If our regulators weren't asleep at the wheel this would have been forcibly spun out years ago.
The blue/green icon debacle should have been ruled discriminatory.
Anecdotally I had to switch to iOS due to iMessage being used amongst my colleagues.
In the US perhaps.
UK here. "no-one" uses iMessage. The only people I use it with are the ones who refuse to use Signal (because I refuse to use WhatsApp). Most people here don't know or care that the green/blue bubbles mean different things. I've had to explain it repeatedly.
The way iMessage locks your phone number into the Apple ID system, meaning that people using iMessage to chat with people who have changed their phone away from Apple sometimes can't get messages through.
Here, it's a joke app, used under sufferance.
I assume you put no-one in quotes because it's not true? Of course people in the UK use iMessage! From this source, it looks like about 1 in 3 internet users age 16-64 use it.
https://engage.sinch.com/blog/most-popular-messaging-apps-in...
People do use iMessage, because it's the SMS app on their phone.
[0]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/262179/market-share-held...
You can disable iMessage on an iPhone and it just becomes SMS. You're not even forced to use it as an iPhone user.
You may note that the DOJ mentioned in the article's title is a US agency.
No it isn't and what Beeper is doing is wrong.
Discriminating is completely fine unless it's done based on protected classes (which, generally speaking, are things that aren't a result of simple choices). Choosing whether to use an iPhone falls on the "discriminating is totally fine" side of things, in my book.
I've never had an iPhone but the default messaging apps on my recent Android phones have told me whether or not the person I'm messaging has RCS or not. That lets me know whether I should expect them to see typing indicators and so forth. Is that also a bad thing? What if it used colors instead of a written label?
This discrimination is not arbitrary, it is critical functionality. The set of features available to blue icons is vastly broader (it goes far beyond messaging) than the features available to green icons. Some of these features cannot be practically replicated to non-Apple platforms.
Blue icons also have a much higher quality of service because they don't rely on telco infrastructure for delivery. Green icon messages frequently get lost or are delivered extremely late.
I use WhatsApp, Signal, and iMessage daily. Apple's iMessage (blue icon version) is the best of the bunch and it isn't particularly close. I don't think this is because there is anything special about iMessage per se, it is more that implementing complex core features across a broad range of unrelated platforms necessarily dumbs things down to the lowest common denominator, which makes for an unnecessarily rubbish experience on many platforms. iMessage goes for depth where other messaging platforms go for breadth.
Can we stop labeling everything that people like a "public utility"? What is ridiculous phrase. At any point in time I can open 10 chat apps and talk to my friends.
There are _existing_ public utilities that have way more, _actual_ monopoly power than iMessage and federal, state and local governments do nothing - nay - support it.
Try and chat to a group including 50+ year olds and see how far you get without it.
This feels like “Please submit documents in Microsoft Word format” all over again.
or with people who _do_ understand other messaging platforms but choose to use iMessage? I fall (mostly) into the latter category. I well understand that other messaging systems exist, have accounts on a handful; but the people I communicate most with use iMessage. I'm not going to persuade them otherwise; and I'm not going to be harangued with notifications on a half-dozen different messaging apps.
> 50+ year olds
It's how I message with my 15 year old. And mostly how she messages with her friends.
I think the usage patterns are more nuanced than old/young and simpleton/cognoscenti.
I do. Regularly. Using WhatsApp.