Is it free? I have it bundled as part of my hardware purchases. Is there somewhere to get it without paying?

They put free in quotes because it is bundled in, I’m pretty sure. It is, from a user point of view, free if you are already buying an iPhone anyway.

I have no idea how to compute the actual price. It really isn’t any better than SMS anyway, so I put the value at $0.

> It really isn’t any better than SMS anyway, so I put the value at $0.

Depends on what you do with it. You can send much higher-quality photos and videos over iMessage than SMS/MMS. You can also do things like play games (chess, for example) entirely inside iMessage.

If you're just sending short messages of plain text, yeah, it's not much of an improvement.

Is Linux free? I have a computer that won't run it.

What kind of computer is this that Linux doesn't run on, and can't you just make Linux run on it?

It’s free. The fact it’s only available on Apple devices doesn’t change that fact.

You can only get Apple Fitness on Apple devices, but you also have to pay for it.

Seems a silly distinction. So you're saying Beeper could make paper clips, sell them to you for $2/m, and then give you Beeper Mini for free and you'd consider it free?

Imo the only thing that should be done here is only valid Apple IDs should be able to use this service. Then paying customers are the ones using it. Problem solved, right?

Come on, you can make arbitrary analogies until the end of time but it doesn’t change the facts:

1) you have a device

2) you have software

If you buy the software, it is paid.

If you do not buy the software, its free.

If the software is not available for your device that does make it not free; you just have an incompatible device.

Any other take on this is subscribing to some bias.

Paper clips, are not relevant.

There is a distinction, to be fair, between “free open source software” which is free and you can take it and port it to your device if you want.

…but no one is claiming iMessage is FOSS, and when someone says it is “free”, that is not what they mean.

Is Windows free because it comes pre-installed on your laptop when you buy it?

No. Windows is not free - the manufacturer prepays for the license and it’s built in to your hardware purchase price.

Look up “windows oem” using your favorite search engine.

Right, I know Windows isn't free. My point is, it's the same situation with OS X, and with iMessage. Just because OS X is made by the hardwae developers doesn't change it. Windows still isn't free on Surface laptops, believe me that the OS team gets a cut of hardware sales.

Maybe it seems confusing because OS X isn't sold as a standalone product, but consider how Apple cracks down on Hackintoshes. They definitely consider it stealing.

Hackintosh isn't cracked down on. Commercial use of it is. I had an osx snow leopard partition I hackintoshed and I was trying old HDDs and it booted on my netbook. Most of the times it doesn't work is based on broken APIs or changes that aren't related to osx. 10.8 or 10.7 was the first free osx and the first one that included iMessage.

The difference is that my device isn't incompatible, Apple just doesn't want me to run iMessage on it. They don't just not care, they're actively blocking companies that released clients.

There’s iMessage the app and then there’s the proprietary Apple Push Notification Service. that Apple use in its implementation.

The iMessage app is incompatible with non Apple devices - there is no iMessage app available period outside of those that run on Apple operating systems.

The APN is not licensed for “public” third party usage unless permission is explicitly and expressly granted by Apple.

So yes, your non Apple device is 100% incompatible with iMessage, and unauthorized usage of the underlying APNs is illegal under the Apple Terms of Service.

So if I write an Android app that polls for messages, or uses my own notifier, that's fine by Apple? They'll leave it be?

What?

I never said that. The Apple iMessage APNS is proprietary - and Apple explicitly state it cannot be used without their blessing.

In addition Apple have the right to terminate any Apple IDs that they feel are being used to circumnavigate their approved service access.

I’d be grateful if you’d stop putting words into my mouth here. I’m not claiming any analogies- just facts.

What? Where did I claim that?

You are the one asking if iMessage is “free” (as in beer) software.

It comes with iOS - the license of which is provided free of charge for each user to run on their respective device.

I never made any statement about Beeper - I was talking singularly and only about Apple.

> You are the one asking if iMessage is “free” (as in beer) software.

No, i was asking if it was free in respect to beeper, because the beeper not being free is literally the comment i replied to. I feel like you're looking at my comment in isolation, but expecting me to keep your comment in context - which also seems to be lacking context.

graphe: “iMessage is reliable, ‘free’ and encrypted. Beeper mini is unreliable, paid, and encrypted. I wouldn’t recommend it anymore to my Android friends.“

You: “Is it free? I have it bundled as part of my hardware purchases. Is there somewhere to get it without paying?”

Not sure where the confusion is. Seems from the quoted text you were expressly asking if iMessage was free or not.

If not, what is the “it” you were referring to in your reply? Your initial response did not seem to compare cost to beeper.

I was definitely referring to iMessage. I was just saying that the conversation is about Beeper and iMessage. The comparison was taken place in the quote you posted.

Anyway, i'm just saying that the mints on a hotel pillow are "free" too, but if you cannot acquire them without paying for another service or hardware, they're hardly free.

Best i can give iMessage is that it's complementary. Please correct me if i'm wrong, but almost no one gets iMessage without paying Apple for an associated product to gain access. It's a mint on your pillow.

There’s barely a nuance between “free” and “complementary”.

Both are essentially the same thing.

https://thecontentauthority.com/blog/free-vs-complimentary

I dunno, it just feels some silly definition or thought experiment to define away the money missing from my wallet.

I'll concede all day long that i may be using the wrong definition, that's definitely not my objection. However free is pretty simple. Entrance fees or any price blocking you from the "free" thing is in any practical sense, hardly free. At least imo.

A lot of things are free if you ignore what you paid for in the first place.

Out of curiosity, how would you even define what is free and what isn't? Lets say a snickers bar released an April Fools edition where you paid the standard price, but only for the wrapper. The snickers bar inside is free. Or the silly paper clip example i gave, with beeper mini. Is there some definition that you would see apt to describe these as practically (as in, how people would interpret them) not being free?

The quotations would indicate that he is using “free” facetiously.

It is free even without purchase. I could give someone an old iPhone and they can use it without issue.

"Cars/TVs/insert-other-thing-here are free, because I could just give an old one to someone!" That ain't how it works bro . . . .

One would say you can watch stations for free over the air even though you have to buy a TV.

A better comparison would be a free over the air station that only works on a particular brand of TV.

Or XM Radio "free" stations that you can only listen to if you have XM radio subscription and hardware.

Even if old iPhones were free: There’s still a significant issue for people not wanting to carry two phones.

Read the post; they've made it free now. They said they'll consider charging again if/when things stabilize.

They said they made ‘beeper’ free, not ‘beeper mini’ free. Unless they combined them since the last post. But maybe they should say beeper mini is free.