Nothing is Bringing iMessage To Its Android Phone (theverge.com) 146
Nothing Phone 2 owners get blue bubbles now. The company shared it has added iMessage to its newest phone through a new "Nothing Chats" app powered by the messaging platform Sunbird. From a report: The feature will be available to users in North America, the EU, and other European countries starting this Friday, November 17th. Nothing writes on its page that it's doing this because "messaging services are dividing phone users," and it wants "to break those barriers down." But doing so here requires you to trust Sunbird. Nothing's FAQ says Sunbird's "architecture provides a system to deliver a message from one user to another without ever storing it at any point in its journey," and that messages aren't stored on its servers.
Marques Brownlee has also had a preview of Nothing Chats. He confirmed with Nothing that, similar to how other iMessage-to-Android bridge services have worked before, "...it's literally signing in on some Mac Mini in a server farm somewhere, and that Mac Mini will then do all of the routing for you to make this happen." Nothing's US head of PR, Jane Nho, told The Verge in an email that Sunbird stores user iCloud credentials as a token "in an encrypted database" and associated with one of its Mac Minis in the US or Europe, depending on the user's location, that then act as a relay for iMessages sent via the app. She added that, after two weeks of inactivity, Sunbird deletes the account information.
Marques Brownlee has also had a preview of Nothing Chats. He confirmed with Nothing that, similar to how other iMessage-to-Android bridge services have worked before, "...it's literally signing in on some Mac Mini in a server farm somewhere, and that Mac Mini will then do all of the routing for you to make this happen." Nothing's US head of PR, Jane Nho, told The Verge in an email that Sunbird stores user iCloud credentials as a token "in an encrypted database" and associated with one of its Mac Minis in the US or Europe, depending on the user's location, that then act as a relay for iMessages sent via the app. She added that, after two weeks of inactivity, Sunbird deletes the account information.
Which means (Score:5, Insightful)
"it's literally signing in on some Mac Mini in a server farm somewhere, and that Mac Mini will then do all of the routing for you to make this happen."
A cease-and-desist this way comes...
If you think the walled garden will passively accept this, you're dreaming.
Re:Which means (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple doesn't want to be high profile in enforcing its ecosystem walls.
Just rate limit the logins and messages from a single machine to "prevent spam", plausible deniability, same result.
Re:Which means (Score:5, Funny)
Apple doesn't want to be high profile in enforcing its ecosystem walls.
A very confused Epic Games has entered the chat...
Re: (Score:2)
A Mac mini in the "server farm" signs into iMessage, and like all Macs, downloads your entire iMessage history for all numbers. Then, suddenly, a search warrant appears a the Nothing corporate office...
Re: Which means (Score:2)
How does this scale? For decent latency, this will have to be logged in most of the time to both send and receive on time. How many concurrent logins can they create on one machine? Somebodyâ(TM)s going to have to pay for this infrastructure too - is iMessage really worth paying for?
If itâ(TM)s constantly logging and out, any other Apple devices connected to that Apple ID will receive notifications every login that a new device has signed in to iMessage? That sounds annoying.
Re: Which means (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I have the impression that virtualisation is limited on ARM-based systems. Parallels only allows one macOS VM at a time. It's now just a GUI wrapper around Apples virtualisation framework, which I think only allows two macOS VMs. I don't know what VMWare Fusion allows. What other solutions are there at the moment, and do they scale to multiple instances well?
New Mac Minis only support up to 32GB. Didn't the last Intel-based Mac Minis support a maximum of 64GB? Not that I'd want to have a business mode
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Apple doesn't want to be high profile in enforcing its ecosystem walls
Why? Apple could not care less. It's their ecosystem and the courts, including the Supreme Court, has indicated they're free to do what they will in that ecosystem. If Epic's argument on the app store was shown by the courts to be completely devoid of any merit, there are zero chances some less than a billion dollar startup is going to pose any kind of legal threat to Apple's legal department juggernaut.
Just rate limit the logins and messages from a single machine to "prevent spam",
Cat and mouse game. Cheaper to crater this company legally. So I'm going to vote that the legal depa
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They are fighting a battle in the EU currently about digital market access and even in the US regulators are not as nice to them as they once were, the situation is different from a couple years ago.
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Anyone with an e-mail address can have an iCloud account and access to iMessage but you cannot add a phone number to iMessage unless that phone number exists in an activated state on an iPhone somewhere.
The only way for this to work is for this service to intercept the destination phone number of EVERY message you start to compose. Send that number to the Mac Mini, do a lookup to see if the destination number has iMessage, if yes, capture the entire message once you send it. Message routes to Mac Mini, w
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not sure why you dislike e-mail addresses so much. I set iMessage to default to using my e-mail address that I control. That way it stays consistent when I switch SIMs while travelling, send messages from my computer when my phone is dead, whatever.
Supporting e-mail addresses as IDs is one of the things that makes iMessage better than RCS.
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I don't dislike e-mail addresses. I dislike explaining to people who don't know what 'iMessage' is why I'm showing up with an e-mail address instead of my phone number. Most iPhone users do not understand the difference between green and blue messages beyond "Blue means iPhone". I also use my phone for work. Defaulting iMessage to my iCloud ID would mean exposing my personal e-mail address to colleagues, after I explain to them that it actually is me, something they'd immediately question if they've pai
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RCS is a replacement for SMS/MMS, not for proper messaging apps. Google Chat is a direct competitor to iMessage, and has similar "tied to your Google/Apple account" and desktop support, with better security.
Re: Which means (Score:2)
The RCS messaging layer in Android is is just as proprietary as Google Chat. You want open, use XMPP.
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A cease-and-desist this way comes...
If you think the walled garden will passively accept this, you're dreaming.
AirMessage, which does exactly the same thing, has been around for awhile. My partner uses an old Intel Macbook Pro as an AirMessage server. There's still a few caveats, such as it still doesn't solve the issue of letting you know that the iMessage you've sent actually made it to the recipient's phone (Apple assumes it was delivered as soon as it hits the Mac computer) and some specific iMessage features aren't supported. iMessage without an iPhone also doesn't associate your phone number with iMessage,
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As well it should. It breaks a expectation of cryptography security among iMessage users.
Suddenly I don't know if the person I am messaging with has real end-to-end encryption, device to device, and maybe Apple itself as another party if one or both of us has iCloud enabled. Apple is naturally assumed to be another party anyway because its a closed binary they can alter at any time.
But if you start letting commercial operator relay iMessages, we have no idea who else is party to the conversation any more.
I
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Suddenly I don't know if the person I am messaging with has real end-to-end encryption, device to device, and maybe Apple itself as another party if one or both of us has iCloud enabled.
Man, you sound like one of those adult cam entertainers who believe that by slapping a "DMCA" GIF on their cam feed that people aren't going to record them. End-to-end encryption is only to prevent your communications from being snooped on until it is delivered at its destination. Once there, the person receiving it could broadcast it on a commercial during the Superbowl if they felt the need to do so.
You've always had no way of knowing if the person you're texting is the only one reading your messages or
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Do all you have actual friends, like people who you trust?
See this is important because yes, E2E does nothing to protect you from the person you are messaging leaking secrets. However if its really 'sensitive' the only reason I am iMessaging it to someone in the first place is because I have conscious choice to trust them.
I have also accepted that; yes I may be potentially bring a likely very disinterested Apple in on our chat. Notably an Apple Inc with a pretty good over all track record as to doing what t
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Now is it possible that person I trusted has implemented their own insecure relay - well sure but nobody is targeting the MacMini in their basement and blob of AppleScript cranking their messages app - lots of people are going to go after a commercial operator that is handling tons of private messages and they will have waaaay more attack surface.
It's actually far more likely that they'd have their phone paired to an infotainment system in their car which is hoovering up all their messages anyway. [slashdot.org] You can't assume that the recipient's client is secure simply because Apple does a reasonable job locking down their platform.
Re: Which means (Score:2)
Youâ(TM)re also taking that gamble if youâ(TM)re using a third party smart/fitness watch.
â¦Maybe donâ(TM)t be in the habit of sending sensitive/incriminating info via text.
Re: Which means (Score:2)
Re: Which means (Score:4, Funny)
So it's openly doing a man in the middle attack (Score:2)
Except that you won't be trusting your telekom provider(s) which are at least tangible and somehow regulated with your messages but whatever company Nothing Something subcontracted. Not a great plan!
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It's an intermediary using your login with your permission.
Telecom companies were selling your location en masse, what's there to trust?
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It's an intermediary using your login with your permission.
In this case the intermediary has complete access to unencrypted copies of every iMessage you send and receive through their service. It doesn't just break end-to-end encryption, someone literally can log in to the VM running the MacOS session and watch your chats in real time or dig through your history. You basically have to trust that this company doesn't hire any creeps who are gonna rummage around the servers looking for fapping material, or worse.
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Verizon has never asked for credentials for my iCloud or Google accounts, which, amongst other things, contain all of my photos, nearly all of my passwords (including to bank accounts), all of my e-mail, my calendars, medical information, and a multitude of other extremely private things that are none of Verizon's business. Even if Verizon could monetize some of this data they'd know better than to try. Can you imagine the liability if Verizon had access to your iCloud Keychain / Google Password Manager,
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What you call a "man-in-the-middle-attack" most people call a proxy server.
It's a man-in-the-middle if you don't know that MITM is there and siphoning data. If you know it's there, and actively want it there to translate info from one application-layer to another (e.g. AirMessage / Beeper / Sunbird to iMessage), it's a proxy service. Or if you really want to run wild, an automated streaming ETL.
When you start calling it a proxy server (which is what it is), it becomes far less incendiary, and far more rou
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There's nothing routine about having someone's iCloud credentials. The comparison to a proxy server is BS. A proxy server has its own credentials. It does not demand that you surrender those for third party services. I can access /. via a proxy server without directly revealing my /. credentials. It may "get" them if I'm not logging in via http but it does not need them by design.
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I'm a corporate koolaid drinker because I can read a privacy policy and find the opt-out portion of their account management webpage?
Green bubbles are effective (Score:5, Funny)
Re: Green bubbles are effective (Score:2)
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I would totally agree, if it actually worked properly across the entire suite of functionality. But it does not. An android user sending a video via SMS / MMS to an iPhone user will result in a bitcrushed .3GPP bicubic compressed video that is completely useless and unviewable. And anyone on an iPhone that sends the stupid emoji reaction things that for some reason iPhone users spam the fucking shit out of, you get a separate notification for each "like", "laugh", "love", etc. reaction. And if you're in
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I noticed that iMessages get sent as SMS if the recipient's phone is off/unreachable. That seems like a pretty big security flaw because you might send a private message thinking it would be encrypted but it goes via SMS instead.
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I noticed that iMessages get sent as SMS if the recipient's phone is off/unreachable.
The fallback to SMS is an option.
Settings > Messages > Send as SMS
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What is it by default? Mine is off, but I noticed it happened to a message that someone sent me while my phone was off.
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It's an options for the *sender*. The recipient can't control how the sender sends you messages. Yours is off, but it wasn't off for the guy sending the message. Tell him to turn it off if it's that important to you.
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You say that like they're not the same thing.
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Sending an SMS and measuring the reaction is an effective way to immediately establish whether a particular iPhone user is an insufferable moron.
Watching a company stand up a lawsuit in order to eliminate the 'wrong' color of message, takes even less time to determine pure stupidity. I mean, did we have to do this before we started labeling certain color bubbles as 'racist' or some shit?
Fact: Messaging today, is not broken between the vendors. It works.
Prime example of why we shouldn't pander to children bitching about pointless shit. Go complain about your coverage and insane costs instead.
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Fact: Messaging today, is not broken between the vendors. It works.
Umm yeah, what's your number? I'll send you a 4k video clip of the neighbor's cat so T-Mobile's MMS gateway can choke on it and time out.
Which I'm sure you'll say is "everything working as designed", because you didn't want a cat video anyway.
Re: Green bubbles are effective (Score:2)
MMS just gets sent as email for me, so as long as you can send your attachment in email, it passes. Not sure why you would want to send me a 4K video on email, anything larger than 25MB gets filtered out anyways.
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Not sure why you would want to send me a 4K video on email, anything larger than 25MB gets filtered out anyways.
We have these smartphones with fancy multi-megapixel cameras and high speed 5G networks, but when you actually try to utilize them to send something from one side of the duopoly to the other, there's always some archaic restriction in place which degrades or prevents the transfer. That's lame.
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Using the method that's universal on all phones (even old flip phones) is a filter for whether or not someone is worth the effort. Some, even many, are not.
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Using the method that's universal on all phones (even old flip phones) is a filter for whether or not someone is worth the effort. Some, even many, are not.
If the message is important enough that you want to use a "universal" method of contact, that's what voice calls are for. However, if it doesn't really matter if the message never arrives (and believe me, I've had enough "didn't you get my text?" experiences that I no longer consider SMS a reliable method of communication), why even bother sending the message in the first place?
I don't do "green text". Call me, iMessage me, or use one of the various 3rd party messaging platforms where I can also check my
Re: (Score:2)
Fortunately, the odds of me ever caring if I get any kind of message from you, or have any desire to send one to you, are indistinguishable from zero.
And you've just reduced them quite a bit.
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Fortunately, the odds of me ever caring if I get any kind of message from you, or have any desire to send one to you, are indistinguishable from zero.
I'm totally cool with that. Outside of /. I've never encountered any of you SMS absolutists anyway. Seems most normal people prefer communicating using something better than an unreliable, insecure, feature limited, string length limited, outdated communications protocol which was originally designed for relaying internal cellular network system messages.
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Outside of /. I've never encountered any of you SMS absolutists anyway.
That's because normal people don't want to have anything to do with losers like you.
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None of Telegram, WhatsApp, FB Messenger or iMessage represent open communication from a respectable source. Granted that I won't send a "green text" either since I have no interest in disclosing the phone number for my personal cell number.
But Telegram is owned by some sketchy Russians and I'm not touching anything that requires Meta or Apple terms of service. If those things are the price to communicate with someone, I don't need to communicate.
Email works great for everyone though.
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Email works great for everyone though.
Email is fine if you don't need an immediate response. I personally leave new e-mail notifications turned off because I got tired of the clutter from mailing lists and other various things that aren't time critical.
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Filter your mail better. If you're using a client that can't do that, that's a you problem. Because I'm able to write rules for which messages demand immediate attention, E-mail is the only communication system I'm willing to use. Nothing else is as flexible as that.
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I like how you shoot down using a third party messaging service that requires you to accept terms and conditions while touting the superiority of e-mail where you have no control over the T&Cs on the other side of the communication. You have control over the T&Cs for your e-mail provider, heck, you can roll your own e-mail server if you have half a clue, but you have no control over what my e-mail provider is doing with your messages. You can encrypt them if you want, that'll keep them from scanni
Re: (Score:2)
Email is fire-and-forget with no guarantee the receiver is going to ever get it, much less read it. And everyone's email inbox has a shockingly low signal-to-noise ratio due to the amazing amount of spam and bullshit that everyone gets in their email so there's a very good chance it just gets scanned over.
If I want to send something to someone that I don't give a shit if they see any time soon, and don't care if they take action on it at all, then email is the communications channel of choice - basically e
What year is it? (Score:3)
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how have we not figured it out on cell phones yet
It's not about figuring it out, it's about companies leveraging their influence to strengthen the walls of their ecosystem prison cells. Even as far back as AOL Instant Messenger companies have been purposely uncooperative with each other. They all want to be the chosen one, and Apple is exactly that. And that's one reason why the are the largest company on the planet.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, I get it, I just don't understand it. The messaging capability of a cellphone hasn't been a selling point for a device since, well, Blackberry did it right. And even then the software wasn't the actual selling point, it was the physical keyboard. The fact that the messaging framework was better was just a bonus. Even with AIM, the point wasn't specifically that they wanted to keep the messaging portion to themselves, it was there because wanted eyeballs on their other product, AOL. It really only tu
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You are correct that Apple won't change.
There isn't anything that Android *can* change, as the proprietary extension of SMS that causes everything to suck is Apple's iMessage.
The only way through is either for iMessage to get opened up, or to be completely abandoned by it's user community in favor of something else.
Re:What year is it? (Score:4, Informative)
This only worked in a single market so far to my knowledge: US.
Pretty much everyone else is using whatsapp, telegram, wechat, signal, etc. Why would you use vastly inferior default applications when there are much better alternatives that everyone else uses?
US is really behind the rest of the world on this one. Likely in part because of the reason you mention. But that only works in a very limited geographic area.
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>Pretty much everyone else is using whatsapp, telegram, wechat, signal, etc. Why would you use vastly inferior default applications when there are much better alternatives that everyone else uses?
Because at least some percentage of Android users in the US also stubbornly refuse to use anything but the default app. So, even when you are on an iPhone and reachable by 3rd party alternative messaging apps, you still end up getting green texts.
Re:What year is it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it seems to be a cultural obsession with status symbols like "different message background color if you buy a more expensive phone that does the same thing" combined with "I just use whatever is the default thing".
In much of Europe for example, we tend to be more willing to install things on the phone because other people tell us that's where we'll find them. And then these tools are widely adapted, like the infamous French emergency services workers rapidly going to whatsapp group functionality for rapidly organizing hierarchical communications allowing for rapid triage of ensuring that relevant messages went only to people that need to hear or see them, so that you didn't have a deluge of messages when you had an actual job to do and lives depended on you doing it. And in China, wechat is basically a necessity for city life nowadays because that's what you pay smaller transactions with that offers some protection from various scams that were so prevalent before it.
It's this weird situation where in US, you're often locked into some really archaic and awful systems. Another two similar archaic systems in US that come to mind is paying taxes, and banking. Because people just use what is, and don't demand something that is better that has become a norm across developed world.
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One person has SMS, Discord, and Element, and the other person has SMS, Telegram, and WhatsApp. What should they use to communicate?
Re: What year is it? (Score:2)
Google Chat?
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There is no truly libre replacement for any of those, though Signal comes close.
After software freedom, my next issue is definitely a question of how US providers operate. My monthly text messages are unlimited, and my data is not.
I don't want to use a messaging service that uses up my data.
Re: (Score:2)
True that there isn't. Because a shit tier product like imessage would have no chance. No one would want this garbage outside the US, where you're trapped because it's a status symbol in a status obsessed nation to have a certain color of a bubble.
We instead have vastly superior products with far more features, like telegram, whatsapp and wechat, because it's not a status symbol to use a specific chat app. It's merely a tool.
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>>Pretty much everyone else is using whatsapp, telegram, wechat, signal, etc. Why would you use vastly inferior default applications when there are much better alternatives that everyone else uses?
So which one is the alternative that "everyone" else uses? Whatsapp? Telegram? WeChat? Signal? All four? The ONLY thing you can be sure that EVERYONE uses IS the default.
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Have you ever looked at a world map? There are those lines separating it into chunks. They're called "borders".
People tend to have different cultures, ethicities and yes, most common messaging app within these borders, that can be different across them. For example here in Finland, everyone has whatsapp. Just across our eastern border in Russian Federation, everyone uses telegram. You go further to the east to PRC, and everybody uses wechat.
I know, I know. Borders are racist, sexist, fascist and every other
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Mostly because we already know that everyone that has a mobile phone, has a mobile phone number. And if you have a mobile phone number and a mobile phone, SMS works.
I have no fucking clue who has Telegram / Signal / WeChat / Whatsapp etc. and I don't care to keep a fucking org chart around to remember who is in what app.
Messaging is a total fucking shit show, globally. The most relevant question for any messaging network at this point is just how much bullshit you're willing to wade through in order to co
Some plans still limit texts (Score:2)
And if you have a mobile phone number and a mobile phone, SMS works.
Only if the subscriber hasn't run out of texts for the month. If the subscriber has run out of data, the subscriber will receive queued messages when the subscriber next connects to Wi-Fi. If the subscriber has run out of texts, the messages sometimes just get dropped without notification.
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25 cents a MB around here when you've gone through your data. Unlimited texts though.
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Only in US. For everyone else, whatsapp, telegram, signal and wechat just request access to your contacts, and then just see who on your contacts also has whatsapp, telegram, signal or wechat.
And then you just go to your contacts app, and it's right there, under SMS, the option to message, voice coll or video call on each app. All you need is to give those apps permission to access your contacts, which they will ask when you first start them. They'll populate your contacts on their own after that.
Globally,
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You give your contacts to random messaging apps? And do those messaging apps work when you have no data? I can go through my 250 MB quota quick if I'm not careful, and up till recently it was 25 cents a MB for overages.
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Your contacts are on your phone. You just have to give the app access to them, because access to contacts is behind a permission wall (at least on android).
No, messaging apps do not work without data, because they work over the internet. That said, if your cellular contract is so incredibly limited compared to even most third world connections, you're probably even more fleeced on messages, calls and voice calls. So it's still going to be cheaper in the end. Unless you're on a really weird contract.
Most of
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This only worked in a single market so far to my knowledge: US.
Pretty much everyone else is using whatsapp, telegram, wechat, signal, etc. Why would you use vastly inferior default applications when there are much better alternatives that everyone else uses?
US is really behind the rest of the world on this one. Likely in part because of the reason you mention. But that only works in a very limited geographic area.
iMessage works with every iPhone. So I'm supposed to have everyone on my contact list vote on what app to standardize on? People use iMessage because it fits their needs.
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You're just supposed to install whatever it is that is popular in your country and it will populate your contact list with links to message, call and video call people.
Yes, you can be a luddite and keep driving your horse drawn buggy, because that's what is the default. That's why the rest of the world looks down on US when it comes to this, as well as banking and taxation. You use utterly ancient, horrifically inefficient technologies that lock you down to whatever your provider of each service decides is
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You're just supposed to install whatever it is that is popular in your country and it will populate your contact list with links to message, call and video call people.
In the USA, that would be Facebook Messenger. Outside of /. where everyone seems vehemently opposed to all things Zuck, it's actually quite popular. Probably by virtue of the fact that if someone already has a Facebook account, then they also already have a Messenger account as well.
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Not the same kind of a service. Facebook messenger is for the masses what discord is for gamers. Community organisation tool. As such, it exists outside US and is quite popular here as well. But it doesn't compete with the likes of whatsapp, becayse it's not a point to point messaging, calling and video calling system built off your phone number.
iMessage is $460 and comes with a free phone (Score:2)
I await your $460 check to each Android user with whom you communicate to buy each of them an iPhone SE 3.
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Why would I do that?
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If you buy an iPhone for the last green bubble in your circle of friends, you can turn them all blue and benefit from an all-iMessage group chat flow.
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I don't give a shit what colour the bubbles are.
The only people that really give a shit that they're in a green bubble is Android users. To that end, if it bothers them that much, they have a solution available to them.
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I also don't do group chats.
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The last thing I want in my phone is spam from Android users pretending to be iPhone users.
I don't give a shit what colour the bubbles are.
You are a hypocrite, just a little earlier you said the exact opposite.
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Who's going to pay for it?
Apple (like Blackberry before them) wants people who buy their phones to pay for the messaging network. Google wants advertisers to pay for it.
The two models are very incompatible.
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Who's going to pay for it?
Me, when they take their cut when I purchase anything from their app store.
Do people really buy the phone for their messaging capability, though? I sure haven't. Not since BBM, anyway. I look at this capability as a sunk cost, it's not a value-add. And unless they are scraping my dinner plans and naked pics from my text messages and selling it to advertisers, then there is no value to be extracted from a messaging platform. So if it's something their consumers expect as part of a baseline service, the c
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Yes, chat apps are attractive features in phones.
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In Apple's model, there's no reason they can't charge money for an iMessage app for Android to pay for it's development and additional messaging network overhead. In fact, Google will be happy to take a 30% cut the same way Apple takes 30% from all of their app store developers!
Can we get rid of the "Liking" and the "Ha ha-ing" (Score:2)
Nothing more annoying than the non-cross-platform reaction feature which winds up duplicating the original message in your feed.
Re:Can we get rid of the "Liking" and the "Ha ha-i (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd be happy if cell phones literally exploded if you try to create an SMS distribution list. SMS does not need email features. If you want email features, use email.
Or add all the email features, so I can put in filters to delete all the "me too" crap from 15 people in response to a message about something the sender knew full well I had zero interest in, but were too fucking lazy to remove me from the list before they hit Send.
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Why don't you just mute them like everyone else does? We solved this a decade ago.
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Except that email is the absolute lowest standard for message delivery that exists today without the message being written on physical paper and delivered in an envelope with a stamp on it.
Your email box is filled with bullshit, and you have to pick through all the bullshit to find the two messages you give a fuck about.
Email has delayed delivery, so being conversational takes way longer than literally any messaging network.
Email has been abused so often over the last 40 years that there is so much bolt-on
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Except that email is the absolute lowest standard for message delivery that exists today without the message being written on physical paper and delivered in an envelope with a stamp on it.
That's the point, yes.
Not the Only Company Doing This (Score:2)
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I'm using it.
It's great. I've made it my default messaging app with the exception of Slack, as it doesn't support markdown all that great and some of the more advanced functionality of Slack all that well yet, but I think their Slack integration is still "beta" on a "beta" software product, so /shrug
The iMessage integration is better than what I had with AirMessage, because it isn't dependent on a 10+ year old Mac Mini staying powered on at my house and connected to the Internet - my guess is that they are
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The iMessage integration is better than what I had with AirMessage, because it isn't dependent on a 10+ year old Mac Mini staying powered on at my house and connected to the Internet.
But that's really the only secure way of running a proxy. Once you have someone else hosting it, you have to trust that there isn't going to be some disgruntled or perverted employee digging through your texts, because it would be trivial for them to do so. The malicious actor would simply connect to the VM and open Apple's built-in messaging app, which, unless Apple is willing to open up the garden gates, will always be a necessary component of the equation.
Having run an AirMessage server myself that my
Most EU users... (Score:2)
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Scale (Score:2)
it's literally signing in on some Mac Mini in a server farm somewhere, and that Mac Mini will then do all of the routing for you to make this happen
I think scaling up will be a problem.
So literally.. (Score:2)
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No, people just keep texting each other. Only the corporations care about Apple's and Google's replacements for SMS.
I don't know which of my friends have Android phones, and which have iPhones. They interoperate; the tech doesn't get in the way. It's been this way for years.
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You must not have an Android phone.
- Every time someone likes an iMessage, it sends a new message to Android that says "so and so liked ". Get a group chat going with several people liking things and it's a mess.
- Video chat of iMessage is incompatible with anything on Android. You can get Google Meet on iPhone, but I'm sure most iPhone users don't.
- Other things.
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I've only ever used Android, and I have occasionally seen that stupid "liked" nonsense, but most of the people I text are grownups.
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I use Textra as my messaging software on my android phone. All I have to do, to get the blue bubble, is change the colors.
I love Textra as well...but the bubble color isn't simply cosmetic. 'Blue bubbles' on iPhones mean that the user can get 'read' receipts, 'typing' notifications, reactions, and full-sized photo and video messages. It also means that group chats can get those features as well; having a 'green bubble' in a group chat means that the whole group reverts to standard MMS, which means that the whole group is stuck in that mode, where photos are scaled, reactions aren't shown, and read notifications aren't seen.
You