this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2023
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Its not just the word bubbles. Pictures and videos come through on Android like complete shit. I can't even have my wife send me pictures of the kids cause I can't see them on the other end. Nor can I watch family videos sent to me. Its much more than simple colors, but of course kids are getting bullied for that.
Now this makes sense, thank you. Garbage quality video and pictures are a so annoying. It seems to ruin an entire group chat if one of them is on an iPhone. I often have to wait until I see someone in person or have them send it through a different app for the video to work.
I have yet to get a group conversation to switch to Signal or something to avoid the potato quality videos
Apple could fix this by uploading the photos to iCloud and sending a link. But improving the experience of SMS chats is not profitable, so they instead actively downgrade the experience.
I always send an iCloud link for photos when I know that there’s someone who may not be using an iPhone. I’m not sure why others don’t. It’s especially useful when sending large numbers of pictures.
That's what the Verizon messages app does, just with a Verizon website instead of iCloud. I found it very annoying and slow to use.
Yea, this is a USA problem. Elsewhere everyone just uses a messaging app of their network's choice.
It’s not entirely true. In Scandinavia for example, iPhone is the majority market share, on average higher than that of United States.
Tell the wife to use telegram or another messaging client. There are plenty of perfectly good alternatives to imessages.
We use messenger, which I also don't like. Its ridiculous. If these fucken tech giants aren't going to right interoperability standards then someone needs to force them to. We made all this shit to make life better and somehow have forgotten that was the fucken goal.
For better or worse you happen to be using the one messaging app that is broadly agreed to be worse than iMessage.
Signal and Telegram are far superior, even putting aside the most glaring flaws of the other two.
Signal/Telegram are not very common where I’m at. I have Signal, nobody in my contacts does.
I've successfully converted a spouse, which I don't think is out of the question w.r.t who I replied to.
I've also converted my main friend group, but appreciate that's insurmountable for a lot of people - genuinely, people hate change after all. I'm lucky to have a lot of friends who work in tech and are receptive to trying new things.
Its convenience. Why have both of us download a new app strictly for pictures when she is already on Facebook, and I have a dusty one with no posts for a decade. Plus getting someone in the US to download a 3rd party messaging app is like asking them to respond to the Nigerian Prince for his offers.
Fair enough. It's kind of an oxymoron to worry about the trust of a given 3rd party messaging app while using products from a known, wide scale, repeated privacy intruder like Meta, but you have what you need in terms of convenience so I won't make a further case for an alternative.
Believe me, I know. I wouldn't be using it if the people I need it for would switch. But people don't give a shit here. I gave up trying to move apps. The rest of my shit is arch linux and de googled. This is the last hold out.
I'd say Telegram isn't superior. It's default encryption is nowhere near iMessage.
And if you step up the encryption, you lose group chats.
For it's flaws, iMessage is a very good solution, one that Signal was emulating for a while.
I'm not criticising the UX of iMessage for Apple to Apple comms. It's solid, and was leader-in-class for a very long time.
Why messenger of all things. That's the worst one.
Why should they be forced to interop? That'll just reduce it to the lowest commend denominator. What impetus would any of them have for investing in making a better system if everyone can use their work?
We have choices. We don't have to use iMessage, or Beeper. We can use other messengers.
Forcing interop means all messengers will function the same... Again at the LCD level.
Plus different messengers have different capabilities, different use-cases.
Frankly I don't even want to use SMS at all, and haven't wanted to for 10 years. I want a messenger that's independent of my mobile device that I can simply sign into just about anywhere. Kind of like instant messengers were in the late 90's (which often used things like XMPP).
Ten+ years ago I was running instant messengers on Android. Pidgin, Trillian, etc, logging in to multiple messengers. That should've been the path forward, but people couldn't be bothered because SMS was free, native, and "good enough" (in their minds).
And yet back then any conversations I had on any device showed up on all devices. With no dependence on my SIM or phone hardware ID.
interoperability is the capability of a product or system to interact and function with others. Why would that force them to all function the same? Why would that be bad for us as consumers? Why does it matter how many choices we have if those choices restrict us to using a specific one? Interoperability solves all of these and causes none of the problems you are stating. Of course they have no incentive for doing this as it doesn't benefit a corporation, they're only incentivized to entrap people in their ecosystems cause it makes them the most money. Different messaging standards is one of the ways they keep us locked in. This is a choice, too, one made by the tech giants for you with no choice in the matter. You can't send a nice quality picture from iMessage to Google Messages, get fukt.
How else do you make them interop, other than by finding a common mapping?
Why would any company map their extended or unique elements, which they developed, to meet government regs?
They won't, they'll drop to the least effort required to get the regulators off their backs.
I have a choice. Apple users have a choice. There are plenty of other messenging systems out there.
MS Teams
Skype
Element
SimpleX
Signal
Telegram
Wire
Wiremin
Litewire
Discord
Conversations
Snikket
Briar
Zello
TwinMe
Tox
Keybase
Threema
Whatsapp
Jami
XMPP (which some listed use)
Just go to Wikipedia for a long list of different messengers and their capabilities.
Choice is nice, but my problem is the choices can't communicate with each other correctly. Thats an issue. Its an issue when our communication devices are not effective at communicating what we want to. We are already seeing the bare ass minimum right now, which is just SMS. They're doing that now, the bare minimum. If Apple was forced to fix their shitty conversion instead of it just picking the worst resolution possible, they would do it. It doesn't matter what app I use because most people in the US use iMessage, and thats where I do most of my communicating.
>"Interop bad"
>using lemmy
I prefer Signal to telegram and it's been amazing the whole time I've used it
Now if I could just convince more people I know to switch to it that'd be great
The better option is to push Google and Apple to adopt a completely open version of RCS with end to end encryption so that regardless of whatever app someone is using, you know for a fact that they can receive your message.
The broken messaging ecosystem between WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, and others is a shit sandwich.
People would lose their minds if email was the same way.
That's certainly less desirable option for many. But why is wanting modern cross platform messaging so bad? It works iPhone to iPhone, works Android to Android, theoretically if there were other players (maybe if BB or Windows still had phones) they could also achieve the same using RCS with Android. This argument is and has always been about default protocols that phone can communicate with. Of course downloading 3rd party chat apps, emailing them, mailing them a letter, using a cup and string, stopping communication because they chose to use a phone from a different manufacture are all still "options".
That doesn’t solve the interoperability problem. You can’t guarantee who has what messaging app. You shouldn’t need a 3rd party app for basic functionality, anyway.
I like Signal better than my standard android SMS app. I can send more pictures at a time, video at high quality, and it does groups well.
Right, right.
Do you hear yourself?