going back to tapping out messages on my phone in iMessage or opening up the god-awful hangouts web client that shows my chat in a phone-sized window even on my 43 inch monitor feels like a joke at this point.
For now, that kind of setup isn't really accessible to a non-technical user, but even so it's the killer feature. Matrix has a few rough edges, but it genuinely feels like it's growing into something that is objectively better than all the other proprietary services out there.