I support the idea that Apple should be allowed to keep it exclusive. I think it makes the experience of using their products worse, but that's their prerogative and the government shouldn't step in to intervene. Signal, WhatsApp, Discord, and others are all available to fill in the gap, so this isn't a monopoly case except insofar as a certain segment of the US population has an irrational reaction to blue bubbles.
I support the fact that messaging should be interoperable and accessible by any client application.
I want applications like Beeper to succeed because I’m totally fed up to be forced to use 3 or 4 messaging applications. I’m fed up to not be able to join Messenger groups because I don’t trust Meta enough to install their app.
Instant messaging is now all about being forced to use the official client to be able to use the network. In fact, IM is in a worst state than 15 years ago. That’s stupid.
I don’t want Apple to be allowed to keep it exclusive, as much as I don’t want Telegram, Signal, Facebook, WhatsApp … to force me to install their apps just to be allowed to join my friend’s group.
I’m fed up by the fact that in 2023, you have to follow the rules of whatever corporation to join your friends group because corporations have actively fought against standardized protocols. Even Google is just faking it with their homemade implementation of RCS.
That’s stupid, we should have had some chat equivalent to emails since at least two decades (hello XMPP/Jabber, nice try) and we are here discussing about the exclusivity of iMessage. In an alternative universe we are laughing about the uselessness of an exclusive IM like we would laugh if Apple tried to implement its own exclusive email protocol.
Not what I asked. Let's take as a given that they are allowed to keep it exclusive. The question is why should them?
I am also not interested in "it makes sense for their business". Unless you are an Apple employee or a significant stockholder, why would anyone prefer iMessage to be exclusive?
You're asking specifically why would any particular iPhone user want iMessage to be exclusive? It's not that they actually affirmatively want it to be exclusive, it's that they simply don't care. They either only communicate with other iPhone users, or a few green bubbles don't bother them. Most of the advocates for iMessage on Android are Android users. It's not complicated. Why would Apple put in the effort to open up iMessage when their customers don't care about it and only their competitor's customers do?
