Right. But it’s a service Apple created to add value to Apple devices. It’s subsidized by people purchasing those devices.

Why should they have to give it to Android?

I just don’t see that quote as a smoking gun. Why isn’t that Apple‘s choice to make?

From a legal perspective, they don't have to. From a legal perspective, the world's largest corporation can aggressively lock out non-iPhone users to try to further increase revenue.

But from an ethical perspective, it sucks. I own Apple devices and Android devices and I have friends on both. Why should my life be more painful just so Apple can squeeze out a tiny bit more money?

Apple is ethically obligated to give free services to people who don’t buy their products?

Ethical? Say you launch a product that uses cloud services (ie servers and storage). If I reverse engineer your protocol and launch my own (paid) product on top of your service, is it unethical for you to shut me down? Isn’t it also unethical for me to create a product on top of your infrastructure without getting permission or providing some kind of payment?

IMHO, Beeper is the one with an ethics problem.

It also shows that the privacy campaign is just a business tactic.

That shouldn’t come as a surprise of course, but the Apple reality distortion field is real so I think it’s worth noting.

I think if iMessage was a separate app that came preloaded on iPhones, it would be reasonable to ask why Apple has to make it work with Android. But the fact that it is THE SMS app built into the OS, in my opinion, is the only reason it’s so ubiquitous in the US.

You don’t get to say, “we compete just like any other messaging app, we shouldn’t be forced to integrate with anything” while also enjoying OS-level integration to the point where many (most?) people were onboarded into the iMessage ecosystem without even realizing it.

As the Microsoft anti-trust case established, defaults matter.

edit: even a separate preloaded app could still be considered anti-competitive if it’s selected by default, cf. Internet Explorer

Isn’t that what Google did with their messaging things? Wasn’t the same app as SMS? Isn’t that how they’ve deployed RCS?

The MS case wasn’t all about defaults. I’m not sure any of it was about defaults. The thing that killed them was deals saying you couldn’t offer competing programs or had to pay them regardless of if you put Windows on the machine (so it was a waste of money to ship anything else). Plus changing code to break competitors.

Google doesn't have "messaging things" anymore. The default messaging app supports SMS/RCS and that's it.

They tried the unified SMS/proprietary message protocol approach with Hangouts but that was short lived. I'm not even sure if it was ever at any point installed by default on a majority of Android phones.

After Hangouts, they tried Allo which did not support SMS and was not a replacement for the default messages app which did support SMS.

I didn’t notice your edit earlier.

The issue with IE, besides the “don’t install Netscape” contracts, was that they undercut Netscape’s price by charging $0 which is impossible to compete with. Essentially dumping. I don’t think it being default was also an issue in the US case, but the 90s was a long time ago.

You’re 100% right about the power of defaults. That was a big issue in the EU which is why MS had to include the first-run browser picker. But I’m not in the EU and didn’t follow that case so unfortunately that tiny bit is all I know there.

For me, the issue is it's hostile to Apple users - too.

Ie i can't use the message platform i pay for on many of my devices unless every single one of them is Apple. I use Beeper to use iMessage from my Linux desktop.

I totally get the “this sucks it should be better argument”. And I get people wanting laws to fix it.

What I have trouble with are the people who confuse that with existing law say Apple is doing illegal things, which has been sadly common in these threads.