this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2024
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Privacy
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I think it's the inverse: iMessage doesn't support Android.
Those aren't equivalent statements; the first implies that something about Android makes it impossible for Apple to produce an iMessage client for it when that is purely a business decision on Apple's part.
You are correct and the person you're responding to is wrong about just about everything they said. Funny to me they think mms is why those images look so shitty when no android users have ever experienced that without an ios device involved
MMS does have size limits that can hurt image quality, but I have the impression iOS applies limits of its own that are considerably lower. I'm not sure why anybody in 2024 wouldn't have at least a couple modern messaging apps, but it seems a lot of people don't.
Well yes exactly. I have noticed for years that every photo or video an iPhone sends me is worse quality than flip phones used to send/receive. Amazing to me that iPhone users fall for this trick
Like they missed that the whole apple MO is to make them feel superior without evidence
It seems like an odd decision to me, as it would make the iPhone look like it has a substandard camera to someone receiving media from one by MMS.
The idea is to convince people that things only look good on iPhones
It seems unlikely to have that effect when the recipient presumably communicates with people who have other brands of phone, from whom they receive better looking media.
I mean, it certainly has that effect. The in group "knows" your phone sucks and will shame you into getting an iPhone. That's the idea and it's probably worked millions of times.
Just doesn't seem plausible to me. If Alice gets low-quality images from Bob and higher-quality images from Charlie, her most likely assumption if she's not sophisticated enough to be aware of the cause is that Bob's phone has a bad camera.
I've literally experienced this first hand. At least three times I've been told that I should get an iPhone when I pointed this out. You're giving people way too much credit for being rational
Wouldn't surprise me at all if they'd hired psychologists to figure out the best way to make conversations like that happen
I have no doubt about the part where iPhone fans waste no opportunity to tell someone else they should get an iPhone. It's the other side of the argument that falls flat: Alice receives video from Charlie that's perfectly fine, but Bob's iPhone sends a pixelated mess, and Bob says the iPhone is better?
Android users would use RCS for communicating with each other via the default messaging app on Android.
MMS has a hard size limit depending on the carrier the sender uses, that's independent of the sender using an Android phone or an iPhone. This limit can be as high as "more than 1 MB", but also as low as 300 KB or even less. Compressing an image down to 300 KB will naturally incur a quality penalty.
Rcs is a new thing and not all android phones use it even now
Photos sent from iPhones look like shit today and they did years ago. Rcs is not a factor.
iMessage is an app. Android is an operating system. I think what you meant to say is iMessage doesn't support RCS.
The difference is Apple worked hard to keep it this way for decades, even so far as "patch" a fix that was created to make it possible for their customers to communicate securely with Android users.
And Apple is only going to support RCS because they were forced to, and they'll on comply to the degree that they think they can get away with. Just like they're doing with app stores.
Interest in RCS is recent - newer than iMessage, which launched in 2011. RCS with Google's proprietary extensions is just another proprietary messaging app, and I am not particularly excited about it.
There's no shortage of options for doing that. What Apple wants is tight control over all of its walled gardens, which should be no surprise given the company's history. They're very good at making it appear as if decisions made to increase their profits are aligned with the interests of users. It's probably even true that someone would have exploited the technique Beeper Mini was using to send spam if Apple hadn't closed it.
I don't know that that's true. But regardless, I agree and wish they decided on a more open protocol, but that is just not the corporate way. Anything is better than SMS/MMS.
Sure. Ask yourself why Apple users don't use them? The answer is SMS fallback. A feature which you can use with any app on Android and literally only with iMessage on iOS.
Well Apple doesn't seem to give a single fuck about SMS spam, so I'm not sure what your point is. Google at least incorporates spam filtering.
SMS fallback is not a common feature of internet-based messaging apps on Android. Signal used to do it, but does not now. I don't think WhatsApp or Telegram ever did.
Yup, good point!