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Comment by lxgr | Hacker News Reader

It'll probably never happen, but I would absolutely love to see P2P messaging on the iPhone.

I've been in so many situations where that would have been useful: Sitting in different rows on the same flight or train, driving in two cars in the middle of nowhere and coordinating toilet/food breaks, finding each other in a mall/store abroad without roaming data...

AirDropping a note back and forth kind of works, but is a real pain compared to what must be easily possible even with Blueooth alone.

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Seems like it would be really easy for them to just add it to iMessage. It already seamlessly transitions between data and SMS as needed; just add a third possibility

Would not be surprised if one day they announce on stage that this is going to just start working for the last X generations of iPhone

Funny how pictochat had this feature 15 years ago, although mainly used to send NSFW drawings

Didn't know I wanted it, but I now really want P2P iMessage between mountain summits

I think you can definitely find apps for this. A quick google brings up bridgefy.

Yeah, but these don't really work in my experience.

The advantage of a first-party solution would be being able to normally message, i.e. the recipient not having to have the app already open, mesh support in the background etc.

Plus you cannot install them when you're already on a plane, I suppose.

> finding each other in a mall/store abroad without roaming data

Shouldn't this work with the new U2 chip where you can look for someones iPhone like an AirTag?

So far UWB isn't really being used for data transfer.

They made an sdk for this but nothing really came of it.

Firechat, famously used during the Hong Kong 2015 demonstrations

> Sitting in different rows on the same flight or train, driving in two cars in the middle of nowhere and coordinating toilet/food breaks, finding each other in a mall/store abroad without roaming data...

I can imagine a lot of interesting & valuable uses for that—but I think it would get entirely taken over by network parasites like ads or unsolicited dick pics.

Seems like it could default to only allow people on your contact list?

Absolutely – and you'll want encryption and authentication too. Apple could just make it work for existing iMessage chats only, where the devices already have the appropriate keys exchanged.

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