And that standard emerged naturally in the market without the government forcing any standard video chat.
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We’ve got plenty of standards. SMS is in fact a standard, but of course, it’s showing its age and has been superseded by RCS. Google has embraced RCS but Apple are dragging their legs. For some reason, it’s considered bad form to have a green bubble in certain cultures. A probable reason is that in group chats, this limits the coversation and media sharing to vintage SMS/MMS levels. Apple has identified this as a key factor for iOS lock-in, I guess. Not sure they are correct, because the iOS ecosystem is SO MUCH MORE than messaging, but here we are.
Interoperability wars in messaging goes back a long time. Some of us remember AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft and others battling it out over PC based messaging around the turn of the century. None of them wanted to allow a universal client that could talk to all the big services.
They are generally called “fire fighters” as a neutral term 
. Here in Nordics, these services commonly share a separate system for voice and data - of course complete with its own set of challenges. They are using dedicated frequencies and special handsets following the European Tetra standard.
Edit: as for global marketshare numbers, iOS and macOS both hover around 16%. This is why Tim doesn’t see a problem. Of course, in the US, the situation is very different.
Edit 2: Me confusing XMPP with RCS, apologies for any confusion caused.
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Going back to the 90s the Department of Justice raised an AntiTrust case with Microsoft that it was using its dominant position in Operating Systems (Windows) to dominate Browsers, IE ended up with more than 80% of market share. The only significant difference was that IE (installed as standard) was the default if you clicked a link. While Messages is installed as Standard, it’s not a default, nothing makes an iPhone owner use it and many don’t.
At the time, it was also very, very insecure.
My problem with iMessage is that it is the default SMS client.
Well sure. Sending a text message requires cellular. But it’s not like there aren’t absolutely dozens of ways to communicate over wi-fi messaging platforms on all types of phones.
To the point of the case, how many people actually think to themselves, “I’d love to leave Apple, if only there were some way to send a message over wi-fi on this Android phone I’ve been considering?”
Actually, IE was so deeply integrated into the system that it shared code with Explorer itself. Part of Microsoft’s argument for not unbundling it was, quite literally, that core Windows functionality would break if IE were removed.
I don’t see anything parallel to that with Messages.
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Yes, but it was what we had at the time. Zoom got better, the pandemic ended, and AFAIK it is still the most popular video conferencing app.
IMO, Apple adding RCS to iMessage will be a big step in the right direction, if it includes E2EE. But even with that if I’m going to send someone my “launch codes” I’ll use Signal.
Don’t all phones have a default SMS client though. Plus of course SMS needs to be configured to work with the Carrier.
I agree that Microsoft said that was true, but that wasn’t the case that the DoI brought against Microsoft.
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In the US only the iMessage app can send/receive SMS, so it is enabled automatically when you select your carrier. From what I’ve read you have your choice of apps on Android.
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Are you questioning whether/asserting that standards are only to be considered because options in consumer choice are limited or when a threshold to how many folks “think to themselves” is surpassed? If so, explain how you’d go about setting a lower bounds on consumer options or setting the threshold and testing the population reliably against that threshold, all in a timely manner.
IOW, tell us please precisely what standards we must use in consumer options or opinions to permit us to certify that we can set standards on the systems being used by the consumer.
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JJW
For the government to step in and regulate, there needs to be a “compelling government interest.” This requires that somebody demonstrate that there’s legitimate harm (or the potential for legitimate harm).
I’m arguing that any claims of real-world harm from iMessage being proprietary - at least the ones I’m aware of - don’t rise to anything close to the level that justifies the government getting involved to try to regulate it. Your complaint that you have to use cellular if you don’t have iMessage doesn’t rise to the level of “harm” either.
There’s already an underlying, public standard. It’s SMS. iMessage works with it. Android works with it. Everything works with it. Heck, you can send emails to phone numbers and they’ll get it as a text message. Because of the existence of the standard, I have zero problem whatsoever sending messages to people on non-Apple devices, and vice-versa.
If I want features that don’t exist in SMS, there are an embarrassment of riches in terms of other options. Or some enterprising organization could extend the SMS standard in a useful direction. Forcing Apple to give away its iMessage services (which it developed and pays to maintain the infrastructure for) is solving a problem that doesn’t exist - especially since Apple has announced support for RCS is coming next year.
I’m not saying there aren’t potential antitrust claims to be made - but IMHO this isn’t one of them.
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Good clarification. I can agree in your logic from premise to conclusion. I must think more about my sentiments for the premise as well as the fact that SMS as an existing standard defers any need to push for a text message standard.
Thanks.
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JJW
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Another thing missing from this discussion is how Apple transformed the text messaging landscape when it unveiled iMessage in 2011. Back then the carriers charged per SMS message or you could buy bundles of messages, 200, 500, 1000, whatever. I just looked up an old AT&T bill, I paid $5 a month for 200 SMS messages, an extra 10¢ for each message over that limit. I remember mostly using email for this reason, not wanting to go over my SMS limit and being charged 10¢ per message. This particular month I sent 56 texts. Today I probably send over 50 texts per day.
Apple said we can do better and liberate text messaging from these fees and let people send as many messages as they want for free over our servers. They didn’t consult the carriers, they just went ahead and did it and then text messaging really took off. Now I don’t think any carriers charge per SMS message, it’s just expected to be included unlimited with your cell plan.
This was the work of Apple who went against the economic interests of the cell companies to give people a better texting experience. It didn’t require any extra setup or installing a new app, you just kept using the same Messages app as you did before and if you sent the message to another iPhone user, you didn’t get charged per message.
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I know these things happened at similar times, but I’m questioning the causality.
From what I can tell, carriers were offering unlimited texting plans in the mid-2000s. iMessage came out in 2011. And by 2012-2013, unlimited texting AND unlimited minutes was a standard feature of cell phone plans.
iMessage theoretically could have affected the text message plans - but nothing Apple did would have affected minutes.
That said, iMessage usage - and sending full-size photos - was likely part of the spike in data usage that caused carriers to shift back from unlimited data to data-capped plans in the mid-2010s.
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My company president was addicted to BlackBerry Messenger. A lot of people were in those days.
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We had about half a dozen Blackberries which I had to almost pry out of their cold dead fingers and replace with iPhones. (You wouldn’t believe the way we were getting email on their Blackberries to “Save money” while requiring them to double handle every email)
IPhone connected directly to the Exchange servers meaning no middleware.
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I used to be a Palm Treo guy, which was basically the same form factor. I could never understand the massive draw to doing email on something with keys that tiny.
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