All this time I've been assuming that Apple keeps iMessage as iOS/Mac only as an anticompetitive tactic, but that this would never be admitted in writing and they'd be smart enough to only talk about verbally in unrecorded meetings.
These emails actually make me change my mind on both aspects. First, apparently they were at one point undisciplined enough to talk about risky topics in writing. Second, the reasoning in those emails is actually very reasonable. iMessage was a non-revenue-generating service that cost them money and was funded by sales of Apple devices, so it's being offered as a service to users of Apple products. This isn't unfair behavior on Apple's part.
The reasoning is quite sound, yes, but it doesn't consider the long term implications. No one outside of the USA is using iMessage and they are one regulation away from losing it in the USA too. Also, outside of the USA if they piss off Mark Zuckerberg enough they can lose the rest of the world because who would want a phone that doesn't have WhatsApp?
It also demonstrates the harm with these lock-in strategies very well. They are concerned that their product wouldn't be compelling enough for people to buy it.
Wouldn't be better if they owned the messaging platform and provide the full experience for iOS due to the fact that they control the device? Owning the platform would have given them also the ability to get revenue from non-Apple users through things like payments and other services that can be integrated into the app.
In its current situation, it might be the case that Apple has won the battle but might end up losing the war.
> outside of the USA if they piss off Mark Zuckerberg enough they can lose the rest of the world because who would want a phone that doesn't have WhatsApp?
We use WhatsApp by default because of the network effects. FB have no power over Apple here because removing it from iPhones would kill the only reason people use it. The switch to (most likely) Telegram would happen overnight.
Okay, what if FB makes WhatsApp slow, buggy and lacking features instead? Are the Android users be willing to switch to other messenger platforms for the comfort of the iPhone users or are the iPhone users consider the messaging quality just as if they consider camera quality when purchasing a new phone?
I agree that the messaging platforms are not all powerful but they do wield significant power. iPhone is famously good for social media because Instagram and Snapchat camera integration sucked and that was something people consider when buying a new phone.
So there must be a point where switching to a different phone to improve communications is less painful than making all your social circle switch platform for you.
I personally doubt it. Most of the markets where Whatsapp is THE messaging app is also where iPhone has low penetration.
At least taking the example of India, if Whatsapp were to stop supporting iOS, then people would still continue to use Whatsapp in their Android phones.
> Also, outside of the USA if they piss off Mark Zuckerberg enough they can lose the rest of the world because who would want a phone that doesn't have WhatsApp?
That is a fantastic point, had never though along those lines. It’d be very interesting to explore if people in, say India, where everyone uses WhatsApp - in that scenario will people drop iPhone, a status symbol, or WhatsApp, a somewhat necessary tool. I don’t think no one knows today and no one wants to find out, risks are too high.
Moreover, in that case it is possible that governments might step in.
If Facebook messes up WhatsApp people will move to Snapchat instead, the groups, the network and the momentum already exist. People really aren’t going to leave iOS for WhatsApp.
That would never happen though because Facebook has enough problems if its own without picking a very risky fight with Apple.
You don't realize how pervasive WhatsApp is in India and how much of a premium product iPhone is there.
You may be right, but I doubt it is going to be that simple.
I have no idea what all Snapchat offers (never used/installed it). But, FWIW, I think Signal or Telegram have better odds of succeeding in India than Snapchat, but who knows.
That would be full circle. I remember back then when Jabber was popular, most competitors offered gateways (similar to the IRC-Slack gateway Slack closed recently) so that people who used the popular open protocol would help spreading their closed variant. After a few years they would shut it down. But people never learn and I think the history would soon repeat itself.
People are loyal to theır friends, not the apps. If the people you want to talk to are not all on iMessage they you don't use iMessage.
If in EU you manage not to use something else than iMessage the you are in a bubble because most people in EU use Android. You somehow managed to have an iPhone bubble but your situation is not the rule but the exception.
> Also, outside of the USA if they piss off Mark Zuckerberg enough they can lose the rest of the world because who would want a phone that doesn't have WhatsApp?
In the US, Facebook admitted that they saw billions in revenue shortfalls because of Apple’s new prompt that makes user tracking opt in.
Besides, Facebook has already lost 70% of its value. Right now, Facebook is worth 240 billion. Apple is worth 2.2 trillion. Facebook is not exactly operating from a position of strength to throw away its most affluent customers.
Why should I continue reading rest when you already made insane claim based on nothing. Or have I suddenly been teleported to USA? I primarily use iMessage when I'm sending messages with my phone. I have only one contact that uses Whatsapp.
No one is using iMessage outside of the USA is like no one is using microsoft Zune. It’s not literally no one but due to the network effect people use Whatsapp or whatever is popular in their country(some places use facebook messenger, Line, Viber, Skype, WeChat etc and you are expected to have it. Why switch apps all the time when you do the exactly same thing everywhere? Except for switching away from iMessage of course because %70 of the people won’t have it even if they want to).
> Why should I continue reading rest when you already made insane claim based on nothing.
You do see the fault with your logic, correct? you state it is an "insane claim" yet offer zero proof... So effectively "based on nothing"?
Here, take a read:
"
WhatsApp announced in 2020 on its blog that the messaging app is actively used by over two billion people worldwide. This puts the green messaging app far ahead of all other messaging apps, such as Facebook Messenger, WeChat, Viber, Apple Business Chat, or Telegram in terms of user numbers.
"
Your personal anecdote that you have a "only one contact" is not relevant, what is relevant is statistics.
But he’s right. There’s no meaningful usage of it outside of America. WhatsApp is king everywhere else.
Anecdotally more people I know use Signal than iMessage, including my non tech savvy sisters and friends. iMessage is too weird and Android too prevalent for anyone to consider using it where I am from (the U.K.)
Anecdata:
Ireland is a wealthy country and plenty of people have iPhones, but WhatsApp is pervasive. Especially for clubs, parent groups, family chats etc... My techie friends mostly use Signal but fallback to WhatsApp. If you contact a stranger to buy a second hand item for example, 99% chance you can WhatsApp them once you have the number. I don't anyone who uses iMessage primarily...
Sweden: all but two of my friend group have iPhones.
Those two use Signal/Telegram.
Not denying that there's a fair whatsapp penetration, but iPhones are quite popular and I have many iMessage groups that do not overlap in the membership.
Neither Europe or Asia use iMessage, they use Whatsapp. Don't know which part of the world youve been to, but more than 70% of the possible iPhone population doesn't use iMessage.
The rest of the world doesn't have the SMS problem that the US has.
As a non American, what problem does the US have with SMS?
I can confirm essentially no one in western Europe uses iMessage. I've seen people use FaceTime to call friends, but I've yet to even see someone open the iMessage app in person.
Yep. Also the iMessage&SMS being in the same place makes the app very prone to spam. I have nothing more than 2FA codes and marketing spam in my iMessage app because the iMessage app is actually integrated with SMS and is called Messages.
I use facetime quite a lot though, because it works better than everything else.
At least in Germany quite a few people still pay for each SMS, so having both in the same convo is actively undesired since at least with e.g. Whatsapp there will be no surprise costs.
I guess the "problem" is that American iPhone users will either exclude non-iPhone users altogether or default to SMS rather than switching to a cross-platform messaging app, despite the deficiencies of SMS in modern communication, e.g. poor support for group chats and sending images or videos.
"EU lawmakers agreed that the largest messaging services (such as Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger or iMessage) will have to open up and interoperate with smaller messaging platforms"
> Neither Europe or Asia use iMessage, they use WhatsApp.
That's really a simplistic way of thinking. It is marked specific sure, but China have WeChat as the dominate messaging app. Denmark has some level of WhatsApp penetration for sure, but it's lower than iMessage (23% vs 33%), in some circles it is really noticeable if you switch to Android. iMessages is also a bit weird, because a large number of people do not care that it's technically iMessage, it just the messaging app on the phone, meaning it's SMS (even if it's technically not). I believe Sweden is rather similar. You also have to consider how many have multiple messaging apps installed. My guess is that a large number of the WhatsApp users are still available on iMessage.
I don't think it makes sense to entire continent or even countries as being WhatsApp or iMessage. We have to view it in much smaller circles. Like businesses, income classes or circles of friends and family.
Not sure where you’re talking about in Asia. Vietnam uses Zalo, China has Wechat, Japan has Line, Korea has Kakaotalk, Thailand I think is Line as well. I think the average tech-aware person in at least East Asia doesn’t know what WhatsApp even is.
There is no 'Asia'. Every country is unique. Hong Kong mostly uses Whatsapp (though some Telegram and Wechat as well), Singapore uses Whatsapp a lot, Turkey uses Whatsapp, Indonesia too...
I use an iPhone. Many of my mates, colleagues and business partners use iPhones. These folks are located in Europe, Asia and Latin America.
We all use Whatsapp to discuss everything, from business to personal stuff to memes. I even use Whatsapp calling with some of my friends and colleagues in the USA. My friends circle has a monthly ritual of chatting through Whatsapp group call. I'm also a part of 3 Whatsapp groups to discuss exclusively football, as well as 5 Whatsapp groups for business networking (white shoe finance).
If Zuck were to get pissed and take down Whatsapp from the Apple Store, I know for a fact that a number of my colleagues would immediately buy an Android phone right off the bat, instead of getting Signal or Telegram. I might personally go the Signal option, but without the network effects, I would be driven straight back to Android. That would mean Apple directly losing an entire set of premium customers in markets outside USA and China.
Fun fact:- OPEC dealings are conducted over Whatsapp.
At this point, Whatsapp is pretty much critical infrastructure in many countries. And yet Zuck has been so stupid in not leveraging its full potential and instead doing Metaverse and Reels shit.
I think this was true but is changing. I've deleted WhatsApp and switched to Signal a few years ago, and now I use iMessage with all my friends who don't have Signal (maybe 4-5 people that I text with regularly). Interestingly enough, I don't have any close friends who don't have Signal and don't have an iPhone...
Yeah, that comment was mental. I'm in Australia and over 55% of our mobile phone users are on Apple devices. iMessage is everywhere. Guy knows nothing.
Right. The world is the USA and the rest of it is UK&Australia. If that wasn't the case, why would the aliens always contact the US president and speak English? iMessage is definitely the dominant messaging platform of the humanity.
/s
The cluelessness of the Anglosphere about the rest of the World is very entertaining and sad at the same time.
I don't know why people don't look at India more. And China too, but in this case we know the Chinese use WeChat. India has about 3 times more people than the US, UK and Australia combined. China and India make up more than a third of all people on Earth, but rarely ever mentioned.
Indians use Whatsapp, and so does the fourth biggest country in the world, Indonesia.
It is always shocking when people make such baseless claims like "Everyone users iMessage" when a very simple google search would show them this is not the case.
It is a very big world out there and so few realize this.
Australian here and I don't know anyone who uses iMessage (knowingly at least - my Mum uses an iPhone and presumably does occasionally use the default messaging app for contacting other iPhone users).
The few people I don't use WA with I use FB messenger or SMS.
> ...and they are one regulation away from losing it...
More than likely, but the government is never going to legislate that companies use a technically excellent messaging product. Governments have the strongest incentives to cripple messaging:
1) Government pressure degrades private & secure messaging, because privacy can be used for criminal activity and tax evasion.
2) The US government has the worlds most sophisticated spy network and is constantly looking for ways to get involved in people's communications.
3) The US government has generally identified "misinformation" to be anything the current administration doesn't like. Presently only the right wing is aware of this fact, but I know the left wing can understand the point because they had figured this out under Trump.
Apple's relative market share and strategy is at best a secondary factor, the US government will regulate first and foremost get involved in messaging to cripple the security of the protocols being used.
Btw I never understood the reason for imessage being so popular in the US
I remember in France when it was introduced, most phone plans had free SMS, but data was paid (and expensive), so people around me would disable it on their iphones
> because who would want a phone that doesn't have WhatsApp?
Me!
I hate whatsapp ui. And not having desktop app. Tend to use Telegram, and Viber as last resort, to talk with elderly family and with businesses(when ordering something online).
Why is WhatsApp special? iMessages is used a lot outside US.
Why is there a “messenger war”? Like what’s the end game? Why do you want people using your free messages product? Data? But e2e encryption and privacy are primary features… I don’t get it
> Why is there a “messenger war”? Like what’s the end game? Why do you want people using your free messages product? Data? But e2e encryption and privacy are primary features… I don’t get it
Messenger apps have powerful network effects. Imagine all your friends are on iPhone and use iMessage, if you're the only android user in that circle you're getting a degraded experience so there's a strong incentive to move to iphone which means more sales for apple.
So that makes sense for Apple. But it doesn't make sense for literally every other messenger app. Why do they bother existing?
(i.e 1 billion people use Messenger X, is the game plan that some one else with an actual business model wants those billion users so they buy it... so Messenger apps are a marketing channel?)
At first messaging was a draw to have people use the portal (AOL, ICQ, MSN). Later, they tried to sell the apps as another banner slot.
The more recent bout has their own services in messaging itself; bots to provide enterprise-specific functions to Slack, payment and marketplace tie-ins to Messenger.
Every tech company tries to lock in their customers all the time, and then turn over backwards and talk about how they are only doing it because it is in the customers interest.
It was nice to read the candid exchange between top Apple execs. It was honest, and it was understandable.
It's unfortunate that Craig Federighi felt the need to give it some bullshit spin instead of being honest in the interview with Joanna Stern (further down the tweet thread).
I wish companies were just honest in their public marketing.
I know that a lot of decisions from Apple are just about protecting their profits (eg. building pretty sweet virtualisation tech into macOS, but then limiting it to 2 macOS VMs per computer even if your Mac could easily run dozens of them).
It would be nice if they didn't always try to tell some bullshit story how that was better for the person buying their hardware.
Yeah Federighi made it pretty clear. I'm a little surprised Eddie Cue didn't seem to realize how significant giving up imessage exclusivity could be. But I'm guessing in 2013 there were bigger differences in iPhones vs Android phones, wasn't as clear that eventually it would be a significant reason why someone might choose one over the other. Giving up iMessage in 2013 would be different than giving it up today
I remember iTunes and Safari on Windows being less polished 'by design' to nudge users who were able to experience them on Mac to think the hardware/OS was better.
The one defence I can think of is that keeping it tied to apple devices means they can ban spammers more effectively since there is a real cost to getting back on the network.
Phones would be useless if they were not interoperable. It's fine to have a proprietary messaging system but at some point, when it gets large enough, it needs to play nice.
Federighi and Schiller nailed it. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s clear that Google would have bungled a WhatsApp acquisition.
I think it’s refreshing to see that Fed & Phil had in mind a clear path to value with their existing hardware+software strategy, rather than rushing to the growth and market share at-all-costs strategy popular at the time.
It’s so easy to point to Federighi’s email and scream “monopolist”! But Apple was in no way close to commanding a monopoly in the mobile market back then.
The whole thing is a bit mind boggling to me. Everyone I knew that had gmail was also actively using hangouts. How they could screw that up is beyond me. It even had voip integration. All they needed to do was polish the app.
They announced the shutdown of hangouts and the removal of google fi integration and despite the uproar they doubled down on it.
Genuine question to people here. Why ? They keep claiming that they're a data driven company. What data are these decisions based on?
"Data driven" is something I've seen occasionally from execs as an excuse to not have - and particularly, not commit to - a plan.
A lot of times it's much easier to find data to give you reasons not to do something long-term (very similar to investors focused on short-term results) than to confirm the value of committing significant resources to long-term bets.
Other than "keep milking ads" is there any clear strategy Google's consumer business has shown? Android looks like a good example of executing on that ads strategy, but other things that seem harder to tie to ads directly tend to languish since nobody there actually knows what they want to do in other areas: chat apps? Stadia? Random things like Cardboard? Consumer G-suite? I'd say even assistant/home stuff is languishing (where's the big money maker).
The data used by the person in charge of making this decision (typically a VP or a Sr Director): what is the probability of them getting promoted. If doubling down or just maintaining and polishing existing projects was rewarded, Google wouldn't have been in this state.
Now why those incentives exist that way? It was a confluence of factors in 2000's when internet was growing rapidly, Google had lots of talented employees, a bold bet in a new area (email, news, street view or browser) had a higher expected value than polishing and maintaining existing products. The culture needs a reset, Google is currently living through its "Ballmer era".
Could be as simple as “We tried this for x months. It still isn’t profitable, and we don’t see it becoming profitable soon”
For me, with zero inside knowledge, it looks like Google’s upper management gives managers lots of freedom to launch products, but expects them to bring in money soon.
That doesn’t seem the case for all kinds of products, though. I don’t see Chrome directly making money for them, for example. There, it seems they realize it indirectly, by defending their advertising income, is profitable.
It seems upper management doesn’t have a long term strategy for making money with messaging apps, but still has hope some of their managers will find it.
> They keep claiming that they're a data driven company. What data are these decisions based on?
When the data shows the results you are looking for, you say you're data-driven. When it doesn't, you manipulate and torture it long enough to produce the result you are looking for. If it still doesn't, you come up with some excuse to end up doing the thing you wanted to do anyway.
It would be a poor explanation if it didn’t fit the facts. When faced with a body “the butler did it” is an explanation, but in the absence of actual evidence or reasoning to support it, it’s not a compelling case.
I’m not sure. Could it be the stock riches? The near exclusive Ivy League hiring initially at least? The jars of candy everywhere and the onsite massages? Charlie Ayers as your chef (at least for a while)? Access to the inside track on news of The AI? Party 747? Or just surviving a famous interview process and having “Googler” be a sure annointment (inexplicably, now after we see the results) conferring status? Gosh I just can’t seem to put my finger on it.
Are you asking if Apple and Facebook have benefits? Of course they do. Just not an equivalent package of so many amped-up ego-stroking elements, no. Those two are more of a walled garden and a fiefdom, respectively, where everyone is put in their place.
It could have been as simple as (1) acquiring WhatsApp and (2) instructing every other product division at Google to not even think about developing or launching messaging apps from now on. But yes, knowing Google chances are that they would have managed to screw it up.
I saw a humorous exchange at a social event: Someone is texting another person to exchange phone numbers and a green bubble appears. "Is it not working or are you on Android?"
In that moment I understood the genius of not just shipping an iMessage for Android app. Not having an iPhone is perceived as a failure state.
In continental Europe I've seen just the opposite. In many social contexts having an iPhone is associated with either being a mindless fanboy, a basic trend-following drone or, in general, bad with money.
As in "why would anyone overpay for a phone that does just the same as an Android?".
I suspect you might be grossly extrapolating from your own social circles.
I think it’s a really safe assumption that most people don’t really care what others have, or really care that much about a device vs it doing what they need.
I don’t think that’s a US vs Europe thing. I see people in tech circles in America make the same judgements, but don’t realize that it’s irrelevant
I am extrapolating from my own experience. I believe you are right in the sense that most people don't really care, not in the EU and neither in the US.
However I have seen first hand the Android prejudice, to call it something, in the US. And I've never seen it in the EU, where I've spent the majority of my time lately.
And, conversely, I've seen plenty of prejudice against iOS in a many varied (but not all, of course) social contexts across the EU.
But yes, definitely, it's anecdotal evidence based on my own experience.
I’m in the UK, and I can’t say your description rings true to me at all. There are some fans who passionately defend their tribe while attacking the other, but most people couldn’t care less either way. I believe it’s similar in the US.
Worth to note that just like US, Canada and Australia, the market share of iPhone in UK is above 50%, whereas Europe average is <40% pushing Apple to #2 or lower.
The Smartphone Premium Tier device-segment (>600 USD w/o subsidy) makes up ~50% of all sales in UK, which firmly positions Apple far FAR in the lead in this segment, just like in US, UK, AU,...
This is also not evenly distributed geographically (cities have a much higher sales of iPhones than rural areas).
--> There are barely any "tribes" left in the higher income-brackets of UK. A person who can afford an iPhone likely owns an iPhone, so non-iPhone users are either "quirky exotics" (i.e. using a foldable device) or very likely in a lower income bracket.
The lower income bracket is where the fringe of Apple/Android is, and that's where the argument of "iPhone means I'm successful" / "Android means I'm smarter" is really happening (~400USD w/o subsidy).
So if you're in one of the above english-speaking countries and you don't notice this argument, you're likely in a higher income bracket and likely live in a city.
I'd love to see some data for that. In my own anecdata, around half of my engineering colleagues (6 figure salaries) are on Android. Nobody gives a shit either way - the only reason I know is from borrowing chargers.
Uh indeed, you're right, engineering is a very valid outlier. There are higher income professions where Android is considered more preferable, which from my (subjective) experience is mostly engineering and IT. I think that's because for this group a smartphone is more likely also recognized as an IT product than "just" a social device, but that's very speculative as I don't have sufficient data.
Unfortunately I cannot share the data on the figures I mentioned earlier as they are restricted for sharing (I'm working in Smartphone business and we're analyzing sales data of all the world to make strategic decisions).
I tried a quick search to find some public data on price brackets and target groups I could share instead, I didn't find much unfortunately.
But here's a public stat on price brackets to show the big valley:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1169438/share-of-global-...
The data resolution is unfortunately not high and also not clustered in countries, but it shows one aspect: ~70% of global sales accounts for devices <300USD. Apple has no smartphone below 300USD w/o subsidy so their global market share of ~23% of all sales is actually concentrated in just 30% of the market. In countries with more high-tier sales like UK, Apple usually has a significantly larger share of that tier. In more granular data it's visible how much Apple actually owns those price segments outside of China, and how households with more disposable income don't move away from Apple anymore (surely also thanks to Airpods and Apple watches, whose value degrades when not on iOS).
Anyway, what happened in English speaking countries first but is also growing in others (i.e. Spain, Italy, Brazil,...), as a result of that split is, that people of lower income and/or status associate owning an iPhone with wealth and success.
This is not so much noticeable in higher income brackets where everyone can afford an iPhone, but on the bottom of that "iPhone class" this is very prevalent. Moreover, on the lower fringe of this there is not only social pressure to own an iPhone to represent your status, but to also own a RECENT iPhone and/or Airpods, Apple watches etc.
Unfortunately I couldn't find public data to demonstrate this, so it's fair for you to consider this not answered. Within the smartphone industry all this is quite known for many years now.
Not sure what could be done to reverse this, so far the potent competition to Apple actually decreased by leaving the market.
A final interesting bit for which I also found zero public data: For several years this "iPhone class" in western countries was slightly female-driven, with more women transitioning from Android to iOS or upgrading to new iPhones than men. This seems to have balanced itself in the past 2 years now, maybe because the recent iPhone improvements are more techy than experience-focused? (speculation)
I had never encountered the "blue vs green" bubble problem until moving to the US.
It's partly because the US has a higher rate of iPhones (through subsidized phone plans) and partly because the US hung onto SMS much longer than other countries.
Sure, I won’t deny that there’s a blue/green bubble issue in the same way that people have issues with any friction point. This is the same as if one set of friends are on WhatsApp and another set are on telegram etc… and having to deal with either switching between apps or dealing with reduced capabilities.
However the initial person I was replying to was talking about judgements regarding the device itself and as a whole, not just messaging friction
> This is the same as if one set of friends are on WhatsApp and another set are on telegram etc… and having to deal with either switching between apps or dealing with reduced capabilities.
It's not really the same, since if a group is using WhatsApp and you want to join, but don't have WhatsApp, you can simply install it. The same with all other messaging platforms.
With iMessage you can join over text/MMS, but it will make the experience so much worse for everyone that most people (from my experience) will simply not allow you to join.
To add my own lived experience, the whole blue / green text thing is absolutely a cultural label throughout continental Europe. As a 20-something who has recently lived in France + Denmark, you do seem like a bit of a pariah without an iPhone
Really? In my experience, the main audience for iPhones, consists of three groups: high earners, fans and children. The first group buys for status, the second group buys for convenience, and the third group because the repairs are cheaper and easier (fewer models). Most people I know despise the Apple model of always trying to squeeze some more money out of you.
Have you ever thought that it might be more of a function of people you know and your own outlook than objective reality?
Does 33% of the population of the EU and 50% of the population of the US really fit in your tiny bubbles.
You realize Android phones are running an operating systems whose entire purpose of being is to collect your data and continuously make money off of you?
With 50% of the population in the US having iPhones and 33% in the EU, where is the “status from having one”?
Besides, in the US, the difference between buying an iPhone on a 24 month interest free payment plan and an Android phone on the same payment plan is minimum. Even at minimum wage that’s less than 5 hours of work. But with todays worker shortage, even fast food workers are making $15/hour. This gets back to how is it a symbol of “status” when you have the same phone as a teenager flipping burgers?
> the second group buys for convenience,
You mean people buy stuff that makes their life more convenient? Isn’t this like saying “water is wet”?
> and the third group because the repairs are cheaper and easier (fewer models)
Repairs are easier because Apple has retail stores all over the country and actually have good customer service.
The fact that you are getting so many response arguing that "its just your social circle/just one anecdotal data", when the parent pro-iPhone comment is exactly the same anecdotal evidence speaks volume about pro-iPhone bias that plenty of North American users may have.
Some of the arguments are straight up bonkers for me - for instance, "iMessage is more secure." Is it? Apple is a US-based firm and subject to the whims of US laws and governmental intrusion.
In my circle - and I have lived in both Europe and Asia - we heavily use Telegram. I find it to be far more favorable experience than iMessage. UX and interoperatibility between platforms is far more superior and it runs flawlessly - doesn't matter whether it is a flagship Apple/Samsung device or a cheap Xiaomi phone. Or PC/Mac/Linux for that matter.
You realize that by citing your “circle uses Telegram” when even a cursory internet search will show you and your friends are in the minority, will quickly reveal how small your bubble is?
My cursory internet search shows me that it has 700 Million active users worldwide - that number is not "small" in my opinion. One of the most popular messaging apps in Asia, Europe, CIS countries, LatAm etc. I think you just prove my point of there being an North American bias against other messaging platforms fwiw
iMessage and iPhones being 'more secure' is simply not true. I know it's being thrown around a lot, but e.g. Pegasus famously had zero-click exploits for iMessage.
I'm feeling you are assuming that the alternative to iMessages in Europe is SMS. It's not. The alternative is WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Facebook Messenger, etc.
Signal, WhatsApp, and iMessage frame privacy from the service operator as the norm, while the others relegate it to some “I’m being sneaky now” switch.
Framing fundamental privacy measures as sneaky mode is actively harmful to their broader adoption, paints a target on the few people who do have dire need for protection, and makes us all vulnerable to efforts to legislate against what progress we’ve made.
The thread developed into E2EE. Threema was an example how to do it more correctly, and to show what the others are doing wrong, giving an incorrect sense of security when there is none.
In my own experience we in Europe don't care much about which phone other people are using. Of course we are defending the reason why we have either an iPhone or more probably an Android but all messages have the same color on WhatsApp and everybody kind of must use it in my country. I knew that there were European countries with a FB Messenger majority (France?) but I don't know if it's still a thing.
Having to use WhatsApp removes a reason to have to buy an iPhone and adds a new one not to care about the brand of the phone.
The US is an absolutely huge win - get the valuable customers and leave the rest for Android. For comparison the 2021 advertising spend in the US was greater than that of the next 10 countries combined.
> - the population of 10 european countries combined is not as big as the US
Exactly opposite. US states generally have larger area, but lower population. Population-wise, California is about the size of Poland and Texas is similar to Romania. No state is comparable to Germany (83M), France (65M) or Italy (60M).
Not sure how universal its in all of Europe but at least where I live, nobody uses SMS for communication. To the point that government services are unofficially using viber and WhatsApp to communicate with citizens.
That's exactly the reason why iMessage isn't used much in Europe, it's seen as an SMS client and SMS aren't used anymore.
Half of the problem is a branding issue (calling it "messages" on the phone did not help) and the other half of the issue is that it's not available on Android
Absolutely. As a continental European, I am always discussing with my fellow Europeans such matters; like when Hans bought a new Mercedes-Benz automobile. Silly man, doesn't he know a Dacia does the same thing for less? We all had a hearty chuckle about it.
I would include all the European countries with exception of Austria, Switzerland, France, Germany, UK and Scandinavian countries, the tier 1 countries in income level.
I've had both. But after your 28th phone, 4th for wife (cause they never lose or break em) and 609th one for kids, the thrill wore off a line time ago. Phones are a blur.
Nonetheless I'm pretty sure apple would not want to hear X likes apple hates android merely b/c it reads apple where it disappears into NY Post page 6 buzz and gossip thing eg vapid nonsense
I think they want to hear they like apple because of its hw/sw features and tight integration.
Brand is a by way to tqa which is a by way to sqa (isakawa). Fanboys are repulsive to anybody who cares about products and services
Where in Europe? Its an entire continent with a huge salary range and many different cultures. Here in Finland, the iPhone is quite popular, and pretty much seen as the default option for non-tech people who don't want to root their phone. The 400 euro model is affordable for most people.
But I wouldn't think that would be the case at all in a poorer country like Poland or Romania.
These days with the iPhone SE you can get a $400 iPhone, there’s $300 Androids which the iPhone doesn’t hit but below $300 an Android is gonna be so bad it’s not really in consideration in the first place for most people.
That's where you are wrong. The truth is that for a for a massive chunk of the population a 200€ phone straight from China like a Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 [1] is plenty enough.
Not great, but not terrible camera. Not flagship, but not sluggish processor. Nice bright 90Hz AMOLED display. 33W Fast Charging. Runs TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, Chrome and so on without a hiccup.
IMO it’s all a matter of perspective. I typically keep a phone for around two years. Ignoring for a second that iPhones are typically more future proof than Android phones, the $200 difference between mid-tier Android and iPhone SE is $8.33 a month.
Is the iPhone a superior experience? IMO, yes. Do I need it? No. But do I use my phone enough that $8 a month is worth it for the improvement? Absolutely.
But I do agree because I'm very tied to the ecosystem, I use lots of Apple products, the whole experience is worth it.
For your usual non-tech professional using your typical five free social media apps, taking a couple pics for Instagram and doing a few calls? I don't think it's worth the extra $8. Better get coffee.
Which is an absolute joke of a phone unless you just value the apple logo that much, which most of Europe doesn't. 720p screen? 4gb ram? What decade are we in again?
Every time someone complains about ram in the iPhone it’s evidence they don’t know what they are talking about and chase the numbers trends of android.
If you're not paying for numbers, what are you paying for then? What reason could there be to pay $400 for a 2022 iphone that doesn't provide anything that a $400 android from 5 years ago doesn't?
Well I’m not paying for ram. Obviously everything is subjective but iOS is better than android, better camera, better eco system, better privacy and security, better battery life over time, better lifetime support, etc etc etc.
iPhone runs well on 3gb, 4gb, 6gb. It’s far more optimised than android.
The same cannot be said for android. Over time lack of ram cripples it.
Hilarious. A fair few techies like me are on SEs because we either get them from work, or use big screens all day so don’t value a large phone because it’s strictly a functional device. Works perfectLy fine. Anyway, why anyone would ever care about the RAM on an iPhone is beyond me.
Granted, I am a weird tech literate guy who wastes his time on hacker news, but what other capabilities does a phone require? I check my email, browse a few websites, use something for messaging, and call Uber/Lyft. How would superior phone specs improve my life? At this point, the next step is to slim down the software, the hardware is more than sufficient.
A cheap phone would work for that. But they are noticeably laggy and kind of grotty to use, especially once you’ve used something nicer. Kind of like going back to an ancient PC.
It's more like running Windows 11 on an ancient PC. If it ran Windows 3.1 when it came out, it's probably still pretty snappy if you run Windows 3.1 on it today.
The cheap phones we have now could totally blow away higher end phones from the past...
But security updates, and lack of support on old phones essentially means you can't do that. Because they're gonna bundle in a ton of bullshit with the security updates.
If all you use your phone for is browsing websites and checking email, you can get a cheap chinese android for half the price that does all of that just fine.
I never said anything bad about the actual size of the screen because I don't think it's a bad thing. The problem is that the phone has a tiny screen, tiny specs but a not-so-tiny price.
I’m not sure I agree. The people buying a $400 phone aren’t getting sweaty about the specs, the phone is just a tool for them. They probably don’t even know what 720p is
Furthermore, if you're trying to save money, you can hold on to an iPhone for a lot longer than a budget Android and you'll come out ahead after amortization.
Google has promised it gets 3+2 years. We'll see in 2025 how that actually panned out.
Meanwhile my mom is on her second iPhone, the first one lasted for 6 years with OS updates, the current one (SE2020) will most likely get updates until 2025. Two phones in about a decade isn't too bad IMO.
I can't think of anything as bad in terms of specs / money spent in the android world as the Iphone SE. You would have to go out of your way to avoid most known brands to find it.
Just compare that to an S10 which is roughly in the same price range now
Specs do matter for the experience as well when it's low enough? The iPhone SE has a 720p screen, a single camera with very poor recording quality (1080p/25fps) that has to matter for the experience at some point.
Do those sub $300 phones sell well in the EU? My only experience with a $150 USD phone, Samsung A10, was that it was so slow it was nearly unusable. I wasn’t really sure who the market is for that phone. Maybe at €250 the A32 is a much better experience, and I know the 6a is great but that’s also nearly the price of the SE
Yes those phones sell well in Europe. In fact I got the list by looking at top selling phones on some online retailers like Amazon.
Most of them aren’t very good you’re right, but most people aren’t willing to pay more. Keep in mind that the north in most of Europe is to pay for the unlocked phone upfront, not finance it though the carrier.
And the SE is €200 more expensive than the Pixel 6A as I detailed. Not even the same ballpark.
I am under the impression that they do because Europeans tend to buy phones unlocked up front at retail much more often than their American counterparts. Sadly a lot of phone manufacturers trying to break into the US market still don't know a vast majority get their phone in installments via their carrier.
I think it comes down to social class. Most German, French, and Spanish people I know that travel frequently, make upper-professional incomes, and belong to what you would typically say is "upper middle class" are almost exclusively using iPhones.
The difference is that regardless of what device people don't seem to care what others are using. There is no iMessage effect cause other messaging platforms are used which behave the same on both iOS and android. At the same time it's also not a status symbol the way it may be in US. A top end Samsung generally costs more than a top end iPhone.
I don't want this to sound as fanboy as it does, but iPhone is really market leader in hardware, the Apple Silicon + Battery management just has no serious competitor.
I agree software-wise Android ~= iOS but Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 < Apple A16.
> In many social contexts having an iPhone is associated with either being a mindless fanboy, a basic trend-following drone or, in general, bad with money.
This is a bad take and is more revealing about your social circle.
US salaries are much higher. What looks like a reasonable spending on quality and privacy (especially with an operator offering a loan) when you make $180k, may look senseless display of wealth when you make $90k.
The thing is that I have a ton of friends all over EU, UK, and Switzerland, and have an idea of the salaries, mostly in the IT. I'm not speaking from some theoretical assumptions.
I don't need to know the financial situation of the iPhone owners. I need to know the financial situation of the 50% of population, to compare to the 50% penetration rate in the US.
As much as I understand, phone carriers / operators subsidize phones in Europe to a much smaller extent than in the US, too.
It is most definitely not a bad take as I'm literally saying just what you imply: as per my comment, in many social circles that is what I've observed. Which does reveal about my social circles. Which are circles I've come across in several countries throughout Europe, and across a large spread of socio-economic contexts.
You can argue that your experience is different, I'm just providing mine which I've experienced consistently enough to find it worth pointing as a common divergence from what I see in the US.
If people in the EU don’t care about iMessage interoperability, then why is the government so keen on forcing Apple to make iMessage interoperate with other platforms?
> If people in the EU don’t care about iMessage interoperability, then why is the government so keen on forcing Apple to make iMessage interoperate with other platforms?
The legislation is aimed at opening up the APIs of all messaging apps/companies which meet their criteria for being a "gatekeeper". Apple simply happens to meet those criteria.
> And the only stats I could find say that iMessage is used more than WeChat
Your article called their data an estimate without giving any insight into how the data was estimated, other than the caveat that it may include users who only used imessage for sms.
> Your article called their data an estimate without giving any insight into how the data was estimated, other than the caveat that it may include users who only used imessage for sms
You mean anecdata without hard facts are meaningless??? You don’t say.
Given you were so keen to call out the ineffectiveness of anecdotes, it's rather ironic for you to be giving out estimates with no real data behind them as somehow superior.
Not to mention, where was the anecdote in your article? There's no anecdote there in a 1.3B estimate, for all I know it's just some random reporter's guess (backed up by who knows what), whereas an anecdote is at least a hard fact, just one with small sample size. If I don't know how the estimate is made then I probably actually prefer the anecdote.
It's something that I often hear, but each time I check, the difference is minimal. So I did the comparison again between France and the US, for an iPhone 14 (unlocked, 128 GB) + AppleCare+.
I take the phone unlocked, with AppleCare+, to attempt a normalization across regulations. Default warranty in the US is much weaker than in the EU, but should be the same with AppleCare+. Buying a locked phone is also cheaper in the US, but AFAIK it's not possible to buy a locked phone in France anymore.
US: 978 USD (excluding sales taxes), France: 1198 EUR (TTC, including sales taxes) or 998 EUR (HT, excluding sales taxes), so about 992 USD at current rate. So the iPhone in France costs about 14 USD more, or 1.45% more. That's not "much more" in my book, although it is a little bit more.
I think the common mistake is to compare European prices with sales taxes (20% in France) against US prices without sales taxes... Hint: prices displayed on the Apple store in the US are always displayed without sales taxes, while in the EU prices always include sales taxes (I'm not sure it's true in all 27 member states, but it's definitely true in France).
The difference is in salary, not price. iPhone costs as much in USA as EU in absolute terms, but when that’s 50% of your monthly income, you go buy a cheap (or telecom sponsored) Android. It won’t be a flagship Android but at least there’s an option you can buy that on paper has all the same specs.
Indeed, I would have agreed 200% with the following: "In Europe Apple stuff costs much more, relative to income."
But I've read so many times (on French forums) people argue that Apple is overcharging EU citizens by forgetting to adjust for sales taxes that I defaulted to interpret "In Europe Apple stuff costs much more" that way.
In a way it makes sense, in France what you see is what you get, so the typical French consumer expects the sticker price on the US Apple Store to be the final price. In fact it's the law: in France you have to honor the sticker price, even if it's wrong (unless it's an obvious mistake, but the bar for obvious mistake is quite high).
Well there is a big difference in sales taxes. When I first started regularly going to USA some friend or another would always ask to bring back an iPhone. Because sales tax here is 7% and VAT is 22% back home.
Ah yes, a friend of mine figured it was cheaper to fly from EU to nyc, buy a couple of macbook pro and come back, than to just get them in a shop here.
I'm sorry I wasn't aware this we are doing is to be taken and done with the scientific pulchritude of a peer-reviewed journal.
This is obviously an informal conversation and I've clearly stated in my comment that "I've seen" a different situation "in many social contexts". Which I, again, informally generalize into a phenomenon I consider common enough to be mentioned.
I do not intend to provide you with statistical backing for what amounts to, again, clearly obviously anecdotal evidence.
In short: Jesus, if you disagree or have a different experience, it's OK, let me know, no need to go straight into a formal semantics discussion.
> What does your completely anecdotal experience add to the conversation?
My original comment was answering an existing comment that literally started with "I saw a humorous exchange at a social event" and described literally an anecdote.
I'm hoping you'll see why it's obvious that my comment was very much fit to the existing conversation that was already happening.
My assumption (as an iPhone user) is that if you're on Android, you absolutely have a phone that can do the same thing, but it also tells me you're not someone who obsesses about the details. Good enough. If you truly obsess about details, you would recognize that the Apple hardware/software ecosystem is worth every incremental penny.
Oh yeah, what details are those? That for the longest time, Apple thought too little of their users to allow them to store files on their phone? Or the fact that the iPhone massively over-processes photos, to the point where you can instantly tell that a photo is taken with an iPhone (and not in a good way)? Or the fact that they still use lightning connectors, which they have held a cramped grip on until they are forced to switch to new technology? Or the fact that the App Store, XCode, ObjectiveC and related docs are widely regarded to have the worst DX in the industry? Or maybe that you don't own your phone enough that you can sideload apps? Or the detail that you pay 10000% markup if you choose to buy a phone with extra storage?
You definitely can. You can attach any standard USB drive to an iPhone/iPad and it shows up in the Files app as a storage source along with every other data storage provider you have installed (Dropbox, Box, OneDrive, Google drive, iCloud, the local device, etc.)
Every app that reads and writes files shows your standard file picker that lets you load and save files that can then be shared across applications. This has been the case for years.
I daily an Android phone and use Macs exclusively for personal and productivity use, with some Linux machines for personal play as well.
If you start to really 'obsess about the details' -- and this'll mean different things to different people -- you'll start to run into the walls that Apple puts up. It's a very one-sided "my way or the highway" dynamic. It's easier to work around on their laptops, but impossible (or at least unreasonably impractical) on their phones. For context I gave iOS a shake twice, once with the XR and once with the 13 mini.
I've always felt that iOS is the platform you go with for:
- unparalleled high-quality integration with the Apple ecosystem
- a very strongly (and unavoidably) opinionated experience (where the opinions are usually more-or-less correct)
That's a bad assumption. I obsess about the details and I don't like iOS. My wife obsesses about details but doesn't give a damn about tech or phones. As a person, my assumption is that if you judge people by the phone they use you might not be very nice.
I was on a date once and I was a few models behind with my iPhone, and my date said, "You work in devops, and you have an iPhone 5?" The disgust was evident in her tone.
That was our first and last date, but I did quickly thereafter buy a new iPhone...
The right phone to bring on a date or any personal human interaction is none at all or turn it off. Cell phones are like toilets. No one wants to watch you using one.
If a date cares which toilet or phone you use... that is weird. Run.
FWIIW I have a 20 year background in software engineering and devops. Today I run an infosec company, live in silicon valley, and I do not have a cell phone at all.
I have a desktop computer for getting work done in office hours, and if I have time alone away from home for an extended period of time I bring a laptop and a book which are used at times of my choosing.
Always having access to a detailed map with GPS has been one of the best quality of life enhancers modern tech has provided. I can go anywhere and never worry about getting lost. And the same device will play any music I want whenever I want, take photos, show me a grocery list automatically synced with my computer, and pay for the groceries and any of by bills like rent. You do you though.
I once used all of those things constantly too. I get it, but there are viable alternatives that are worth it for me, and maybe others.
Paper maps exist. As do standalone GPS devices. Personally I look up directions before I leave and write them down. Within a few months of not using a GPS I actually started learning to navigate on my own.
I actually still use and prefer taxis over uber/lyft because there is no app, and they tend to know where they are going without staring at a phone while driving. As a motorcycle rider, I think all distracting screens should be turned off while driving. They get people killed.
As for photos, dedicated point and shoot cameras are still a thing as they have vastly superior lenses to most/all phones.
As for keeping lists, I switched back to paper notes. I rarely even look at them because the act of writing things down commits it to memory remarkably better than I expected, and my memory is pretty poor.
As for music, I use rockbox on a small dedicated music player with 2tb of storage. I filled it so I have plenty.
There is nothing stopping you from still using a phone for all these things, but consider keeping your phone in airplane mode full time so you are a bit less distracted and more disconnected.
The average person checks their phone 300 times a day. When you know the internet is off... that addictive habit dies down.
I did that for a year and used offline music and maps on the go etc. After that I stopped paying for cell service I never used as I could find wifi anywhere if I felt I really needed it. After that I deleted apps one by one and finding alternatives. Somewhere along the line I started finding I would forget to bring it with me to go shopping or for a walk. About a year ago I just ditched it entirely. I simply realized I am happier and more present and focused without it. Even airports, traveling, etc. There is no anxiety for me when I am without internet or a phone like there once was. It is like modern day survival training that paid off.
The mental health gains and my overall ability to focus has gone up so dramatically I do not see myself ever going back. Maybe a beeper for emergencies but that is about it.
I suggest anyone start with airplane mode and wifi only for a while and see how far down that path is right for them.
If you had asked me 2 years ago if I would ever leave home without a phone I would have thought you were nuts. Detoxing from anything takes time.
Best not to show your phone on a first date. It is like talking about religion here in San Francisco. Apple verses Google is like Allah verses Yahweh. You may not get laid.
Apple are pretty bad repair wise in the country I live. I've had to take macs in to get repairs many times and it's an exercise in frustration. There is no Apple store in NZ, they're slow, they won't ship things.
I bought a Dell laptop, there was a problem with the trackpad. The Dell technician came to my house and fixed it on my dining room table.
If this is true, it's the opposite of what you imply. The fancier and more expensive the phone, the less productive you're likely to be with it.
My 4 year old Android device can do anything productive that someone else's iPhone 14 can do. What it can't do is play the latest games (not enough RAM), stream Netflix comfortably (small screen), or impress people with face unlock (lowly thumbprint recognition for me).
It's the most common yet worst status symbol, because it can be bought with a plan and monthly instalments, so it's easier to flaunt than a Lamborghini.
I've seen people on benefits with better iPhones than mine.
If your date judges you for having an Android instead of an iPhone, they're a terrible judge of character and wealth.
It's pretty much the same in Denmark. It's either a blue bubble or a green bubble. I'm pretty sure it's because of the heavy competition between mobile carriers in the 00's resulting in unlimited free SMS texts, thus having no incentive for using an alternative messaging platform. This meant that once iPhones became popular, every iPhone user's message automatically became an iMessage.
Practically no-one has WhatsApp here, but all my family in the Netherlands use WhatsApp almost exclusively. It's my impression that in the Nordic countries it's iMessage but the rest of Europe uses WhatsApp.
Seems that Norway and Denmark are in a bubble, because it is definitely not like this in Finland where data and tech have been years ahead. As soon as 3g/4g plans and smartphones started becoming more widespread than unlimited SMS/MMS, WhatsApp took over.
I have noticed that my Norwegian friends use Facebook Messenger quite a lot and the iPhone is pretty ubiquitous there with younger folk, so perhaps Denmark is the same.
People for some reason like to harp on the whole green bubble thing when it’s not even the real issue. The lock-in is Facetime — there is zero answer for it on Android. It’s the default in my friend group for calling someone, we hold group hangouts in it.
Getting non-work people into a video call if you don’t have an iPhone is painful.
I’m still shocked that they added this. It actually made the UX worse for people that only typically talk to other iPhone users. The entire existence of non-ephemeral call links / lobbies is confusing if you never have to share them and are just trying to call an iPhone user directly. And it’s such a prominent part of the new FaceTime UI instead of something that they could’ve hid in an options menu.
Video-calling my friends and acquaintances would be seen as totally creepy, it's text all the way. Phone calls in case of a real emergency (and for some work tasks, unfortunately), but otherwise it's text-only.
In case you have lots of information to share you can also leave a recorded voice-message via WhatsApp, but that's all done in a asynchronous way, i.e. the person receiving the recorder voice-message can listen to it whenever he/she feels like it.
Thing is, it just works.
Facetime just works, iMessage just works.
That means that you can let non tech people easily audio/video call, group chats, share photos, albums and what not with good quality.
Android isn't bad, it is just that the ecosystem around iOS is that good.
Yes it does, and at least video quality on facetime is as far as i've seen way better than what's available on Android.
This eternal attempt of forcing Apple to make their products/platform more open is in opposition to a lot of its users as well. I actually enjoy the walled garden and most do - it makes for a hassle free experience. If you don't want that - fine, go get an android or a old nokia.
I think you're thinking about this the wrong way. It's more than just iPhone vs Android. Apple is creating an enviroment of exclusion; maybe you will just use a different app but many in the US (admittedly mainly teens) just won't speak to android users. It's not ok and I hope Apple correct themselves.
To your point about walled gardens, I don't see how Apple developing an imessage client for android users defeats the walled garden. Unless you think part of the walled garden is to keep Android users from contacting iPhone owners? I don't think thats what you mean but that is what you are saying.
I was thinking similarly. The tone is incredibly casual considering the implications of the decision on both the company and society at large. There are basic spelling and grammar errors for goodness sake. I'm not criticizing, I just find that intensely interesting.
The rest of the conversation almost certainly happened in person. These emails were just getting out some initial thoughts. Happens all the time. Also, notice that Tim Cook wasn't in the email conversation.
for me it was that one guy calls it "the best messaging app" , then federighi implies that it s not really and they d need a lot of effort to make a marginally better competitor.
Also how they admit that a busy messaging service "does not cost us a lot to run", but HN constantly defends the 30% tax for app store storage space
so yeah like HN, except in HN this would start an epic flamewar "how dare you say that"
I thought most of it was a little surreal to converse about innovating that way, as though innovation was specific. No one here would ever say, "what we have to do as HN members is innovate. Once we do that, we can make our comments better and draw in more users from Slashdot." I thought the whole thing was fake until I got to the end and saw what Internal Tech Emails was. Then I just thought it was all pretty phoney. That isn't how ordinary people converse. I'd almost think they can walk without their feet ever touching the ground.
What are you saying? That we aren't all super different individuals and are actually in fact a very very narrow window of a specific tech culture? Madness.
And this decision gave them the US mobile market (very profitable) but basically lost them the messaging and ancillary commercial services enabled by messaging market in the rest of the world.
Yep. It's interesting how uniform the US messaging mesh is (practically everyone on iMessage). An average American's chance of having Whatsapp installed on their phone is a function of how likely they are to have contacts from abroad.
The actual market share for Apple in US mobile market is around 50%, so even if every single one of those use iMessage exclusively, there are still plenty of people locked out of it. If you don't have any in your social circles, that's probably due to the nature of those circles.
Not sure I agree. A generation or two is eons in tech. In that timeframe there will likely be another massive paradigm shift that totally washes away today’s thinking about phones, communication, etc.
Everyone makes this mistake. Something being popular with young people is no guarantee it will remain popular as they grow up. The social pressures that lead teens to want iPhones drop off over time.
Nobody said there was a guarantee it would stick to the same percentages as they grow, but brand loyalty is definitely a thing for people that develops in their formative years.
It’s also not just “social pressures to use iPhones” but the fact that parents can:
* give them hand me downs due to longer device lifespans
* the ability to get them more easily serviced when their kid breaks something by going to the Apple Store
* the ability to more easily buy a decent midrange device on a student discount
* the ability to communicate more easily themselves using iMessage
* appealing to privacy and safety in Apple marketing
People over index on social pressure from other teens. There’s lots of reasons teens get devices and many come from parental choices.
Maybe the percentages will vary as they grow but any company worth their salt is paying attention to the possibly high rate of market drop off that they’ll experience
Yep, definitely. I just know when I moved there one of the first things I was told was "install Line" and I got to smile and say "I've had line for years." (because I collect social apps for fun)
Both are American companies. Whatsapp is Meta (Facebook), and iMessage (actually now Messages) is Apple. If you care about security, the question is which is more likely to comply with the US government's requests for information: Meta or Apple. If you don't, the question is price point, ignoring the question of which is more likely to make your data marketable. That is likely Meta, so we could rephrase this as, "Do you care to pay more for Apple's privacy, or is it okay for Meta to sell your messages to anyone willing to pay?"
There's Line, Kakao Talk, Viber, WeChat, SnapChat... all very popular in different countries & with different demographics. WeChat is of course the most sophisticated in terms of ecosystem beyond just messaging.
None of these may have arisen or become so popular if Apple & Android had created interop.
Telegram is orders of magnitude smaller than any of the those listed above, except maybe a Viber (I’m not sure; it seems to have some use in SEA countries).
As always, it's important to remember that people choice of messaging depends on network effect more than anything else.
But even without it, they are both E2E encrypted. Of course you could ship new code that send the messages unencrypted but it would be extremely risky for Meta and the government, depending on the target
Was just talking about this with my wife. We had an extended family group chat come in that was an absolute disaster with each of us getting several messages per response. I believe this is because it contains a mix of android users and we were discussing how Apple forces us to have a worse experience to maintain their exclusivity.
It’s because it falls back to MMS with android users in the group which does have a weird duplication issue. Best bet is to use another platform for group chats (Signal is excellent but WhatsApp may be a path of less resistance)
I, for one, could never understand the appeal of using the messaging app that would work only on devices made my one manufacturer. Imagine your emails could be read only on iPhones and Macs, how far would it take you? Why are messages any different?
Here in India, Apple has a cult like following among teens. Anyone not having an iPhone is considered uncool. And many of them use the archaic iPhone 5 or 6 rather than a latest Android. The obsession is unreal.
This isn't the primary part of this conversation but I found this quote pretty interesting:
> Now, we are starting to work on Safari again but look at Chrome. They put out releases at least every month while we basically do it once a year.
Even though this was in 2013 nothing about the release cycle (still only major changes with the major OS release versions). I wonder if some of the other emails have more context on this.
I think the truth is the vast majority of people don't care much about their browser anymore. They are pretty much all good enough.
There is only one reason why chrome got so much market share: because they put an ad on the Google homepage "Try a faster browser!". The marketing was bullshit (bloated websites don't load any faster in Chrome than in other browsers), but it worked.
If any other company advertised their browser so heavily, they would be the leading browser maker today. But noone else can put ads on every load of the Google homepage.
> I think the truth is the vast majority of people don't care much about their browser anymore. They are pretty much all good enough.
I think browsers are just so complex that most people don't understand that there's something wrong with their browser or operating system and just blames the website. Few years back it feels that everybody knew that if something is a bit off on the web they should try a different browser. Now, this idea seems to be more or less gone - most people only have 1 browser installed to begin with.
Safari is the Chrome around webkit on the platform, so it tends to reflect platform major version number changes. Chrome is its own platform and does not have semantic version numbers AFAIK (or, they just break compatibility once a month)
Non-APNS push notifications landed on macOS in 16.1. They get webkit features in minor releases. Mouse and keyboard support for iPad also landed in a minor release. They average about 6 releases a year.
I thought they released Safari for Windows to enable developers to test their web based iPhone apps. Before the App store all iPhones were supposed to only run web based apps, and Windows was a much larger platform for developers.
"Basically" means "not literally but for all practical purposes might as well be" but in fewer words. Safari's major features, for all practical purposes, are released annually and not with point upgrades unless they were planned features (same with iOS, iPadOS, and macOS) that didn't make it into .0.
Among my iPhone-owning friends, it is common to hear “they didn’t add X to Safari in iOS 16 but I hope they will in iOS 17” or “did you watch the iOS 16 promos? They’re adding X to Safari.” It is expected that major Safari features coincide with major iOS releases.
I’m not comparing the features of iOS Safari and Chrome on Android. I’m just saying they approach the release schedule differently, like the exec said in the email.
Is iMessage an American phenomena mostly? I don't know a single South Asian or Chinese person who uses iMessage. In Canada, most people use WhatsApp or Messenger, and some tech-savvy millenials use Signal.
As opposed to what? It’s the same as any other network effect in any other social group.
Using signal or telegram or WhatsApp isn’t intellectual superiority. It’s just a network effect motivated by other factors like cost of data vs cost of sms etc… at a certain point of time.
while using other messaging services isn’t a sign of intellectual superiority, judging others for their choices is very much a sign of low self confidence.
I don't think it's the same. Joining the iMessage network requires purchasing an Apple phone, which is a barrier that may be insurmountable to teens that aren't making their own purchasing decisions, regardless of how badly they want to join.
Joining any of those other networks just requires installing a free app.
That’s not the point though. He was saying that users of iMessage are brainwashed by Apple marketing with the implication that those who don’t use it are not. .
your comments are salient but irrelevant to that point. The choice of messaging platform is due to networking effects regardless of platform, and their smugness is unwarranted
Why is Apple is being attacked for not providing a viable platform-level messaging solution to a mobile platform they don't own or control. Isn't that Google's job?
People dislike Apple intentionally making interoperability between platforms worse (something that hurts users of both platforms) in order to make money of network effects.
They are hurting inter platform communication by encouraging people to use the only messaging app on the market that isn't multiplatform.
Secondly they intentionally provide a bad experience (like low res images and video) when people do try to communicate by text.
TFA is the most direct example that this is entirely according to their plan.
It seems a stretch to label this "intentionally" making interoperability between platforms worse, when in order to create interoperability they would have to devote significant engineering and design effort into creating a solution for a platform they don't own or control. Recall that when iMessage was introduced, the messaging landscape was very different. It was basically SMS "but nicer" for iPhone users with a simple fallback.
My understanding of low res images and video is that it's a limitation of MMS messaging?
I dunno, I read the exchanges and it seems fairly benign. Execs asking the question of "do we want to invest in this or not?" and coming to the conclusion not to invest outside their own platform.
> they would have to devote significant engineering and design effort into creating a solution for a platform they don't own or control.
They wouldn't even have to engineer it themselves. Opening for third party developers would quickly solve the problem. Besides, making a multiplatform app doesn't seem to be an issue for Apple im other contexts, or for any other maker of messaging apps.
> My understanding of low res images and video is that it's a limitation of MMS messaging?
Apple could fall back on a more modern MMS version, like RCS.
But the whole SMS/MMS -replacement thing is purely an American problem, the rest of the world has pretty much moved on to different applications that are cross-platform.
This is basically going to involve a lot of initial engineering effort no matter how you slice it. Cleaning up and opening a codebase, or turning a private protocol into a for-public-consumption interoperable multi-platform messaging protocol is a huge undertaking. Possibly even bigger than maintaining a second closed Android-only implementation of iMessage.
Second, there is a ton of design decision that needs to be put into that, too. What do you do with iMessage iCloud backups of users who switch to Android? From Android? Do you interoperate with other backup providers? Does this change the fundamental nature of iCloud backups? How do you interoperate with forks?
> Apple could fall back on a more modern MMS version, like RCS
They could. But that is also significant engineering effort and not something they get "for free." If it doesn't make the iPhone-to-iPhone experience any better, they aren't likely to invest heavily in it
I don't think there's an intention to make people unhappy, I just very much doubt that there are many Android users working at Apple who want to see this in their day to day lives, and Apple tends to build products for themselves first. Lots of other people just happen to buy them
Because not everyone is on Apple, and not being able to use it with people on other platforms also hurts Apple user's experiences. That's what lead to the iPhone-using journalist's complaint about messaging that lead to Tim Cook's "buy your mom an iPhone".
My point is that it's not only journalist's parent having a bad experience. The journalist's experience is worse for it. And having to buy their parent a new phone isn't exactly an amazing experience either.
That Craig guy had made a very good point in the last message. Barring the socio-economic thing, which makes lots of iPhone users in the US look down on non-iPhone users for not having access to iMessage, WhatsApp was, and still is, the better messaging app compared to iMessage. So why would have hundreds of millions (at that time) WhatsApp users migrated to a worst messaging app?
WhatsApp has a way better interface to quickly share photos at the same original resolutions (or very close to them). I'm now forced to use iMessage because WhatsApp has stopped working on my older phone, and it comparatively sucks at that.
If you ever needed further proof that you should not financially support Apple, eh?
I assume all the big successful companies are like this. To change it, if that was your desire, we need to be outside their influence. That's why FOSS is so valuable.
I'm a little surprised that there's zero surprises. If you hadn't seen these emails, but were asked to write the dialogue for what people would say in that scene, you might write pretty much the same arguments.
Why is SMS type texting not prevalent outside the US? I keep seeing arguments about how everyone uses whatsapp or wechat or what ever, But why? Is the SMS service not there for some reason? Is it perceived as less safe to give out your phone number? Do many people have data only devices with out a number?
SMS is limited to 140 symbols per message (half of that for non-Latin languages), costs money, multimedia messages are a royal PITA to handle.[0]
Most providers moved to bundled plans with tons and tons of SMS included, but only when they already lost to WA.
[0] Last year I needed to send a photo through MMS. It took me 3 attempts to find a proper combo on how to photo in a format acceptible for MMS. Think 640x480 at best. Only three because I've used MMS in the past so somewhere back in my mind there are still info about it. If I were 20 y/o I wouldn't even figure out what I need to do.
One of the reasons, at least here in the UK, is that for a long time you only got so many SMS messages in your phone contract. MMS was also awful for a long time. WhatsApp solved both those problems, and most importantly was on every device possible.
And it was easy to set up. No need for accounts and email addresses. The fact that your phone number served as id and login meant that even my tech-illiterate mother was able to use it.
I think people first moved away from SMS because it cost extra to send them, while messaging apps were virtually free. Then messaging apps beat SMS on features, you can send photos, videos, files, read receipts, works across platforms, etc.
Very true. I've worked in corporate job for 15 years working up to director after 9. I still find writing email tedious and error prone, and envy those who do it well.
Curious: any insights you can share on learnings you had throughout your career when it comes to writing succinct but to the point emails/documents/communication?
I think this would be very helpful for someone who's just venturing on to half of your career length.
"I am concerned the Imessage on Android would simply serve to remove an obstacle to Iphone families giving their kids an Android phone." -Craig
It was with great difficulty that I convinced my girlfriend to try an Android phone that I had tricked out for her. The main obstacle was that her entire family of more than twenty are locked into Imessage. She felt ostracized afterwards being the green bubble in the family. She has gotten many of them on Signal, but they treat me with some disdain. I really learned what a firm grip Apple has on its users, and it is proven here yet again that it is by design. She must really love me.
Having grown up with IRC, AIM, ICQ, MSN, Jabber, etc etc. I can say this was and is _always_ the case.
I have a group of friends who refuse to use Signal (because of the phone number requirement) and for several years the only channel we could agree on was Steam chat.
I have a side of my family that I have warned that I will only see their messages once a month because they will only use Facebook Messenger. I keep my Facebook account for them.
The Android phone I gave her and we use is GrapheneOS, and we have a Nextcloud server for most all our needed services. It is far more private than Apple who knows where you are at all times, what you are using on your phone, who you communicate with.. and is building an advertising business to capitalize on this.
> And since we make no money on iMessage what will be the point?
In case you ever get fooled into thinking Apple really cares about its users or their experience - they care as far as it makes them money. Then they don't care.
If it doesn’t make money there should be some strategic importance. Phil is arguing that targeting Android users has neither financial nor strategic benefits.
It’s bad business practice to put energy towards something that doesn’t serve your mission because you lose focus and discipline.
For the things they do invest in, Apple puts a lot of energy in the user experience because they believe that there are business benefits to doing so. This is true of most well-run companies. Generally speaking, our economic system works out well because the incentives of businesses align with the incentives of the consumer.
Do they send worse images than an Android would send over MMS? Because even on Android I wouldn’t send pictures over MMS because they’ll be scaled down.
Neither is great but Android MMS is much better. And of course RCS is better still. And Google Messages let's you automatically upload videos to Google Photos and let you share them with a link. The affordances to send high quality video are significantly better on Android.
(I don't use any of the above, instead preferring to use Signal.)
It bothers me that they straight up lied to us about this. They said in the iMessage announcement that it’d be an open protocol. Really duplicitous.
That and the way they remove you from group chats if you ever try to turn off iMessage makes the whole thing feel like a dark pattern to me. Apple really has us hostage as iMessage users.
I’m generally a big Apple fan but iMessage feels like abuse to me.
Where did they say it would be an open protocol? I went and found the WWDC 2011 announcement [0], and they described it as a "new messaging service between iOS users" (big bold text from the slide). I watched all the way through the end of the demo, they never said anything about it being an open protocol. In fact, right at the end he said they were "building this on the push notification system that we built", which implies that it's using internal iOS systems, not something they ever intended to make public.
Even if they had said it would be open, changing their minds later wouldn't be a lie, it would be... changing their minds. I'm not an Apple user or fan, and I dislike iMessage's weird half-baked integration with regular SMS, but this feels like an overreaction even if there was a place where they claimed it would be open.
>They said in the iMessage announcement that it’d be an open protocol.
Do you have a reference for this?
At the Facetime announcement, Jobs said that would be an open protocol. Then they ended up in a big patent suit over Facetime and it didn't happen. Not sure how much the suit influenced the decision, but for whatever reason the Facetime protocol was never opened up. I don't remember a similar announcement about iMessage.
As far as abuse, how so? They provide a messaging app. That app is compatible with SMS. There are several alternative messaging apps. Where is the abuse?
> That and the way they remove you from group chats if you ever try to turn off iMessage makes the whole thing feel like a dark pattern to me. Apple really has us hostage as iMessage users.
They have to do that since messages are encrypted. If they left you in they’d either have to send messages insecurely or warn everyone that the entire group was now insecure due to you. There’s no way that wouldn’t be decried as a dark pattern, too.
I’m deeply invested in iMessage portability but I think you might be mistaken. It was FaceTime that was announced as a to-be-open protocol but didn’t see the follow-through.
You mean in a timely manner, right? Because the crazy thing is that they did follow through on FaceTime. It just took them nearly a decade. Seeing all of this now, one might wonder if there were certain legal motivations for that.
Allowing people to join Facetime calls through a browser is not "opening up" the platform. Until they have an API I can write a custom client for it's just a different kind o
closure
Yeah, I debated commenting about the somewhat-crippled cross-platform support that recently landed, but that was really just in response to Zoom taking the ball away from their court and Apple being desperate to try and get it back.
I don’t think it had anything to do with their earlier promise (and I’m also not convinced patent issues were the real crux of the matter ten years ago).
> Yeah, I debated commenting about the somewhat-crippled cross-platform support that recently landed, but that was really just in response to Zoom taking the ball away from their court and Apple being desperate to try and get it back.
Not really; Apple simply doesn't move that fast. You can certainly see projects get more resources as a result of trends, but that isn't necessarily going to move the release forward a year.
You’re thinking of FaceTime not iMessage. FaceTime however was blocked from being opened up due to patent trolling that required a different implementation.
I think you might be thinking about FaceTime. At announcement, Jobs said on stage that it was going to be an open standard, which came as a surprise to the developers. I don’t believe iMessage was ever announced to be open.
These emails actually make me change my mind on both aspects. First, apparently they were at one point undisciplined enough to talk about risky topics in writing. Second, the reasoning in those emails is actually very reasonable. iMessage was a non-revenue-generating service that cost them money and was funded by sales of Apple devices, so it's being offered as a service to users of Apple products. This isn't unfair behavior on Apple's part.