“App Store Monopoly” Discussion

Some very short-sighted views, imo, in there from Apple execs.

If they truly care about privacy, rather than must maximising hardware sales by jumping on the privacy bandwagon, the single most significant thing they could do is to port iMessage and make it an industry standard.

Edit: I’d have much preferred WhatsApp to go to Google over Facebook though. Missed opportunity.

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I don’t think they did as much back then - they obviously did, because it was mostly baked into the platform from early days. However, it’s definitely the thing that Apple have taken a much stronger stance on to help separate it from the likes of Google/Android etc.

Personally, I can understand why they wouldn’t bring iMessage to Android back then, but now, pretty much everyone has a phone, and iMessage has evolved so much that I think the value of it on an Android would be huge from a Privacy perspective now.

The problem is, Apple don’t want to even run the risk of people being like “oh an Android phone supports all these things, I’ll just get an Android”, when there could be a small chance of an iPhone purchase.

As an avid Apple User, I’d love nothing more than iMessage on Android, so I can ditch WhatsApp.

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I’ve always wanted, and still do, want iMessage to come to Android. I think it would a good thing for Android and iOS users alike.

It’s really insightful to read how they approach those things internally though. The others didn’t simply cull the idea, the probed and explored how, if they were to do it, they could make a success of it. Craig was spot on at the time too, I think, because back in 2013, iMessage was no real competition to WhatsApp. It lacked in features quite significantly.

I think concern over the impact to iPhone was a very valid one. Every iPhone owner spoke to alluded to iMessage being the only reason they went for one over Android. If iMessage came to android, quite a lot said they’d just buy android again.

Now in 2021, it’s a completely different landscape. iMessage has caught up in many ways to WhatsApp, and on track to go further in iOS 15, so it can better compete and entice folk now, especially now many WhatsApp users are disgruntled with the things Facebook keep trying. I think they want somewhere to go, and iMessage would be a very compelling place, especially when you factor in that one of its most important features is that it’s baked into Apple platforms by default so people won’t need to have two apps anymore. It’s also no longer the sole pivotal reason it once was for choosing iPhone. So I think a better argument could be made for it now.

This.

Let’s hope re the go further.

Right now I think it’s the worst messaging app by far.

It’s so slow and clunky. The ‘threading/specific message replying’ they’ve implemented is just weird compared to the very clear and normal way it’s done in every other app. You can’t even archive or mark a group/contact as unread.

Also really wanna emphasise the slow and clunky. Every interaction just takes far longer than it should and seems so dated compared to e.g. WhatsApp.

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I’m still not convinced that most people care much about iMessage outside of the US. I don’t think it would have made much difference in 2013, and I still don’t think it would make much difference now.

I keep dismissing the WhatsApp terms of service every few days, I think Telegram is a far better messaging app and yet I’m chained to WhatsApp because ultimately ‘everyone’ is on it and it doesn’t feel like that’s changing any time soon.

From the amount of times I’ve heard people say they’d switch if it wasn’t for iMessage it feels like Apple made the right decision strategically.

Couldn’t agree more. I just don’t get what the fuss is about.

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I know this isn’t the core topic of the discussion, but could I probe you on this for a little more detail and what improvements you’d like to see in this regard?

I have a very close friend on the iMessage team so I can pass your feedback on to them, and they can explore it with colleagues, they really appreciate that. There’s also a feedback portal, you can use too, and they do read all of it:

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Haha yeah sure.

My overall point is def very qualitative…but it does just feel slow. Like WhatsApp going in and out of chats feels very speedy, I can message one person, jump out, straight back into another group. But on iMessage, it feels maybe twice as slow to open up a chat? Certainly doing things like bringing up the info screen, I dread, because it’ll take about 10 years.

Having to click the name/icon to show the call buttons, weird and unhelpful move. WhatsApp isn’t ‘unclean’ at the top, but I can easily move from messaging a call in one tap.

I generally find the totally plain design quite jarring these days as well. It’s like the stock mail app which I despise. So much blank space.

In the actual chats… like I said, the reply threading is just so odd. WhatsApp’s (and everyone else’s I know of) implementation is perfect. You want to reply to a specific message, you drag/swipe and do so, and it’s clear what you’re replying to. The iMessage option of opening up this totally new screen so I then can’t see the rest of the chat while replying (also making me get there by going through a whole action menu) is just a mess. The way it’s then shown in chat with the lines between the messages, again, mess.

I think there’s a lot to fix tbh.

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Can I just add, chats not keeping your position. This feels like the single most important thing.

It makes Group Chats impossible because whenver you go into a chat you’re right at the bottom and then have to scroll back up and figure out where you were. It just stops me from having group chats in iMessage.

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I agree with much of what you say, but to pull out two things:

Part of visionary leadership is to see where things are going, not where they are. My criticism of the correspondence we see in that article is mostly that there’s no foresight - it felt like some of the execs were struggling to look beyond Apple hardware and think about broader ecosystem and strategic advantage. So I don’t think it’s unfair to expect a visionary company to think ahead a few years. Cue obviously got it, but the others less so.

Anecdotally, I had exactly the opposite experience. iPhone users I knew at the time were evangelical about the phone, but hardly ever over iMessage. No one ever said get an iPhone and we can iMessage, for example. And everyone (in the UK) had WhatsApp anyway, so there was always another (more widely used) option for messaging. The only time I really ran into problems was with my US friends, who couldn’t quite understand why I wanted to use WhatsApp (because iMessage fell back to SMS and I was getting international text charges).

So I just don’t buy that it would have had a significant negative effect. Indeed, I think it could have the opposite outcome: being a gateway into Apple products.

I suppose we’ll never know. But I still think that it was short sighted. They could have made the weather - instead they opened an umbrella.

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I feel like C Fed was spot on.

Do you have any thoughts on how we would make switching to iMessage (from WhatsApp) compelling to masses of Android users who don’t have a bunch of iOS friends? iMessage is a nice app/service, but to get users to switch social networks we’d need more than a marginally better app. (This is why Google is willing to pay $1 billion—for the network, not for the app.)... In the absence of a strategy to become the primary messaging service for [the] bulk of cell phone users, I am concerned iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove an obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones.

Strong chance of iMessage not succeeding on Android and a clear obstacle to switching removed for iPhone users. May have worked out differently but even if they did succeed what is the benefit to Apple or owning the dominant messaging platform assuming that it’s free and doesn’t monetise through data?

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While I agree, I think the circumstances have to be just right. Timing is more often not the most crucial factor in success. WhatsApp also had inertia on their side, and I don’t think anyone back then could have foreseen the Facebook purchase and where they drove WhatsApp too from a privacy standpoint. Factor in the fact that no one had a compelling reason to leave WhatsApp, Apple will have needed a damn good compelling service to even convince people to think about switching, especially outside of the US. As much as I’ve always loved iMessage and preferred its simplicity, it was not the product to do that in 2013.

As Ravi say’s, as much as I champion Cue for pushing this, I think Craig was absolutely spot on too.

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Not really a surprise, but it’ll be interesting to see what the proposed remedies are.

This has a long way to go still.

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Sounds very familiar…

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Would be interesting to hear @l33t take on this.

Personally I can’t see the big deal. It’s easy to focus on Apples 30% tax, but the real problem on iOS is that there’s just no alternative route to market.

Sure PC alternatives may be crappy, but there’s nothing stopping you getting your game out on PC through various other means.

If Steam guarantees success then pay the damn fee and suck it up.

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I think it will take years before Apple is forced to change anything on it’s App Store. It will take a long time for all the litigation to be resolved.

Re WhatsApp, my biggest issue is the Facebook ownership. I have to have it as like so many others, but I detest Facebook and it’s modus operandi .

I can see why Apple never ported iMessage but I think it’s a mistake

@ravipatel I have been pretty crazy busy at work this week so still catching up.

I still dont think 3rd party stores/sideloading are a good solution for iOS. Given it doesnt seem to help much on android and introduces lots of risks for users when they allow sideloading I really dont see a big gain but huge risks. I dont want to play the whole “piracy” card for games as a pirated copy != a lost sale but one of the reasons people on android end up getting their phones loaded with crap is the idea that they can get X game from Y site for free by enabling sideloading and a whole lot of bad crap happens because of that, the same will happen on iOS with sideloading etc and remember android has been trying to harden the OS against these types of things for a while now and it still keeps happening.

I think 3rd party payment processors too are potentially problematic, if apple had been proactive and had done deals with say stripe to allow it to be integrated into the SDK in a managed manor then it could work, a dev can use stripe but apple gets a smaller slice and the dev takes all of the risk of refunds etc but its managed by apple/os level for account/card security like IAP does right now.

I know of several dev’s that say 15% would be pretty fair for IAP via apple given the lack of hassle dev’s have to deal with rather than the 30% and 15% should be workable given the largeness of the market for apple but it will still be 15% too high for epic. Also I know dev’s would like to offer version upgrades for a cost as well, its possible to do that on iOS but messy and several have said it would get around the whole subscription approach to fund app development. Case and point look at an app called Infuse where they have several version’s of Infuse listed, you can buy outright each major version which live on their own listing or the sub version which gets upgraded to each major version each time.

Spotify against itunes is a lot more complex than epic tbh as I see spotify’s point about the 30% being hard for them to swallow and I also see why apple dont allow you to push people to buy using an external site, spotify would effectively get all the benefits of the app store while covering none of the costs.

Although these costs may not seem a lot I dont doubt they are minor given the huge install base, updates bandwidth, app store approval process and SDK development and tooling so if you allow people to bypass all of the returns for apple on mass the app store would suffer for it. I really like how apple manage everything and its all done with decent privacy controls and if it turned into an android mess I am not sure what I would do. Spotify cries about the rules but it has not stopped them getting to where they are either.

Then you got to the whole apple pay problem, banks want NFC access to bypass apple pay and have pleeped about it, apple pay is brilliant though, its private and works very very well, if I had to use several banking apps and open them each time to use each card it would be a huge PITA or worse if one bank insisted on taking control preventing apple pay. Android I believe is seeing some of this pain where banks are not integrating with google pay to avoid a processing cut and expect you to use their app each time you want to pay. You even get the whole samsung pay problem which causes pain for users as well.
I dont know a solution to keep all parties happy there but I prefer things as they are right now over the potential for mess and issues with everyone trying to take control of NFC payments on my phone.

iMessage, I can see why apple didnt port it, its one of the better secure messaging apps out and like many I am put off whatsapp after facebook bought it, I would also have been put off if google bought it as I dont find either great with privacy. I am slowly moving people over to Signal and when whatsapp had the whole terms change mess a few months ago a large amount of my phonebook moved over (20-30 odd anyway)
I dont have any issues with iMessage other than the lack of desktop app on Windows, if that was added I would use it all the time but sadly thats exclusively on Mac.
One thing, if google had bought it they would have no doubt destroyed it as they cant seem to run a proper messaging service to save themselves.

So to sum up, epic/spotify I think apple should partner with several 3rd party payment providers to integrate control and privacy into the OS directly where apple gets a cut but it is a much smaller cut because they have none of the hassle but ideally I think apple should probably cut IAP to 15% and it would stave off a lot of these problems. Spotify still wouldnt be happy as they want to distribute their app without costs but there has to be a compromise and its not like it has truly stopped spotify on iOS as things stand.
Maybe apple could allow direct competitor categories to open up sites/direct people to a site to sign up as a workaround as long as using apple pay is an option (much lower cut) so they make a little off to cover the infrastructure costs.

One thing I dont want and dont see a gain with is 3rd party stores or sideloading, if you want that stuff buy android! You have a choice! Samsung and Google phones are pretty decent and you will get all the flexibility you miss on iOS. Yeah I prefer apples hardware but if those things were an issue for me I would buy android and be happy.

Apple needs to work on the app store rules and allow a better appeals process with multiple tiers of appeal to work through issues some apps like Hey etc have when they are denied. I think if dev’s feel there is a proper appeals process with multiple tiers to get issues listened to and worked on it would be a big help rather than right now where some feel its very adversarial and ignored.

No matter what, politicians getting involved will cause issues for everyone involved as they almost never understand technology and legislate based on what gets votes and not what is in the interest of all. When the whole browser selection screen was added it didnt make a difference in browser adoption when the EU attempted to regulate, the thing that changed the browser was MS stagnating on development and google getting aggressive across their sites pushing people to use chrome, a one time screen did not tilt it in a huge manor.

Sorry about the huge post :wink:

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Potentially a big deal if it does happen.

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Mostly a roundup of whats coming in the trial but I find Ars one of the best sites for tech news without bias.

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