Senator Warren calls out Apple for shutting down Beeper’s ‘iMessage to Android’ solution::U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is throwing her weight behind Beeper, the app that allowed Android users to message iPhone users via iMessage,
Who the hell uses iMessage? Do some people really only have friends with apple phones?
iPhones have the largest share of the US smartphone market. iMessage is the default messaging app on every iPhone, and cannot be changed. Ergo, iMessage is one of the top 5 largest messaging apps in the US. I believe it’s number 3 or 4 behind FB Messenger, WhatsApp, and FaceTime (also an Apple product).
I’d assume some people use it when it’s available and just use regular texts or something like Signal for non apple contacts.
I’d be really surprised if anyone only uses it and just never talks to anyone with an android…
Anyone who doesn’t want to touch a Facebook product with a thousand foot pole.
And then there’s me, who doesn’t want to touch a Facebook, Apple, or Google product with a thousand foot-pole.
This is largely a North American problem. More than 50% of phones are iPhone, and the de facto texting for iPhone users is iMessage. While WhatsApp is the default IM for most of the rest of the world, it’s iMessage in North America.
I’m so annoyed by people dismissing a standard protocol for sending messages builtin to phones and the networks they run on as unnecessary. We should have choice, but why in the fuck should we not have the most basic fucking infrastructure already in place that works with every device and without needing a new account/ app and needing to wrangle people we know into using the that app? I truly don’t get why people seem against a fucking standard just because they found a workaround for not having one
So much incredible UX design work has been undertaken by the experts in charge of it… then we’re forced to reassess solutions (Signal or Telegram?), remarket them (everybody download this app!), support them (no grandma when you don’t have your glasses Siri can’t send Signal messages).
Great job with your stock Apple and for driving the blind to tears with such excellent accessibility features and epic hardware… but you suck for stigmatizing kids’ digital lives and causing so much duplicative effort and confusion in the messaging space.
Yes, apprently. I didn’t know that. I think less then 10% of the people I know have iPhones. It’s all Android.
Different countries have wildly different phone and messaging systems preferences.
