If stars align right for Apple, this can at least with some probability that they can kill WhatsApp in a few countries. If they implement a few features.
What do you mean by kill WhatsApp? This wouldn't make iMessage available to everyone. It would just enforce iMessage users being able to talk with others. Which, if Apple actually implemented it in non-malicious way, would let people who use an iPhone mostly because of iMessage migrate away.
Lmao. How? This just means that msging apps on Android will finally be able to break the blue bubble problem. There will be even less incentive for ppl to switch to iphone to enjoy the 'privilege'
Its a joke that people here seem not to get because I did not add /s at the end. Obviously there is no superiority, but its pretty clear that green bubble design makes it unpleasant to look at [1]
Definitely not, we got lured into it by the original WA owners under (later) false pretenses. Back when we would just pay a euro one time, or every year with a big focus on privacy.
Now it's just everywhere, helpdesks, schools, classes, parents, sportsclubs. All WA groups sadly. We even have this: [0], like it's some government sanctioned platform. Disgusting.
I am getting more and more people into Signal though. Some geeks on Element.io.
It’s our government endorsing the use of an (in my opinion) horrible and closed platform. It’s public money being spend to promote a commercial company that’s not even Dutch and has a horrible privacy track record. Our local pirate party seems to agree, I’m always glad I voted for them when I read stuff like this: [0], what’s perhaps more crazy is that in that piece it is argued that WhatsApp is just how we call group chat apps :s.
Hey, my neighborhood also has a sign like that!
The WhatsApp dominance is the network effect in full force.
I have WhatsApp, SMS, Signal, Telegram, Element/Matrix. Telegram is used just for some nerdy international group and the API from my smart oower meter, the rest is WhatsApp only.
And I bet in classical Apple style, they would definitely gimp the Android iMessage app restricting some features, just to spite Android users and try to force them to buy iPhones.
Android users will still be second class citizens so the transition off Whatsapp or Signal will not happen.
Now that would be the stupidest thing to do, why would they want Android users to think that Apple services are broken? Shouldn't they do the exact opposite and have a really good app giving Android users a glimpse of the holy iPhone land?
That's what I was thinking but no, that was never the case with apple.
If iMessage was as good on Android as it is on iOS, why would Android users switch? Or why would people buy iPhones in the first place?
Internal documents from Apple prove that they had builds of iMessage ready for Android but never released them because Apple knew iMessage was one moat that kept the userbase loyal and annoyed Android users enough through the bubble color discrimination to make them switch to iphone. Like parents heading down cheaper iPhones to kids instead of buying them android phones so they can all use iMessage.
FaceTime is currently available for Android users as well but the experience is shit to prove Android is poor and that iOS is the only way to go for the full experience.
I'm not making all this UB but tech YouTubers extensively covered Apple's iMessage moat with proof and arguments and how this works in their favor so I won't go into all the details.
It's a messaging app, you can either pretend people will give 2 flocks about not being able to message you "in the right color", or you know, install Whatsapp or any other competing messenger
> it's not a thing here in the Netherlands at least. People use Whatsapp.
Then you have a super blue bubble effect if everyone uses WhatsApp then you don’t communicate with people who aren’t on WhatsApp.
My understanding of the blue bubble isn’t that the color matters it’s that iMessage functions only work with other iMessage users (eg, delivery is slightly different, sync with other devices, special emojis, reactions, etc). So if there’s one “green bubble” (ie, non-iMessage user) then the entire group text is downgraded to not do iMessage stuff.
There is no bubble because literally everyone has whatshapp. It's even available on "dumb phones". I've never met anyone of any age who doesn't have it.
Hello there, nice to meet you. Life without Whatsapp is not easy in the Netherlands, but is possible. The "super bubble" exists though, and it sucks. Most problems come from the "literally everyone has whatshapp" crowd like you, by the way, the people who deny the existence of the bubble.
Could you please stop making my life harder? No, not "literally everyone" has Whatsapp: I don't. Agreeing to T&C of some foreign corporation should not be a precondition to participating in the society, don't you think?
You have my Respect (although the person you're responding to probably doesn't mean it like you take it). I probably could only do it while feeling good about it by self-hosting some Matrix bridge. Actually, I'd still feel bad because I'd support the system.
Well, as a parent it really is difficult, you constantly have to explain yourself and arrange alternatives. Some context: Texting (SMSing we call it) is f-ing expensive here, ridiculous (25 ct/message? Unless you buy a plan, but why should you? There is Whatsapp... Nobody is going to use SMS with you, any parent will probably think: "Are you making me send an SMS [to come pick up your kid], really?").
I think you're misrepresenting (or misunderstanding) the matter.
WhatsApp can be installed on any device. iMessage requires specific hardware, i.e. an Apple iPhone.
It is always possible not to use either and just communicate by SMS (which I prefer myself, but as I understand it WhatsApp came to be used here in Belgium because phone plans are expensive and SMS are still limited/paid on most plans) but that's a different matter.
> I think you're misrepresenting (or misunderstanding) the matter.
The matter here is that the commenter I was responding to says I don't exist. My experience is that folks with that attitude also treat me as if I don't exist. I object to both of these things.
Selling your first-born rights for a lentil soup, or agreeing to adversarial T&C of a foreign corporation should not be a precondition for participating in a society.
Take heart, times are a-changing, even in sophisticated and freedom loving Netherlands. Its been a long oppresive period where the lemming mob would simply bully you: "I don't recognize your concerns, I don't care, I can't be bothered". But nowadays you definitely see some inroads of e.g., Signal.
But its a steep upward slope to climb. Lots of data-siphoning apps are painted on buses or splash on city ad "walls" but whatsapp is actually a permanent fixture of the urban landscape in so-called "neighbourhood watch signs". A creepy dystopic image if there was one.
Yeah can confirm that I'm another one in the boat of "would drop WA since Facebook owns it", but it's just borderline unviable to do so if I don't want to make my life much more difficult/put extra stress on all my IRL social connections.
It's hard to understand it if you don't live in NL just how extremely omnipresent WhatsApp is. People use it for everything, from casual family chatter to highly serious conversations to quite literally business-related conversations. Not having WA will absolutely result in things like missing crucial information because "we send it in the WhatsApp group" and that of course in turn will be used as a mark against you when you're say, seeking a job.
This occurred before Facebook bought it and their recent T&S change that allows them to use WA usage to improve their algorithms basically was a case of "enjoy being forced to share your data with no recourse". There was tons of social pushback about it but nobody could do anything about it because the app is so entrenched.
I am thoroughly looking forward to the DMA and its impact on WhatsApp.
> There is no bubble because literally everyone has whatshapp
Given how much Europeans bitch about America and American corporations, I continue to be dumbfounded by the tremendous love for Whatsapp. It's made by Facebook FFS. I am pretty amazed at the number of people who are happier with Facebook managing their private communications than they are Apple.
Or, it's just network effect and a lot of rationalization. That's the simpler answer.
This isn't at all aimed at Apple, it's aimed at Facebook. Apple already has SMS messaging integrated, it just has a green bubble and there's nothing in the proposal that would force Apple to change anything about how the messages are presented.
There's nothing in the regulation saying Apple has to make everything look the same, they're free to put whatever color they want on third party integrations.
They probably won't, and even if they did, I won't hold my breath.
As it is the difference between sending photos via iMessage vs sending photos via WhatsApp is like night and day. I don't know how Apple managed to f. that up but if I have to send more than 2-3 photos the app asks me to do horizontal scrolling, which is not optimal, to say the least.
Plus the very process of sending and receiving the photos themselves seems very clunky in comparison.
I don't see how they could, iMessage is severely lacking in features compared to WhatsApp and users don't like change, iMessage doesn't need to have feature parity but it has to be massively better - and so far it's not
you don't need whatsapp desktop app, just go to web.whatsapp.com in browser, why would anyone bother with app (which can't be even installed on work computers)
I like the desktop app better as it’s integrated better and thus easier to use. I have notifications set up for many different apps not just messages so I want them all to function the same.
Also, I just think native apps still perform better than web apps.
Not sure how it can be easier to use than already supereasy web app, notifications work same via browser and you don't need to install anything, these are really no arguments for desktop app.
If you would say desktop app can do voice/video calls which you actually use (I don't, not gonna open laptop with closed lid and external display for that) I can understand using the desktop app, but for someone who doesn't need voice/video calls on computer and is fine with better camera in phone there is no benefit in installing additional dedicated app.
I understand it very well, that's why I asked for explanation why/how is desktop app easier to use than already very easy web app and how are notifications in desktop app different from web app. But thanks for your valuable input which provided me with definite explanation, although I didn't ask for it and I asked user I was conversing with.
The WhatsApp desktop beta for macOS is built using Catalyst, and it's pretty nice. Catalyst is when an iOS and macOS app share one codebase, but can have different interfaces. I've been using it for a few weeks and no complaints so far. I believe the stable version app is Electron (or some web technology). The beta is full on native now!
As a ThinkPad Linux user, how can I run this iMessage desktop app you speak of?
There isn’t even iMessage functionality in iCloud.com despite the breadth of other Apple products and services being there. Kinda odd how they left that one out, no?
I don't think that will be enough, yeah sure compatibility with Android will help imessage but they will also need some big marketing change, right now it's marketed as an SMS app and SMS is pretty much a dead platform in the EU
A 40 billion dollar fine if you don’t do as the EU says… at some point tech companies are just going to pull out of the EU, right? For most (but not all!), GDPR was worth complying with (and had benefits for citizens). This is likely to also be worth complying with (and also has benefits for citizens), but I imagine the EU is going to run out of ideas that legitimately benefit users long before it runs out of desire to levy huge fines.
The EU doesn't exist for the purpose of giving fines to companies, if they "run out of ideas", they just keep doing what they're already doing most of the time. The whole 'fines' thing is just a small part of a much bigger thing.
If you pull out of the EU you've now created a unified market of half a billion consumers that need a alternative to your product. That seems like a good way to kickstart a competitor.
Except EU is not a single market: there's 27 countries, speaking multiple languages, having different laws, so to serve the EU you need at least a dozen versions of your app.
Also, EU has just decided that this half billion of consumers will be downgraded to the third world standard of living (google "Fit for 55"), so they won't really have much money to spend on tech toys anyway...
The only way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 55% is to push everyone into poverty, basically. Make the car ownership too expensive for common folks, as well as meat consumption, buying new clothes, heating your apartment in winter, air travel, and more.
Why wouldn’t massive buildout of nuclear energy plants allow hitting that greenhouse emission goal while simultaneously tripling the amount of power used per person?
That's an extremely uncharitable and snarky answer given the open-ended nature of my question.
Thorium reactors don't use either and a fusion reactor wouldn't involve any isotope of uranium. Others may disagree, but I don't think it's a forgone conclusion that all R&D in nuclear energy grinds to a halt.
I disagree with the GP's claim that poverty is "the only way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 55%."
No scifi nuclear reactor concept is going to be mass deployed by the early 2030s. The only nuclear fuel source that has ever been used in commercial application is U235, with a little bit of Pu239 to boost yield. There is no viable source of U235 for even a fraction of current energy use.
OP's claim is garbage (insulation, ending car dependency, and legislating products that aren't landfill help the poor rather than hindering them), but the constant nuclear shilling and shilling for growth is much worse.
> (insulation, ending car dependency, and legislating products that aren't landfill help the poor rather than hindering them)
That's not at all what "Fit for 55" program is about. I agree, those things, over long enough timespan (say, 20 years) could be net positive. Instead, "Fit for 55" means imposing additional "carbon tax" on many industries, and on goods imported from China, based on how much carbon was emitted when producing them. And given the short, 7 years time frame the net result of those policies will be what I originally claimed: pushing everyone to poverty.
EU politicians say it quite openly really, that in order to "save us from the climate catastrophe" we need to sacrifice the standard of living.
Problem solved. It won't hurt anyone but anybodybwho is already doing the right thing will be far better off.
If people who choose to drive (and it will be a choice because non-car infrastructure is part of the plan) pay more, then nothing of value has been lost.
When was the last time in history of mankind when taxes were actually distributed to the poor? I mean in significant amounts, not as a lame attempt to win upcoming elections.
If Apple just pulls iMessage from EU, nothing changes, the competitor already exists, is already dominant, and is a US Silicon Valley social media company.
Do you think the EU is a capitalistic entity, with a board room of members that party with the fine money because they can buy themselves a few new yachts?
Strange how you don't seem to realize that all these "ideas for fines" come years or decades after the "efficient and self-regulating free market" ends up what it will always end up: entrenched monopolies, moats, little competition and high barriers of entry.
The EU is a 17 trillion dollar economy. It's the second largest market in the world for most of these companies, they'll never pull out. It is simply hot air. They'd never even leave China unless the US gov. forces them at gunpoint.
Google never really had any traction in China to start with, their search results were useless for Chinese content, so then they pretended to leave for some noble cause. Same with Amazon who tried for much longer until it gave up after decade.
That's assuming sites/users in China use statcounter, completely misleading data.
According Wikipedia and at least 2 different sources they quote, Google peaked in China at 29-35% and even that seems way too optimistic, if you ask anyone who used search in China back then or have been there. By my experience from years ago was Google search in Chinese language useless.
Happy to go by your numbers, that was just the first search result. 35% is still very significant, so your initial claim about it having no traction and this being just a face-saving gesture was not correct.
Since they seem to be determined to legislate every detail of the product, from ports used to software protocols, maybe they should indeed just skip the middleman and acquire the phone makers.
> Since they seem to be determined to legislate every detail of the product, from ports used to software protocols, maybe they should indeed just skip the middleman and acquire the phone makers.
And in every case where they don't legislate it, companies don't give a crap.
Silly example. I went to buy a broom/mop stick to use with broom/mop heads I had at home.
Guess what, they stopped making the original, and 3 different supermarkets had slightly different stick diameters, so they weren't compatible with the other brands.
I really need that level of innovation in my life...
Hey, it's only been 12 years, wait a few more decades and a few more billions of dollars and it will surely happen, when a VP there wants to get fired.
The Digital Markets Act [0] was voted, published, and parts of it will be applicable as of beginning of May 2023.
Some technical workshops [1] are being organized with interested stakeholders to receive their views on specific issues and questions that may arise in relation to the specific implementing measures by gatekeepers that are to ensure effective compliance with that legislation.
Is that a problem worldwide or more localized to the US? I am using Signal, Threema, and WhatsApp and never received spam on any messanger, only occasionally via SMS.
I live 10,000km away from the US and can confirm that I get more spam on androids than when using iMessage. It wasn’t the main reason I switched back to iOS with my newest phone but it was a reason.
Maybe it depends on the Android vendor, but my OnePlus' "Messages" (the SMS app) automatically blocks a lot of spam messages automatically and it's quite good at it. On the contrary I have friends with iPhones who get spam/phishing messages.
Via SMS like everyone else with a mobile phone here, and especially around election dates. Apple’s done a few things recently to mitigate this and last election I reported a lot of phone numbers for spam to my carrier using a mechanism Apple built-in; so we’ll see if it starts to make a difference within a couple of years time.
To add my own: I've received one, maybe two spam SMS messages in my entire life, none at all in the last few years. I have received one or two spam messages in WhatsApp.
Ok but I was talking about dedicated messenger apps, not the messaging feature of what are basically social media apps. Those are all full of spam if you've got enough contacts and liked enough things.
No I don't have data to back it up. I say this because I vaguely recall reading somewhere that the reason why apple/google cooperation broke down was because apple insisted on banning spammers and google didn't want to. I have no idea where I saw that other than it was mentioned in a HN comment somewhere.
I remember that it made sense and seemed plausible to me at the time because I've also actually never received a spam iMessage in my whole life. It never even occurred to me in that moment this was the case until I read that comment and was like, "O yeah, right, I've actually never gotten spam on iMessage come to think of it." I just assumed that to spend spam via iMessage required apple hardware or that for one reason or another it just wasn't very viable.
On the other hand, I have gotten a lot of sms spam in the past, and I continue to get spam on WhatsApp.
As a side note, my sms spam has decreased dramatically after I ported my mobile number to google voice vs. when my carrier was T-Mobile. It's anecdotal but still telling.
There are people in this discussion posting opposite experiences from you, so it's probably all anecdata either way. But I think it's a convincing argument that SMS is significantly more vulnerable to spam because the price of entry is negligible and it lacks the traceability that comes with a requirement to have an Apple ID to use iMessage.
I hope you're reporting the spam you get to Apple, because the fastest way to stop it is to have the offending account terminated.
The source article [1] claims that " the largest messaging services (such as Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger or iMessage) will have to open up and interoperate with smaller messaging platforms"
I am very intrigued to see how the various platforms will enable such features in software terms - WhatsApp recently allowed the usage of proxies via their platform, and there is talk of Apple maintaining the Made for iPhone program when they roll over to USB-C which is allowed under the "USB-C for phones" law they passed recently. So expect some creative applications/interpretations of the DMA.
I think it'll work similar to telegram, they'll "open up" without the E2EE aspect and basically enable a "compatibility" mode. Otherwise, and being more cynical, this does feel like a 'ploy' to get around E2EE by making large, privacy-focused platforms such as Signal 'open up' (I do wonder if Signal would be classified under the rules for turnover etc). Suppose it depends on the final text of the law and how lawyers interpret what "opening up" means. Haven't really seen much about what the EU is going to expect there.
But if we are cynical, expect the end of E2EE messaging apps entirely.
The actual law does say they have to keep E2EE enabled.
>The level of security, including the end-to-end encryption, where applicable, that the gatekeeper provides to its own end users shall be preserved across the interoperable services. [0]
As for forcing them to open up, I think Matrix has a good response to it [1]. As well as their follow-up technical implementation article [2].
Misleading headline. This affects many apps and is much broader.
In fact, this line from the article is far more serious: “Apple, for instance, will also need to contend with a reported requirement to allow side-loading of apps outside of its App Store, something it's spent years fighting internationally”.
>>> allow side-loading of apps outside of its App Store
Just in time to replace that broken Siri thing with OpenAI based assistants!
Previous app submissions were rejected on the basis of being "too close to existing functionality". Maybe they meant dysfunctionality? If the EU needs witnesses of anti-competitive behavior I volunteer.
Is there a good integration for Android? I never used Google Assistent, when I tried, it failed for basic tasks.
I rented a car with Android Auto, went inside my podcast app, and couldn't go back to Google maps, and of course Android Auto makes google maps stop working on my mobile phone when android auto is on.
So i was trying things like ,,go to maps'', ,,go to navigation'', ,,maps'', but none of them worked.
Disconnecting and reconnecting andorid auto worked mostly (but not always)
oooh that would be awesome. I'm at a point where I only use it for timers and it even gets that wrong sometimes "I created an alarm named Timer for 01:30am".. oh yeah I can't just say "timer one hour thirty" because Siri hates British people and parses the numbers wrong lmao.
Also can we get multiple timers yet? Why is a device more powerful than the computer we used to send people to the moon limited to one timer?
Oh that's interesting! I'm using HomePods, how odd that iPhone Siri doesn't do multiple timers... It can work headlessly, so my guess is they've not bothered to write a UI for multiple timers on iOS... weird move
Correct me if I am wrong, but you're using OpenAI simply to answer queries/questions, not to perform any actions. In that sense, it's not really an assistant. It's not creating reminders, sending texts, reading your messages, etc.
Is this what you're wanting from an OpenAI integration?
Overall the experience will be worse. No doubt about that. Features like the Privacy Nutrition Scorecard (I can't remember what it's actually called) won't be nearly as powerful, for example, because other giant multi-national corporations will just create their own app stores to avoid playing by Apple's rules and "paying the Apple tax", which is something that they have to pay and end consumers don't. I.e. it's just a payment negotiation between big corporations.
It'll also lead to fragmentation and you'll have to manage 5-10 different "app stores" in order to use apps that you use day-to-day right now.
Overall it's just going to be a mess and really suck. Fortunately I don't use many apps so I don't see this affecting me personally other than occasional annoyance when I can't find something I may need in the future or having to help family members fix their phones now. For many though their experience using the iPhone will be degraded, particularly when it comes to software.
There's a price that the market (consumers) will bear to pay for a service. Let's call it MyBigBrand and you charge $5/month or idk, $10 for a one-time purchase.
Apple charges whatever their fee is, let's call it 30%, and they keep this fee and do lots of things with it including buy back stock and reinvest in improving their services.
MyBigBrand comes along and says hey that's not fair! They launch a marketing campaign "The Apple Tax" and file lawsuits. Courts decide Apple should allow 3rd-party app stores or that they can't charge the fee or have to reduce it.
In each of those scenarios, MyBigBrand continues to charge customers $5/month for their product. All that's occuring here is whether or not MyBigBrand gets to pay less to Apple or whether Apple gets to continue to charge MyBigBrand and eat into their margins.
For a consumer you still pay the same fee for the product, or potentially you have to download some other app store that MyBigBrand owns or collaborates with MyOtherBigBrand on and then they split the costs and keep more of the margin.
At the end of the day people are being duped into really caring about who gets to keep more of their money and it just doesn't matter, except that it appears Apple does something beneficial with the money they keep and having multiple app stores with exclusive apps will suck and be annoying.
Yeah, like Android. 10 app stores and today nobody downloads their apps from Google Play anymore. Also all Androids are full of viruses too. Those reckless grandmas and their Android phones...
Just because you can download apps from an app store that is other than Apple's own does not mean that you can replace Apple's default apps.
Considering the number of people who celebrated in response to your comment, I think I get it now why people support side-loading---they don't actually understand it and are merely projecting their own interpretations.
>>Tomorrow I can guarantee they will immediately cut costs and ship out piles of sideloaded garbage
Yeah except that's absolute nonsense because you could already do that on Android and yet I recall only one instance where a developer explicitly asked me to sideload an app(for Fortnite, no less). It's going to remain an incredible niche that will affect 0.00001% users at most.
Then what’s the point of forcing these companies to allow it? If it only affects such a small user base then money regulating it is clearly being wasted and should be used for something that will affect more people’s lives?
I think you are looking at it from the wrong perspective. It will affect hundreds of millions of iOS users. Whether these users choose to use their newly given freedom to install software not controlled by Apple is up to them - but the legislation affects 100% of iOS userbase.
(in hindsight I shouldn't have said it will affect 0.0001% users - maybe I should have said that I guess only that many users will choose to sideload software instead)
Actually yes it does. 3rd party app stores is where the majority of Android malware comes from. The vast majority of mobile malware is all Android for this reason. Whenever I need low hanging fruit for mobile malware analysis it’s always start at a third party Android App Store. It’s a dumpster fire.
iOS’ advantage is it’s walled garden. It’s a place where a lot of trust is curated for the nontechnical. This evaporates that.
What appears good for the highly technical is not always good for the user.
We can’t be expecting grandmothers to check signatures, ensure an app has certificates pinned, trust that a company won’t let its update domains lapse, and understand public key crypto to set up their GPG keys for a messaging alternative much less handle them properly. Hell I’ve had senior engineers send me their private GPG key when requesting their public key.
Delightful movement of the goal posts, highly technical move.
Your argument was that the moment there is no longer a need to be constrained by Apple's App Store rules, your Samsung dishwasher will make you install its app through Shady Store Incorporated, because it's easier, and it'll make your grandma install it.
Except that doesn't happen. Noone has done that. The highest profile case is Fortnite, and it makes you install it either through Epic Games, or the Samsung Galaxy Store, and the only reason for that is that Google feels entitled to taking 30% of transactions too.
I'm thinking more of a smart fridge, or car app, or some other crap. I'm 99% sure a lot of them will stop going through the painful iOS process and just give you a QR code for their app
That the EU's overreach has made a product worse for the majority of its users.
As a technical user, it doesn't bother me. When I consider many of my friends, it does bother me—most of them I know with non-iOS devices have complained about their devices moving slowly due to the junkware and the third-party app stores they've acquired (never F-Droid, always something sketchy). When I think about family members, I think about how web push notifications have rendered two of their phones borderline unusable.
Most "consumer-friendly" choices the EU makes are actually about developer & manufacturer profit. This isn't consumer-aligned. It eliminates the profit motive that's left iOS devices as more or less the only LTS phones on the market.
I don't like Apple products that much—I use Linux on my cell phone, but at the same time I refuse to adopt cheap rhetorical tactics to make app developers wealthier.
If they really wanted things to be consumer-friendly, they'd ban proprietary software. Instead, they make it easier for proprietary software developers to make profit off of users.
The basic message from EU to innovators is: don't bother. If you manage to create a successful business out of your innovation we will punish you.
You created an advanced easy to use connector for your line of phones? Fuck you, you have to change it to a plug that came later and has a different set of trade offs that may not align with your product.
You created a messaging service that was way ahead of its time, and it basically took a decade for others to catch up? Fuck you, provide the fruits of your innovation to everyone for free, erasing your competitive advantage.
If everyone would release their own incompatible version of TCP protocol, internet would have never happen to be. This is just same interoperability on higher level.
Interoperability undoubtedly has advantages in the long run. But there's a delicate balance to be struck at what point in product evolution to standardize. I'm fine with standardizing on USB-C (even though the cable situation is a mess). But IMHO USB micro would have been inferior to lightning, and forcing Apple to standardize on that would have set back the industry. And imagine laptops if the EU had decided to solve the conference room projector problem by mandating VGA ports in every laptop.
I also can't help shaking the feeling that the EU is so happy regulating cell phones and internet services because they have no major players in that field left anymore. Conversely, they seem to be incapable of mandating a unified standard for grounded AC power outlets, although that would surely be equally beneficial.
> With respect to charging by means other than wired charging, divergent solutions could be developed in the future, which could have negative impacts on interoperability, on consumer convenience and on the environment. <<Whilst it is premature to impose specific requirements on such solutions at this stage, the Commission should take action towards promoting and harmonising such solutions to avoid future fragmentation of the internal market.>>
Unlike the US Constitution, EU laws are not set in stone and they <<are>> updated.
> I also can't help shaking the feeling that the EU is so happy regulating cell phones and internet services because they have no major players in that field left anymore. Conversely, they seem to be incapable of mandating a unified standard for grounded AC power outlets, although that would surely be equally beneficial.
Hotels and many other places have started offering USB A and USB C ports. I think we're close to the point (5-10 years away?) where you could go to the US from Europe with just a laptop, for 2 weeks, and you'd be able to charge it just by using USB C ports available in restaurants, hotels, bars, offices, etc.
On top of that, for wall outlets the EU is mostly standardized except for Denmark, I think.
>Hotels and many other places have started offering USB A and USB C ports. I think we're close to the point (5-10 years away?) where you could go to the US from Europe with just a laptop, for 2 weeks, and you'd be able to charge it just by using USB C ports available in restaurants, hotels, bars, offices, etc.
I know EU is very nonchalant about sex, but sticking oneself into random USB ports is a bridge too far.
> Hotels and many other places have started offering USB A and USB C ports. I think we're close to the point (5-10 years away?) where you could go to the US from Europe with just a laptop, for 2 weeks, and you'd be able to charge it just by using USB C ports available in restaurants, hotels, bars, offices, etc.
Yeah, but I don't think there are USB C razors yet.
> On top of that, for wall outlets the EU is mostly standardized except for Denmark, I think.
France and Germany have different outlets (although there are plugs that work in both), and as far as I can tell, Italy has a completely different outlet from either of them.
> Yeah, but I don't think there are USB C razors yet.
Give it a few years :-) I have a hair clipper that uses micro-USB.
> France and Germany have different outlets (although there are plugs that work in both), and as far as I can tell, Italy has a completely different outlet from either of them.
In continental Europe in practice you only care about 2 standards: the German one and the French one. Those cover something like 45 out of 47 countries in Europe.
On top of that, the narrow connector actually works in all of continental Europe and for the big one, almost everything sold since at least 1 decade works with both the German and French standards.
Sucks to be Italy or Switzerland, I guess :-)
> And the UK never stopped using their own system.
The UK is still doing its own thing with many things, we don't talk about them anymore...
This is such a wrong take. As an "innovator" who also worked on one of the largest messaging apps: I'm VERY happy about this change. Very long due. If properly executed, this gives a very large advantage to startups against those established network effects. And for late stage founders this is not an issue anyway and also makes them shift their focus back to product.
There have been no laws towards fostering competition within walled gardens in either the US or EU until now.
Apple had no app store competition until now. Do you contend the app store will not see material improvements in the future now that it finally has within bundle competition?
Why has Apple suddenly started investing so heavily in Safari over the past year, now that they will soon be forced to allow competing browsers?
Apple has plenty of competition for their product that includes an App Store. If you don’t like their product, you’re free to get an Android device like 85% of the rest of the world and 2/3rd of the EU.
The nuance of anti-competitiveness through bundling or the merits of competition at more granular levels appears lost to you.
If products have to compete on their own merits, rather than leaning on other aspects of a larger bundle, then software and products get better for all of society.
For example, if you were allowed to install any car OS you wanted, rather than forced to use the manufacturers, car OSes would improve significantly. Some people will buy a car for the hardware, despite terrible software. This is bad for the evolution of car software. If a manufacturer was forced to compete, they would have to invest more heavily in improving their software... or simply cede control of the OS to a better implemented third party one, and focus on the hardware. Both outcomes are better for consumers than allowing anti-competitiveness via bundling
No one wants you to be able to install any CarOS. What you can have on a car info system is strictly regulated for safety reasons. For instance you can’t have video showing where the driver can see it while driving. On my old car with Ford Sync, you couldn’t even pair a phone with your radio while the car was running.
A “product” is a combination of software and hardware.
My opinion is that both Windows is worse than Macs and Android is worse than iPhones because they aren’t an integrated product.
GlobalSuperMegaCorp has plenty of competition for their company town that includes a grocery store. If you don't like their company town, you're free to move to another town like 85% of the rest of the world.
Oh and BTW there are only two countries in the world, one of them is entirely comprised of GlobalSuperMegaCorp's monolith city-state company town, and the other is entirely comprised of company towns run by franchisees of OtherMassiveGlobalCorp.
This only applies to the very biggest companies. It is about preventing companies using their scale and dominance to prevent innovation in OTHERS. It opens UP the market.
>> Fuck you, you have to change it to a plug that came later and has a different set of trade offs that may not align with your product.
Quick reminder that Apple was literally one of the companies that invented USB-C and already uses USB-C across many lines of their products. You're making it sound like EU is making them use HDMI for charging or something.
If everyone's messaging has to be compatible with everyone else's then maybe we will finally only need one messaging app on our phones again instead of 5. Sounds great. I just want to be able to send messages without thinking about which app I need to go into to communicate with a particular person; that really breaks my flow when I'm trying to get something done. I don't give a shit about any features apart from pictures, groups and emojis.
I forgot email. Even better, integrate messages with my email client and then they would all be in one place. Can't wait. Don't care how they are sent, just want to know if I write something to someone it gets there. Don't want random strangers to be able to write to me without my consent. That's my spec for the ideal setup.
I had a globally distributed family and WhatsApp was literally a life changer for me back in 2009/2010.
I'm sure other people in a similar position will also know what I'm talking about.
It was super lightweight, cheap, multiplatform - when I was interning in Singapore in 2012, I was able to stretch a 2MB pay as you go SIM plan over 2 months using WhatsApp over WAP on a Symbian iPhone.
There are few things I will be more loyal to.
Now, with my biases declared, I am genuinely open to understanding why SMTP/IMAP based chat didn't take off. I don't know much about the protocols but as you say, email should have solved this problem. But somehow it lacked that immediacy of instant messaging that made me feel that much more connected to my family halfway across the planet.
Maybe that's what it was - email delivered in 1-5 seconds is completely fine, but instant messaging needs to be delivered in under 500ms ideally.
Is there something about the email protocol that makes it slower due to some tradeoffs?
Twenty two minutes ago you cared about groups, pictures and emojis. Email clients don't do emojis well or groups well, SMS doesn't do any of them, and IIRC Blackberry did everything in one program 15 years ago.
Downvoted because this is the comment equivalent of the manager walking into a technical discussion of how something should work and demanding "just make it work" and leaving. Or commenting on a war topic "I just want peace I don't care how it happens".
Like, you and everyone? But that doesn't make concerns like "people who don't use Facebook don't want their photos routed through Facebook servers without their knowledge or consent" magically vanish. There's a reason federated open protocol multi-service clients never became dominant and it's not because the problem space is trivial. "Just make it work" gets you iMessage, and that slurped your SMSs through Apple servers without telling you, which is still one of the cheekiest most unbelievable things I'd heard of at the time, despite that being tame by big tech company standards today.
Users just want simple direct communications to work (yes, with more features than that, E2EE, image sending, and such; but those features are not the focus).
Companies want to get users into a walled-garden where they can target them for financial and political gains.
Democracy trying to push things away from the latter seems good. Do you agree?
What about this is a walled garden. SMS exists, this is an attempt to get green bubbles painted blue, and reactions to attach to a bubble. These are all visual changes and not at all required for functionality. Explain how this is such a problem that a government decided to focus any effort on this. It seems like they have nothing better to do.
Apple's walled garden of the app store, no sideload apps, is a way they can profit. What financial or political gain is Apple getting from people using iMessage instead of WhatsApp?
Email does sort of support groups, they are just reply all + consent to be receiving the group messages. I put emoji in emails, I don't understand what the problem is there?
Anyway, maybe I wasn't being precise enough, more precisely I meant Unicode, anything that can send Unicode with file attachments works for me which is every message service already. All the other extra stuff apple and google do with custom emoji and other things like that is irrelevant to me and I would happily give it up to have all written communication in one client with one red dot showing unread messages and one list of contacts.
WRT to privacy concerns, maybe my dream client lets me prioritise which services I prefer and it drops down to the lowest common denominator. So I could prefer Matrix > Signal > Telegram > iMessage > WhatsApp > Email > (the google one?) > Facebook Messenger for starting new chats or groups. I don't see what else you can do as some people can only be contacted on Facebook messenger; either you stick to your principals and your kids don't go to football club or you suck it up and use Facebook for that chat?
Probably because every automated system has to send 10 emails per action, making me have 100 emails every time I look. Turn off the team wide email notifications and Id check it more often.
And that's IRC in the nutshell, until you joined you have no history of any conversation. Sure you can scroll up in future apps like Discord but barely few read the channel conversations when they join a new server.
The social contract of email dictates that it is not a real time communication media. Some people do check their email in real time, but many don't, so you can't rely on that.
I don't check anything in real time. I do it maybe two-four times a day. I don't want clients, bosses or friends that expect me to reply within seconds to messages.
I'm actually very afraid of precisely that, because knowing the EU, they will want administrator access, to "combat misinformation and disinformation" and "monitor for extremism" of course. Nothing nefarious.
Before even the flawed STARTTLS was a thing, people wanting to have private communication over unencrypted email would simply exchange public keys and use PGP to create encrypted messages.
If E2E were not available for any reason whatsover, we could go back to that as necessary, though might lose some extra benefits of integrated E2E platforms like perfect forward secrecy (or maybe not; I'm not really up to date on my crypto).
With a standard and open protocol enforced, we could create a FOSS client that automatically pre-shares a public key and de/encrypts messages before sending them, so the UX would be much better than the awkwardness of early PGP.
The solution I use to minimise this is Element One (https://element.io/element-one). This is a paid for service that operates bridges from Matrix to Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram. I then get to communicate with all those contacts in one place (I'm on Android so iMessage not a problem).
I signed up the moment it came out and they had some teething reliability problems for a while, but it's been great for months now. Element is a much better web client than any of the others and it's nice to not have to worry about which computer or platform I'm on when I want to write a message.
That's correct. It's encrypted in transit, but the endpoint bridges decrypt messages then reencrypt them. IIRC you can run the bridges yourself on your own servers - Element just offers this service as well.
Matrix comes up quite often here. Tell me why, even as a nerd, I want to run a server and get my friends and family to join to chat, instead of them opening the built in app and just having at. This is a non-starter.
> Tell me why, even as a nerd, I want to run a server
Apparently you don't want to, which is fine. Just use a publicly available server, there are many out there including matrix.org.
But if you wanted to, you could. It's about control.
I talk to exactly one other person using "proper" Matrix to Matrix communication. Everything else I do is via bridges. I talk to people who are using WhatsApp and Signal clients, and I use it as an IRC client (it is an excellent IRC client).
Despite not using proper Matrix it still is enormously useful to me just by being a good client with good bridges.
For actual Matrix-Matrix comms I think Slack/Teams is probably a more realistic use-case to replace.
> ...Tell me why, even as a nerd, I want to run a server...
Actually, you have the *choice* to run a server or not. (Conceptually similar to old school email, you can live on your own server, or live on someone else's servers.) For matrix (or heck even for email) if you do not wish to manage your own server, there are free and paid services that you can leverage.
> ...instead of them opening the built in app and just having at...
This is not clear to me if you were referring to Apple to open up their app or if you meant matrix. Because i agree that Apple should open up their app....Even though i am a matrix fan. More open apps helps everyone involved to communications plaforms (including and especially users). But, if you meant for matrix to have their app open...well, matrix is the open protocol, and there are already many opened apps, such as Element, Cinny, Fluffychat, Schilid, etc.
> ...and get my friends and family to join to chat...
Yeah, no matter if Apple opens up or not, the network effect of asking/hoping friends/family join something else is real and non-trivial. Matrix won't solve that alone, because its not necessarily a tech-only problem. My personal hope is that - whether it is matrix protocol and associated clients, servers or something else entirely - i do wish we had some universal, open protocol that allowed for everyone, everywhere to chat...and which was not controlled by a few, powerful entities.
> You don't care about any features, apart from the features you care about. Just like everyone else.
That's a pretty uncharitable way to interpret the statement, when the three features OP mentioned are a part of literally every modern messaging platform that people use. Not just iMessage and RCS (the open protocol which is the best analog to iMessage), but WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, Discord, Messenger, Instagram, Slack... It's actually hard to think of one that doesn't. I guess IRC, if you consider that in any way comparable to the others, but it really isn't at this point, being a now fairly obscure protocol reserved mostly for tech-savvy people and niche cases.
It doesn’t matter if it’s an obscure protocol, if it’s used in a large business then they must comply. Wait until discord or any of the gaming focused media apps try to unify on features.
I similarly interpreted OP as someone who only wants basic features in messaging while the reply implies that not everyone views those three features as the only necessary features. Nothing uncharitable about saying that everyone’s needs are different.
Exactly. For example, I care about pictures and emojis but not groups. And groups crucially is the one thing that (from what I hear) is extremely non-trivial to do well alongside with E2E encryption. So nothing "basic" about it, it turns out.
Sounds like what you really need is a contacts manager that links to recent conversations with them. You know who you want to contact, you pull them up and navigate to the relevant convos or apps.
> RCS (the open protocol which is the best analog to iMessage)
It's so "open" and so "best" that Android doesn't even provide a public API for third party clients to use it. It's just yet another pseudo-open thingy that in practice is only open to a handful of mobile oligopolies, and all other developers are locked out of it just like they're locked out of iMessage. Google replacing the actually-open SMS with vendor-locked RCS is a major reason why Signal is dropping support for SMS. Much good that fake openness is doing, smh.
To be fair, that was probably the same opinion you expressed when buying an iPhone. Nobody thinks about the consequences of who they can text when they buy a phone, and why should they?
I never bought an iphone, because it seems to me outrageously overpriced (especially since we know now that it takes 2-3 years until they make it lag on purpose) and I don't like the company anyway.
I'd be fine with the EU proposing certain standards that must be met in order for an app to be used as an official messaging app, like:
[ ] - Can send and receive basic text messages
[ ] - Can send and receive rich text messages (bold, italics, underline, headings, etc.)
[ ] - Ability to send and display file formats (debatable which ones - maybe force custom animated emojis to be transmitted, cached for later use as compatible file formats (webm, gif, etc.)
Just as an example.
The EU is going to mess it up, as they likely will by forcing all companies to "fall in line" with standards that will likely not be updated frequently, instead of allowing smaller companies to innovate first, then enforcing current policies if there's too much BS behaviour in the industry.
See - current rumors of Apple creating "special" Apple USB-C cables that will be the only ones to allow faster charging and data transfers, compared to other high-quality USB-C cables that an iPhone won't permit to have high data transfer rates and will charge devices slowly. You can set the standard, but companies with enough money and legal know-how can still bypass the intent of the law! Smaller companies can't compete on the accessories market.
Unless other government are serious about this (the EU is a fairly small market segment compared to the rest of the world), we're going to see more of this regulation dodging and chicanery from massive companies while smaller ones suffer or struggle to succeed in a marketplace dominated by capital interests.
I wish somebody had stolen the Windows Phone idea of linking all the socials to the Contacts system, so if you want to message a person you go through Contacts and it would show their full unified social history. It would be simple to expand this so their preferred contact app is up top on their contact page. Remove the messengers from your home-screen altogether and start from Contacts.
It could well be, remember the state (police) have the monopoly on the evidence gathering process for criminal prosecutions. I sometimes think the fictional authoring skills of the Police is highly under estimated, certainly their criminal ingenuity and sexual depravity as undercover cops is all state sanctioned.
Another way of seeing it is that Europe maintains a standard of living high enough, that US companies are interested in the European user base. Then the EU is legitimate in demanding whatever for access to that market. I find nothing wrong with that.
They have changed it now. You can have first class clients on both a tablet and a phone. At least, that's how it is on Android (have WhatsApp installed natively on a phone and a tablet, also use it via web client on desktop).
Android tablet, that is. If it's an iPad, you're SOL completely.
Even funnier is that the new native app for macOS [0] (i.e. not using Electron) is made with Catalyst… a tool made for porting iPad apps to macOS.
Somewhere, someone at WhatsApp works on a version of the app for the SOLE PURPOSE of porting it to another platform, while NOT releasing the original. It's completely baffling.
As someone who benefitted greatly from the era when thirdparty MSNP clients were extremely common, I think they need to do the same with Microsoft Teams.
Does anyone know whether there's any implication for Signal? Will they have to comply as well and make their app interoperable with other messaging apps?
I read a while ago that the regulation will require them to build an API that other apps can access it, so you could use an alternative app if you want to. I'm not sure if they will force them to receive messages from other services.
No, because the regulation would only apply to market-leading "gatekeepers", with thresholds for revenues after which it would apply, so Signal are safe.
Adding to that Pidgin has a nice plugin called OTR that enables E2EE regardless of the platform/transport being used. OTR exists for Weechat [1] as well.
I am not a fan of offline key exchanges through a centralized privacy-focused server as in, the server stores a key. Moxie knows why too. I wish he would come here so we could have that discussion. Perhaps I am old fashioned but I prefer military procedure of go for authentication in an out-of-band communication and verifying via voice each others key fingerprints or better, physically exchanging keys in person.
I miss this a lot. Trillian and Adium were a couple of other clients that allowed this. It was really nice to have some choice among what client to use.
I fondly remember iChat from my younger years. XMPP was incredibly powerful -- I would kill for a single client app for signal, telegram, facebook messenger, whatsapp, and more today.
I've been thinking about building one. I currently have too many other projects though, so this is going to be my next one, when I'm more or less satisfied with my ActivityPub server. It's so strange that no one has even tried to fill the niche for a modern desktop multi-protocol IM app. The one I have in mind would be properly-desktop though — multiple windows, 100% native controls, complete ignorance towards touchscreens, etc.
KDE has a built in chat client that seems to do the job most of the time. What's severely lacking there is client support.
Because of it libraries for all kinds of services exist already. KDE Telepathy sounds pretty close to what you're describing (native (Linux) controls, multi window, no touch screen design, plenty of different protocols).
With the KDE project slowly seeming to move towards Matrix rather than XMPP I wonder how long Telepathy will stick around. It can still be a pretty good start for your own chat application, though, as large portions of the work have already been done for you.
An alternative approach I've seen people take is what I'm doing myself: Matrix/XMPP combined with various bridges. That way the chat client only needs to speak one specific protocol. It has its downsides but it does save you from having to develop abstractions over abstractions. You also get multi device support for free without having to scan tons of QR codes if you need to reinstall your client for whatever reason.
I looked at the screenshots of KDE Telepathy and I'm not convinced. This kind of multi-protocol IM client exists for every major desktop OS — this and Pidgin for Linux, Adium for macOS, Miranda for Windows, etc. The problem with all these apps is that they're not modern. They do great for text messages, but that's it. Anything beyond text is an afterthought if implemented at all. What I mean by "modern" is first-class support for all the IM features people now take for granted: media attachments, server-side history with search, replies, mentions, reactions, forwarding, bot features, channels, etc. None of these existing apps even try to do any of this. This is what I want to fix with my future project.
That's not really true. These clients often reversed engineered other chat protocols and thus supported services that didn't support Jabber / XMPP. This was before e2e encryption was the norm so it was easier to do.
These were all multi-protocol clients supporting more than XMPP because MSN, Yahoo Messenger, and AIM all had their own thing. I believe Facebook was always its own thing but they exposed an XMPP proxy. Only Google Talk really relied on XMPP from the start but it was pretty much a token player in the market until two things happened: 1. They integrated with Gmail making Google Talk readily available to Google’s entire Gmail user base without installing a separate Windows-only client (or finding a compatible messenger, iChat ended up natively supporting XMPP within a couple of years) and 2. Instant Messaging went into rapid decline as users switched to mobile-first messengers (IMing was always a desktop-centric experience and the various pre-existing protocols were not battery efficient and you typically had to have the client open and active to be signed in).
My fave was Miranda-IM. Windows-only but did a wonderful job of sticking to native windows API and so was very lightweight and native-feeling in an era when that really mattered for performance.
For a brief period Facebook was the biggest XMPP server, it was fun using OTR[1] on Facebook messenger. I think Whatsapp is still using XMPP under the hood but the server is closed.
You can do that today with Matrix and whatever client you want (albeit with much more friction than what was previously possible).
There a bunch of bridges[0] available for pretty much any communication network you can think of and some people even go so far as to use their Matrix client for email too.
Libpurple powered the messaging on Nokia N900. It was really a great experience, seamlessly using the same app for SMS, FBM, Skype, Google Chat and few others.
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[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 318 ms ] threadCrappy as they are, they are still life savers.
[1] - https://uxdesign.cc/how-apple-makes-you-think-green-bubbles-...
Now it's just everywhere, helpdesks, schools, classes, parents, sportsclubs. All WA groups sadly. We even have this: [0], like it's some government sanctioned platform. Disgusting.
I am getting more and more people into Signal though. Some geeks on Element.io.
[0]: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=attentie+buurtpreventie+wha...
If I said “Neighborhood watch at /r/MyNeighborNameWatchDiscussion on reddit”, is that concerning too?
[0] https://blog.iusmentis.com/2021/05/10/mag-een-gemeente-whats...
Android users will still be second class citizens so the transition off Whatsapp or Signal will not happen.
If iMessage was as good on Android as it is on iOS, why would Android users switch? Or why would people buy iPhones in the first place?
Internal documents from Apple prove that they had builds of iMessage ready for Android but never released them because Apple knew iMessage was one moat that kept the userbase loyal and annoyed Android users enough through the bubble color discrimination to make them switch to iphone. Like parents heading down cheaper iPhones to kids instead of buying them android phones so they can all use iMessage.
FaceTime is currently available for Android users as well but the experience is shit to prove Android is poor and that iOS is the only way to go for the full experience.
I'm not making all this UB but tech YouTubers extensively covered Apple's iMessage moat with proof and arguments and how this works in their favor so I won't go into all the details.
It's a messaging app, you can either pretend people will give 2 flocks about not being able to message you "in the right color", or you know, install Whatsapp or any other competing messenger
Then you have a super blue bubble effect if everyone uses WhatsApp then you don’t communicate with people who aren’t on WhatsApp.
My understanding of the blue bubble isn’t that the color matters it’s that iMessage functions only work with other iMessage users (eg, delivery is slightly different, sync with other devices, special emojis, reactions, etc). So if there’s one “green bubble” (ie, non-iMessage user) then the entire group text is downgraded to not do iMessage stuff.
Could you please stop making my life harder? No, not "literally everyone" has Whatsapp: I don't. Agreeing to T&C of some foreign corporation should not be a precondition to participating in the society, don't you think?
The green bubble effect is because some people do not want or cannot afford an Apple phone. There's a huge difference.
If Whatsapp came with a €400 base price and roughly 50% of people using something else, I'd understand.
Well, as a parent it really is difficult, you constantly have to explain yourself and arrange alternatives. Some context: Texting (SMSing we call it) is f-ing expensive here, ridiculous (25 ct/message? Unless you buy a plan, but why should you? There is Whatsapp... Nobody is going to use SMS with you, any parent will probably think: "Are you making me send an SMS [to come pick up your kid], really?").
WhatsApp can be installed on any device. iMessage requires specific hardware, i.e. an Apple iPhone.
It is always possible not to use either and just communicate by SMS (which I prefer myself, but as I understand it WhatsApp came to be used here in Belgium because phone plans are expensive and SMS are still limited/paid on most plans) but that's a different matter.
The matter here is that the commenter I was responding to says I don't exist. My experience is that folks with that attitude also treat me as if I don't exist. I object to both of these things.
Selling your first-born rights for a lentil soup, or agreeing to adversarial T&C of a foreign corporation should not be a precondition for participating in a society.
But its a steep upward slope to climb. Lots of data-siphoning apps are painted on buses or splash on city ad "walls" but whatsapp is actually a permanent fixture of the urban landscape in so-called "neighbourhood watch signs". A creepy dystopic image if there was one.
It's hard to understand it if you don't live in NL just how extremely omnipresent WhatsApp is. People use it for everything, from casual family chatter to highly serious conversations to quite literally business-related conversations. Not having WA will absolutely result in things like missing crucial information because "we send it in the WhatsApp group" and that of course in turn will be used as a mark against you when you're say, seeking a job.
This occurred before Facebook bought it and their recent T&S change that allows them to use WA usage to improve their algorithms basically was a case of "enjoy being forced to share your data with no recourse". There was tons of social pushback about it but nobody could do anything about it because the app is so entrenched.
I am thoroughly looking forward to the DMA and its impact on WhatsApp.
At the same time, the OP is not in a "bubble". You can't call something a bubble if almost everybody is inside it.
Now you have.
I uninstalled WhatsApp when they updated their policy.
I considered it, it’s too inconvenient. I did get my family and my in laws on Signal. Some friends as well. So I’m for more than 50% off of WA, fwiw.
Given how much Europeans bitch about America and American corporations, I continue to be dumbfounded by the tremendous love for Whatsapp. It's made by Facebook FFS. I am pretty amazed at the number of people who are happier with Facebook managing their private communications than they are Apple.
Or, it's just network effect and a lot of rationalization. That's the simpler answer.
As it is the difference between sending photos via iMessage vs sending photos via WhatsApp is like night and day. I don't know how Apple managed to f. that up but if I have to send more than 2-3 photos the app asks me to do horizontal scrolling, which is not optimal, to say the least.
Plus the very process of sending and receiving the photos themselves seems very clunky in comparison.
You can build basic app functionality into iMessage, something you can't do with WhatsApp.
The desktop app for iMessage is simple, but efficient and gets the job done. The WhatsApp desktop app is slow by comparison.
WhatsApp has the user numbers, but it has never been the best when it comes to functionality.
Also, I just think native apps still perform better than web apps.
And I can install it on my work computer
If you would say desktop app can do voice/video calls which you actually use (I don't, not gonna open laptop with closed lid and external display for that) I can understand using the desktop app, but for someone who doesn't need voice/video calls on computer and is fine with better camera in phone there is no benefit in installing additional dedicated app.
There isn’t even iMessage functionality in iCloud.com despite the breadth of other Apple products and services being there. Kinda odd how they left that one out, no?
Maybe when they run out of things to fine firms for that don't benefit their citizens ... they'll just stop fining them ...
Also, EU has just decided that this half billion of consumers will be downgraded to the third world standard of living (google "Fit for 55"), so they won't really have much money to spend on tech toys anyway...
"Fit for 55 is a package by the European Union designed to reduce the European Union's greenhouse gas emissions by 55% by 2030."
I call bullshit on your statement.
Thorium reactors don't use either and a fusion reactor wouldn't involve any isotope of uranium. Others may disagree, but I don't think it's a forgone conclusion that all R&D in nuclear energy grinds to a halt.
I disagree with the GP's claim that poverty is "the only way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 55%."
OP's claim is garbage (insulation, ending car dependency, and legislating products that aren't landfill help the poor rather than hindering them), but the constant nuclear shilling and shilling for growth is much worse.
That's not at all what "Fit for 55" program is about. I agree, those things, over long enough timespan (say, 20 years) could be net positive. Instead, "Fit for 55" means imposing additional "carbon tax" on many industries, and on goods imported from China, based on how much carbon was emitted when producing them. And given the short, 7 years time frame the net result of those policies will be what I originally claimed: pushing everyone to poverty.
EU politicians say it quite openly really, that in order to "save us from the climate catastrophe" we need to sacrifice the standard of living.
Problem solved. It won't hurt anyone but anybodybwho is already doing the right thing will be far better off.
If people who choose to drive (and it will be a choice because non-car infrastructure is part of the plan) pay more, then nothing of value has been lost.
https://gs.statcounter.com/press/google-gained-market-share-...
According Wikipedia and at least 2 different sources they quote, Google peaked in China at 29-35% and even that seems way too optimistic, if you ask anyone who used search in China back then or have been there. By my experience from years ago was Google search in Chinese language useless.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_China
And in every case where they don't legislate it, companies don't give a crap.
Silly example. I went to buy a broom/mop stick to use with broom/mop heads I had at home.
Guess what, they stopped making the original, and 3 different supermarkets had slightly different stick diameters, so they weren't compatible with the other brands.
I really need that level of innovation in my life...
Some technical workshops [1] are being organized with interested stakeholders to receive their views on specific issues and questions that may arise in relation to the specific implementing measures by gatekeepers that are to ensure effective compliance with that legislation.
[0]: https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-...
[1]: https://competition-policy.ec.europa.eu/dma/dma-workshops_en
I suspect that, a bit like email addresses, being very selective about who you give your "address" to is the most important bit.
Sadly, phone numbers, unlike email addresses, are such a small address space that it's possible to just message all of them.
The only other service/medium where I get comparable (really any) spam is SMS/email.
I've never, and I mean never, have received a spam message over iMessage.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...
My anecdote is that iMessage is only place where I get spam almost daily. All other messengers - once per month, at most.
I remember that it made sense and seemed plausible to me at the time because I've also actually never received a spam iMessage in my whole life. It never even occurred to me in that moment this was the case until I read that comment and was like, "O yeah, right, I've actually never gotten spam on iMessage come to think of it." I just assumed that to spend spam via iMessage required apple hardware or that for one reason or another it just wasn't very viable.
On the other hand, I have gotten a lot of sms spam in the past, and I continue to get spam on WhatsApp.
As a side note, my sms spam has decreased dramatically after I ported my mobile number to google voice vs. when my carrier was T-Mobile. It's anecdotal but still telling.
I hope you're reporting the spam you get to Apple, because the fastest way to stop it is to have the offending account terminated.
I am very intrigued to see how the various platforms will enable such features in software terms - WhatsApp recently allowed the usage of proxies via their platform, and there is talk of Apple maintaining the Made for iPhone program when they roll over to USB-C which is allowed under the "USB-C for phones" law they passed recently. So expect some creative applications/interpretations of the DMA.
I think it'll work similar to telegram, they'll "open up" without the E2EE aspect and basically enable a "compatibility" mode. Otherwise, and being more cynical, this does feel like a 'ploy' to get around E2EE by making large, privacy-focused platforms such as Signal 'open up' (I do wonder if Signal would be classified under the rules for turnover etc). Suppose it depends on the final text of the law and how lawyers interpret what "opening up" means. Haven't really seen much about what the EU is going to expect there.
But if we are cynical, expect the end of E2EE messaging apps entirely.
[1]https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/fr/press-room/20220315IP...
>The level of security, including the end-to-end encryption, where applicable, that the gatekeeper provides to its own end users shall be preserved across the interoperable services. [0]
As for forcing them to open up, I think Matrix has a good response to it [1]. As well as their follow-up technical implementation article [2].
[0] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...
[1] https://matrix.org/blog/2022/03/25/interoperability-without-...
[2] https://matrix.org/blog/2022/03/29/how-do-you-implement-inte...
Isn't that exactly what the Messages app does now? SMS is that compatibility mode.
- Interopability between walled gardens like messenger apps
- Side-loading software on your devices
I'm also hoping that we see this specifically lead to the following:
- Installing your own operating system on any electronic device
- Third-party video games running on proprietary consoles without the vendor's approval
- Less tech-savvy folks side loading viruses
Can’t wait for all the calls for help from my parents and friends. It’ll be just like the good old days.
/s
It has a very negative connotation, like you are doing something odd, out of the ordinary, unorthodox, even semi-forbidden.
In reality it's just: installing and running the software of your choice on a device you own.
In fact, this line from the article is far more serious: “Apple, for instance, will also need to contend with a reported requirement to allow side-loading of apps outside of its App Store, something it's spent years fighting internationally”.
Previous app submissions were rejected on the basis of being "too close to existing functionality". Maybe they meant dysfunctionality? If the EU needs witnesses of anti-competitive behavior I volunteer.
I rented a car with Android Auto, went inside my podcast app, and couldn't go back to Google maps, and of course Android Auto makes google maps stop working on my mobile phone when android auto is on.
So i was trying things like ,,go to maps'', ,,go to navigation'', ,,maps'', but none of them worked.
Disconnecting and reconnecting andorid auto worked mostly (but not always)
oooh that would be awesome. I'm at a point where I only use it for timers and it even gets that wrong sometimes "I created an alarm named Timer for 01:30am".. oh yeah I can't just say "timer one hour thirty" because Siri hates British people and parses the numbers wrong lmao.
Also can we get multiple timers yet? Why is a device more powerful than the computer we used to send people to the moon limited to one timer?
Can't wait!
Try: "Hey Siri give me a 90 minute beef timer", "Hey siri give me a 25 minute chips timer"
Are we both talking about iPhone Siri?
Is this what you're wanting from an OpenAI integration?
[1] https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/hackers-use-f...
It'll also lead to fragmentation and you'll have to manage 5-10 different "app stores" in order to use apps that you use day-to-day right now.
Overall it's just going to be a mess and really suck. Fortunately I don't use many apps so I don't see this affecting me personally other than occasional annoyance when I can't find something I may need in the future or having to help family members fix their phones now. For many though their experience using the iPhone will be degraded, particularly when it comes to software.
I'm sure the execs sell a yacht to pay their Apple taxes target than pass on costs as they do for everything else. /s
There's a price that the market (consumers) will bear to pay for a service. Let's call it MyBigBrand and you charge $5/month or idk, $10 for a one-time purchase.
Apple charges whatever their fee is, let's call it 30%, and they keep this fee and do lots of things with it including buy back stock and reinvest in improving their services.
MyBigBrand comes along and says hey that's not fair! They launch a marketing campaign "The Apple Tax" and file lawsuits. Courts decide Apple should allow 3rd-party app stores or that they can't charge the fee or have to reduce it.
In each of those scenarios, MyBigBrand continues to charge customers $5/month for their product. All that's occuring here is whether or not MyBigBrand gets to pay less to Apple or whether Apple gets to continue to charge MyBigBrand and eat into their margins.
For a consumer you still pay the same fee for the product, or potentially you have to download some other app store that MyBigBrand owns or collaborates with MyOtherBigBrand on and then they split the costs and keep more of the margin.
At the end of the day people are being duped into really caring about who gets to keep more of their money and it just doesn't matter, except that it appears Apple does something beneficial with the money they keep and having multiple app stores with exclusive apps will suck and be annoying.
Considering the number of people who celebrated in response to your comment, I think I get it now why people support side-loading---they don't actually understand it and are merely projecting their own interpretations.
Tomorrow I can guarantee they will immediately cut costs and ship out piles of sideloaded garbage
Sure, it’s up to the consumer to choose, but they’re not going to write that on the package
Yeah except that's absolute nonsense because you could already do that on Android and yet I recall only one instance where a developer explicitly asked me to sideload an app(for Fortnite, no less). It's going to remain an incredible niche that will affect 0.00001% users at most.
Clearly they believe that number is much higher.
(in hindsight I shouldn't have said it will affect 0.0001% users - maybe I should have said that I guess only that many users will choose to sideload software instead)
iOS’ advantage is it’s walled garden. It’s a place where a lot of trust is curated for the nontechnical. This evaporates that.
What appears good for the highly technical is not always good for the user.
We can’t be expecting grandmothers to check signatures, ensure an app has certificates pinned, trust that a company won’t let its update domains lapse, and understand public key crypto to set up their GPG keys for a messaging alternative much less handle them properly. Hell I’ve had senior engineers send me their private GPG key when requesting their public key.
Your argument was that the moment there is no longer a need to be constrained by Apple's App Store rules, your Samsung dishwasher will make you install its app through Shady Store Incorporated, because it's easier, and it'll make your grandma install it.
Except that doesn't happen. Noone has done that. The highest profile case is Fortnite, and it makes you install it either through Epic Games, or the Samsung Galaxy Store, and the only reason for that is that Google feels entitled to taking 30% of transactions too.
As a technical user, it doesn't bother me. When I consider many of my friends, it does bother me—most of them I know with non-iOS devices have complained about their devices moving slowly due to the junkware and the third-party app stores they've acquired (never F-Droid, always something sketchy). When I think about family members, I think about how web push notifications have rendered two of their phones borderline unusable.
Most "consumer-friendly" choices the EU makes are actually about developer & manufacturer profit. This isn't consumer-aligned. It eliminates the profit motive that's left iOS devices as more or less the only LTS phones on the market.
I don't like Apple products that much—I use Linux on my cell phone, but at the same time I refuse to adopt cheap rhetorical tactics to make app developers wealthier.
If they really wanted things to be consumer-friendly, they'd ban proprietary software. Instead, they make it easier for proprietary software developers to make profit off of users.
You created an advanced easy to use connector for your line of phones? Fuck you, you have to change it to a plug that came later and has a different set of trade offs that may not align with your product.
You created a messaging service that was way ahead of its time, and it basically took a decade for others to catch up? Fuck you, provide the fruits of your innovation to everyone for free, erasing your competitive advantage.
I also can't help shaking the feeling that the EU is so happy regulating cell phones and internet services because they have no major players in that field left anymore. Conversely, they seem to be incapable of mandating a unified standard for grounded AC power outlets, although that would surely be equally beneficial.
This is the law passed:
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TA-9-2022-0338...
->
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TC1-COD-2021-0...
Guess what, on page 10 the text says:
> With respect to charging by means other than wired charging, divergent solutions could be developed in the future, which could have negative impacts on interoperability, on consumer convenience and on the environment. <<Whilst it is premature to impose specific requirements on such solutions at this stage, the Commission should take action towards promoting and harmonising such solutions to avoid future fragmentation of the internal market.>>
Unlike the US Constitution, EU laws are not set in stone and they <<are>> updated.
> I also can't help shaking the feeling that the EU is so happy regulating cell phones and internet services because they have no major players in that field left anymore. Conversely, they seem to be incapable of mandating a unified standard for grounded AC power outlets, although that would surely be equally beneficial.
Hotels and many other places have started offering USB A and USB C ports. I think we're close to the point (5-10 years away?) where you could go to the US from Europe with just a laptop, for 2 weeks, and you'd be able to charge it just by using USB C ports available in restaurants, hotels, bars, offices, etc.
On top of that, for wall outlets the EU is mostly standardized except for Denmark, I think.
I know EU is very nonchalant about sex, but sticking oneself into random USB ports is a bridge too far.
Your only concern would be someone trying to fry your computer, but electrical outlets are the same.
Yeah, but I don't think there are USB C razors yet.
> On top of that, for wall outlets the EU is mostly standardized except for Denmark, I think.
France and Germany have different outlets (although there are plugs that work in both), and as far as I can tell, Italy has a completely different outlet from either of them.
And the UK never stopped using their own system.
Give it a few years :-) I have a hair clipper that uses micro-USB.
> France and Germany have different outlets (although there are plugs that work in both), and as far as I can tell, Italy has a completely different outlet from either of them.
See this:
https://www.plugsocketmuseum.nl/EuropePlugsSockets.html
In continental Europe in practice you only care about 2 standards: the German one and the French one. Those cover something like 45 out of 47 countries in Europe.
On top of that, the narrow connector actually works in all of continental Europe and for the big one, almost everything sold since at least 1 decade works with both the German and French standards.
Sucks to be Italy or Switzerland, I guess :-)
> And the UK never stopped using their own system.
The UK is still doing its own thing with many things, we don't talk about them anymore...
Or Denmark. That still makes 3 incompatible standards in the EU, and 5 incompatible standards in Europe overall.
Leveraging bundling to avoid having software compete on their individual merits 1:1 with competitors is not good for innovation
There have been no laws towards fostering competition within walled gardens in either the US or EU until now.
Apple had no app store competition until now. Do you contend the app store will not see material improvements in the future now that it finally has within bundle competition?
Why has Apple suddenly started investing so heavily in Safari over the past year, now that they will soon be forced to allow competing browsers?
If products have to compete on their own merits, rather than leaning on other aspects of a larger bundle, then software and products get better for all of society.
For example, if you were allowed to install any car OS you wanted, rather than forced to use the manufacturers, car OSes would improve significantly. Some people will buy a car for the hardware, despite terrible software. This is bad for the evolution of car software. If a manufacturer was forced to compete, they would have to invest more heavily in improving their software... or simply cede control of the OS to a better implemented third party one, and focus on the hardware. Both outcomes are better for consumers than allowing anti-competitiveness via bundling
A “product” is a combination of software and hardware.
My opinion is that both Windows is worse than Macs and Android is worse than iPhones because they aren’t an integrated product.
It’s the same with game consoles.
Oh and BTW there are only two countries in the world, one of them is entirely comprised of GlobalSuperMegaCorp's monolith city-state company town, and the other is entirely comprised of company towns run by franchisees of OtherMassiveGlobalCorp.
85% of the worlds population uses an Android. They made a different choice, why can’t you?
There are over a billion people in China that don’t use Google’s Android. And there are phones for geeks that don’t use Google’s Android.
The other 85% are using phones that allow them to escape the “wall garden”.
It’s like complaining that you locked yourself in a room and threw away the key.
Quick reminder that Apple was literally one of the companies that invented USB-C and already uses USB-C across many lines of their products. You're making it sound like EU is making them use HDMI for charging or something.
I'm sure other people in a similar position will also know what I'm talking about.
It was super lightweight, cheap, multiplatform - when I was interning in Singapore in 2012, I was able to stretch a 2MB pay as you go SIM plan over 2 months using WhatsApp over WAP on a Symbian iPhone.
There are few things I will be more loyal to.
Now, with my biases declared, I am genuinely open to understanding why SMTP/IMAP based chat didn't take off. I don't know much about the protocols but as you say, email should have solved this problem. But somehow it lacked that immediacy of instant messaging that made me feel that much more connected to my family halfway across the planet.
Maybe that's what it was - email delivered in 1-5 seconds is completely fine, but instant messaging needs to be delivered in under 500ms ideally.
Is there something about the email protocol that makes it slower due to some tradeoffs?
The email client was much clunkier, presumably because it had to support all the other usage patterns of email.
Worth noting this was a phone that didn't have a touch screen and I was inputting via the numpad
Downvoted because this is the comment equivalent of the manager walking into a technical discussion of how something should work and demanding "just make it work" and leaving. Or commenting on a war topic "I just want peace I don't care how it happens".
Like, you and everyone? But that doesn't make concerns like "people who don't use Facebook don't want their photos routed through Facebook servers without their knowledge or consent" magically vanish. There's a reason federated open protocol multi-service clients never became dominant and it's not because the problem space is trivial. "Just make it work" gets you iMessage, and that slurped your SMSs through Apple servers without telling you, which is still one of the cheekiest most unbelievable things I'd heard of at the time, despite that being tame by big tech company standards today.
Companies want to get users into a walled-garden where they can target them for financial and political gains.
Democracy trying to push things away from the latter seems good. Do you agree?
Anyway, maybe I wasn't being precise enough, more precisely I meant Unicode, anything that can send Unicode with file attachments works for me which is every message service already. All the other extra stuff apple and google do with custom emoji and other things like that is irrelevant to me and I would happily give it up to have all written communication in one client with one red dot showing unread messages and one list of contacts.
WRT to privacy concerns, maybe my dream client lets me prioritise which services I prefer and it drops down to the lowest common denominator. So I could prefer Matrix > Signal > Telegram > iMessage > WhatsApp > Email > (the google one?) > Facebook Messenger for starting new chats or groups. I don't see what else you can do as some people can only be contacted on Facebook messenger; either you stick to your principals and your kids don't go to football club or you suck it up and use Facebook for that chat?
If E2E were not available for any reason whatsover, we could go back to that as necessary, though might lose some extra benefits of integrated E2E platforms like perfect forward secrecy (or maybe not; I'm not really up to date on my crypto).
With a standard and open protocol enforced, we could create a FOSS client that automatically pre-shares a public key and de/encrypts messages before sending them, so the UX would be much better than the awkwardness of early PGP.
I signed up the moment it came out and they had some teething reliability problems for a while, but it's been great for months now. Element is a much better web client than any of the others and it's nice to not have to worry about which computer or platform I'm on when I want to write a message.
An alternative is to self host the same set of services.
But if you wanted to, you could. It's about control.
Despite not using proper Matrix it still is enormously useful to me just by being a good client with good bridges.
For actual Matrix-Matrix comms I think Slack/Teams is probably a more realistic use-case to replace.
Actually, you have the *choice* to run a server or not. (Conceptually similar to old school email, you can live on your own server, or live on someone else's servers.) For matrix (or heck even for email) if you do not wish to manage your own server, there are free and paid services that you can leverage.
> ...instead of them opening the built in app and just having at...
This is not clear to me if you were referring to Apple to open up their app or if you meant matrix. Because i agree that Apple should open up their app....Even though i am a matrix fan. More open apps helps everyone involved to communications plaforms (including and especially users). But, if you meant for matrix to have their app open...well, matrix is the open protocol, and there are already many opened apps, such as Element, Cinny, Fluffychat, Schilid, etc.
> ...and get my friends and family to join to chat...
Yeah, no matter if Apple opens up or not, the network effect of asking/hoping friends/family join something else is real and non-trivial. Matrix won't solve that alone, because its not necessarily a tech-only problem. My personal hope is that - whether it is matrix protocol and associated clients, servers or something else entirely - i do wish we had some universal, open protocol that allowed for everyone, everywhere to chat...and which was not controlled by a few, powerful entities.
That's a pretty uncharitable way to interpret the statement, when the three features OP mentioned are a part of literally every modern messaging platform that people use. Not just iMessage and RCS (the open protocol which is the best analog to iMessage), but WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, Discord, Messenger, Instagram, Slack... It's actually hard to think of one that doesn't. I guess IRC, if you consider that in any way comparable to the others, but it really isn't at this point, being a now fairly obscure protocol reserved mostly for tech-savvy people and niche cases.
It's so "open" and so "best" that Android doesn't even provide a public API for third party clients to use it. It's just yet another pseudo-open thingy that in practice is only open to a handful of mobile oligopolies, and all other developers are locked out of it just like they're locked out of iMessage. Google replacing the actually-open SMS with vendor-locked RCS is a major reason why Signal is dropping support for SMS. Much good that fake openness is doing, smh.
Many of my friends have made the choice to get an iPhone so that they can use iMessage (and FaceTime)
It will be impossible to build an app that supports everything. And with 10%-20% global turnover as a fine, the EU is turning into a dictator.
[ ] - Can send and receive basic text messages [ ] - Can send and receive rich text messages (bold, italics, underline, headings, etc.) [ ] - Ability to send and display file formats (debatable which ones - maybe force custom animated emojis to be transmitted, cached for later use as compatible file formats (webm, gif, etc.)
Just as an example.
The EU is going to mess it up, as they likely will by forcing all companies to "fall in line" with standards that will likely not be updated frequently, instead of allowing smaller companies to innovate first, then enforcing current policies if there's too much BS behaviour in the industry.
See - current rumors of Apple creating "special" Apple USB-C cables that will be the only ones to allow faster charging and data transfers, compared to other high-quality USB-C cables that an iPhone won't permit to have high data transfer rates and will charge devices slowly. You can set the standard, but companies with enough money and legal know-how can still bypass the intent of the law! Smaller companies can't compete on the accessories market.
Unless other government are serious about this (the EU is a fairly small market segment compared to the rest of the world), we're going to see more of this regulation dodging and chicanery from massive companies while smaller ones suffer or struggle to succeed in a marketplace dominated by capital interests.
You can use the web version, but it sucks on a tablet.
You can link a device (but I haven't checked it)
https://faq.whatsapp.com/1317564962315842/
https://faq.whatsapp.com/378279804439436
WhatsApp companion mode lets you use the same account on multiple phones https://mashable.com/article/whatsapp-companion-mode-multipl...
Android tablet, that is. If it's an iPad, you're SOL completely.
Even funnier is that the new native app for macOS [0] (i.e. not using Electron) is made with Catalyst… a tool made for porting iPad apps to macOS.
Somewhere, someone at WhatsApp works on a version of the app for the SOLE PURPOSE of porting it to another platform, while NOT releasing the original. It's completely baffling.
0 – https://wabetainfo.com/whatsapp-native-beta-for-macos-is-now...
As someone who benefitted greatly from the era when thirdparty MSNP clients were extremely common, I think they need to do the same with Microsoft Teams.
https://pidgin.im/
[1] - https://github.com/mmb/weechat-otr
There are individual bridges out there that can fix that, though.
https://www.beeper.com
Because of it libraries for all kinds of services exist already. KDE Telepathy sounds pretty close to what you're describing (native (Linux) controls, multi window, no touch screen design, plenty of different protocols).
With the KDE project slowly seeming to move towards Matrix rather than XMPP I wonder how long Telepathy will stick around. It can still be a pretty good start for your own chat application, though, as large portions of the work have already been done for you.
An alternative approach I've seen people take is what I'm doing myself: Matrix/XMPP combined with various bridges. That way the chat client only needs to speak one specific protocol. It has its downsides but it does save you from having to develop abstractions over abstractions. You also get multi device support for free without having to scan tons of QR codes if you need to reinstall your client for whatever reason.
It is great having a unified tool with minimal resource usage that is fully integrated into your platform.
Many clients including Empathy and Kopete allowed this at the time.
[1] https://wiki.xmpp.org/web/OTR
When I saw that I figured they were aware and would soon start blocking it.
https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0384.html
The bigger they get, the less they want to interoperate.
There a bunch of bridges[0] available for pretty much any communication network you can think of and some people even go so far as to use their Matrix client for email too.
[0] https://matrix.org/bridges/