What does Apple do to stop people migrating? I’m genuinely curious given the only consistent thing I’ve seen boils down to “we want to use iMessage without paying for it”
Hardware lock-in, proprietary formats, and DRM. If you're heavily invested in Apple Services (iCloud, Apple Music, etc.) you will notice not everything is transferable or works on non-Apple devices.
And the iMessage thing is silly. I have an iCloud account and own an apple device. It shouldn't matter from which device I ultimately send the messages. I'm still "paying for it".
I think the complaint about iMessage is more that people using the core SMS function on iPhones are automatically opted into iMessage, then get a worse experience when communicating with groups containing people who don’t have iPhones. It creates awkward social situations which nobody involved wanted to happen, and looks really exploitative.
> people using the core SMS function on iPhones are automatically opted into iMessage
This isn't the case. you have to make an iCloud account and Messages settings has to be set to use that iCloud account.
Yes, you can do that by setting up a new phone with your iCloud account.
But -- surprisingly -- you do not have to.
You can set up and use most things about an iPhone without iCloud.
You'll be missing FaceTime, iMessage, iCloud Backup, FindMy, and a few other things, which are parts of "services" rather than parts of the phone.
// This is fresh in mind, as I recently bought a slew of "real SMS" phones for the workplace, since robo-fearing 2FA providers mostly refuse to work with e-SMS (and god bless vendors who won't use TOTP but think SMS is dandy).
> then get a worse experience when communicating with groups containing people who don’t have iPhones
And people who opted into email have a worse experience exchanging notes with families that don't have electronic devices.
In general that's how lowest common denominators work.
You've just described the dark pattern here that's allowed Apple to trick the majority of its user base into iMessage thereby creating a monopoly that may not have otherwise existed.
And yet this issue only seems to impact North America. So much so that the EU doesn't even consider iMessage a "gatekeeper" of the industry (WhatsApp is though).
In Europe people have to pay to send SMS right? So people have a good reason to seek out alternatives like WhatsApp, which are cross-platform. There is no habit of using SMS. Therefore linking iMessage to SMS by default doesn’t create any network effect in EU like it does in US, where SMS is free.
The reason why WhatsApp is dominant here is that iOS never gained the market share it had in the US. The iPhone was exclusive to the US until the iPhone 3G was released and as far as I remember even the 3G wasn't released globally. Also wages are lower in most of Europe and in some European countries an iPhone cost an average monthly salary.
This lead to a much higher market share for Android and the need for a cross platform messenger. While SMS were cheap or included in your monthly plan MMS was not and was really expensive. Except if you communicated with someone in another country. This meant paying expensive roaming fees (these are basically history thanks to the EU).
Meanwhile WhatsApp was "free" and a way better user experience for group chats and sharing media than SMS and MMS. It was also a way around roaming fees because you could use it with your included roaming data or over the hotel wifi. So it was basically universally adopted in the 2010s. Sending a WhatsApp is basically a verb today.
This is of course all anecdotal and is mostly a western European perspective.
I’m curious of the history. Presumably people used SMS when it was the only option, and stopped at some point and installed message apps (but they never stopped in the US).
Pure guess, but given the high market share of iPhones in the US in that demographic, it may actually be the higher usage of iMessage among young adults that prevented the ascendancy of WhatsApp there.
I think this is all stupid. One the one hand the tech companies get slammed for not inter-operating, then Apple gets slammed for inter-operating. Loads of phones have come with vendor specific messaging apps and such, it's just that Apple committed the crime of making theirs decent and successful.
Interoperating? Is the iMessage spec public? Can I use iMessage on an android phone without hacky workarounds like using a mac computer?
Come to think of it, the same lack of interop openness applies to airdrop, use of the on-phone NFC chipset (for uses other than apple-pay), and a bunch of other such things.
RCS has been available for over 10 years. Apple is being knocked for their half-assed version of interoperability, where the iPhone implements just enough of the standard to shame non-iPhone users when they communicate with friends and family. If you have any doubt this is intentional, see the emails and public comments from Apple executives.
>And yet this issue only seems to impact North America.
That's absolutely correct. Outside of US/CAN, everyone has long since moved on to various chat apps. Each country/region basically has a de-facto standard chat app that everyone uses. Here in Japan, you have to use LINE if you want to communicate with anyone outside of work/business. In China, it's WeChat, in many other countries it's WhatsApp, etc. Only Americans (and Canadians I guess) still use SMS for anything besides 2FA.
If you can point me in the direction of a $1000 laptop that's equivalent to a Macbook Air, that also seamlessly works with an equivalent to a $350 iPhone, that also seamlessly works with an equivalent to a $300 iPad, that also seamlessly works with an equivalent to a $300 Apple Watch, that also seamlessly works with a $200 AirPods then I'll consider migrating. Also, it needs to not be tied to Google. Don't care at all about iMessage.
Edit: Not an Apple apologist and have many, many gripes about their business practices and their software.
One I know I've ran into is that migrating passwords to a different provider requires a lot of pain (up to 5 unlocks per password) or purchasing a different Apple device (i.e., a Mac).
