Nothing announces iMessage for Android ... somehow

[hu4d]

Summary

 Nothing, the phone company started by OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei, has announced that its Nothing Phone 2 will have a new default messaging app, "Chats". The gimmick is that you'll be able to login to Chats with your Apple ID, and send/receive Apple's proprietary iMessages from it. Nothing has partnered with Sunbird, a company who has apparently been doing this for a while now

 

Quotes

Quote

“...it’s literally signing in on some Mac Mini in a server farm somewhere, and that Mac Mini will then do all of the routing for you to make this happen.” - MKBHD, who receive an early preview

Quote

"Nothing’s FAQ says Sunbird’s “architecture provides a system to deliver a message from one user to another without ever storing it at any point in its journey,” and that messages aren’t stored on its servers." - The Verge

My thoughts

This is cool, I guess? But very weird. How much do we trust 'Sunbird', the company that nobody has ever heard of before now, to handle your AppleID? I mean I suppose if you're an android user who's never touched anything Apple before, you just make a throwaway AppleID and who cares if it gets hacked. But for anybody who uses any Apple products at all, you probably don't want to be giving your AppleID out to random messaging companys. Because if what MKBHD is saying is to be taken at face value, it's not secure at all

 

Sources

https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/14/23960516/nothing-chats-imessage-android-phone

 

 

[Eigenvektor]

7 minutes ago, hu4d said:

This is cool, I guess?

Until Apple blocks the IP of their server farm for abusing their services, or adds some security improvements that breaks it in another way…

 

Most of my family has iPhones while I'm on Android, and we simply use another messaging app, problem solved.

[GuiltySpark_]

35 minutes ago, hu4d said:

you'll be able to login to Chats with your Apple ID

Without reading anything else, I'll believe this when I see it in retail units. 

[bcredeur97]

I would not doubt Apple already has lawyers working on bringing a case against Sunbird. 

This is really cool, but Apple is super protective of their IP. It's what makes them Apple.

[CyberneticTitan]

There are apps like this already, but Sunbird simply does the hosting for you.

 

i.e. https://bluebubbles.app/ and https://airmessage.org/

 

As an ignorant outsider I wonder why they did not wait for EU to take on opening up iMessage before announcing this as a feature.

[TetraSky]

Sunbird be like "lets give a subpar messaging experience to our users when texting android to android. But in exchange, they get to have blue bubbles when texting iPhone users!"

From their FAQ:

No RCS. Just regular SMS/MMS and whatever iMessage enables between iOS users.

 

Then you look at the rest of their FAQ...

At launch it will have RCS ? But in the future it will have RCS ? Makes no sense. Hard to take them seriously when they can't even get their message straight.

 

 

Fully expect Apple to swoop in and deactivate whatever loophole they are using in the name of "security".

Even more so considering they are planning for it to be "free". As in, you're the product.

[Fasterthannothing]

1 hour ago, bcredeur97 said:

I would not doubt Apple already has lawyers working on bringing a case against Sunbird. 

This is really cool, but Apple is super protective of their IP. It's what makes them Apple.

Except now they are being challenged on multiple fronts of the legalities of locking down a messaging service to their OS. This will only make them look worse. I think it's more than a gimmick from nothing it's an actual very usable feature for cross platform messaging.

[hishnash]

14 hours ago, TetraSky said:

Fully expect Apple to swoop in and deactivate whatever loophole they are using in the name of "security".

 

Given that they are asking for users Apple ID PW and even asking them to grant 2FA approval to Macs that the users do not controle I think security concerns are legit.   Also this sort of breaks the entier end to end encrypted nature of things. 

[Sauron]

15 hours ago, hu4d said:

it’s literally signing in on some Mac Mini in a server farm somewhere, and that Mac Mini will then do all of the routing for you to make this happen

lmao

15 hours ago, hu4d said:

This is cool, I guess?

No, if the description above is accurate this is a terrible idea. It depends entirely on continued support for a gimmick held together with the equivalent of duct tape and a prayer.

[Doobeedoo]

Or, people could stop using iMessage as be all end all only app and expect everyone to have iPhone and act like such freaks.

[Dracarris]

Signal, Whatsapp, Telegram, Teams, Slack, Mattermost, Hangout (not yet killed by Google?)

 

All with more features than iMessage and even more so plain SMS. As a heavy Apple user: Simply ditch iMessage. Yes I know, the US.

[goodtofufriday]

19 hours ago, Eigenvektor said:

Until Apple blocks the IP of their server farm for abusing their services, or adds some security improvements that breaks it in another way…

 

Most of my family has iPhones while I'm on Android, and we simply use another messaging app, problem solved.

im also only android and my family and i just use normal text messaging. why do you need another app?

[suicidalfranco]

23 minutes ago, goodtofufriday said:

im also only android and my family and i just use normal text messaging. why do you need another app?

cause outside of the US SMS texting is a dead technology that got massively replaced by WhatsApp in some regions, WeChat in others. No reason to use SMS when it's less convenient, more expensive, less feature rich, limited in characters and files you can send etc...

[Obioban]

1 hour ago, goodtofufriday said:

im also only android and my family and i just use normal text messaging. why do you need another app?

Low quality photos and videos. No encryption. Outside of the USA, people sometimes pay per SMS to their carrier.

 

SMS sucks.

[captain_to_fire]

I mean iMessage partially works on Windows 11's Phone Link app and it's greenlit by Apple but I doubt they'll keep this any longer. At work most of us use iPhones but we use Teams and Signal, at home we mostly use Whatsapp and both my parents use Samsung phones so the issue of green bubbles being second class citizens is a pathetic US-only issue.

[Eigenvektor]

1 hour ago, goodtofufriday said:

im also only android and my family and i just use normal text messaging. why do you need another app?

Depends on your mobile plan. Text messages can cost money, while iMessage works over you internet connection, so no additional cost.

 

Of course now you have WhatsApp, threema, Signal, ... that all do the same, so iMessage isn't that special anymore. But it is built into iOS, so if everyone is in iOS it's the simplest solution.

[goodtofufriday]

3 hours ago, suicidalfranco said:

cause outside of the US SMS texting is a dead technology that got massively replaced by WhatsApp in some regions, WeChat in others. No reason to use SMS when it's less convenient, more expensive, less feature rich, limited in characters and files you can send etc...

I can do all that with Google messages though. Only thing lacking is I don't come up blue I. Imessage. 

[goodtofufriday]

2 hours ago, Eigenvektor said:

Depends on your mobile plan. Text messages can cost money, while iMessage works over you internet connection, so no additional cost.

 

Of course now you have WhatsApp, threema, Signal, ... that all do the same, so iMessage isn't that special anymore. But it is built into iOS, so if everyone is in iOS it's the simplest solution.

Google messages with RCS turned on gives me all those additional things though. Also at no additional cost. And uses data instead of text cost. 

So i still don't see why you'd need to download something like whatsapp. 

[suicidalfranco]

11 minutes ago, goodtofufriday said:

I can do all that with Google messages though. Only thing lacking is I don't come up blue I. Imessage. 

because google message is like iMessage, IP texts to everyone who has google message installed, SMS to everyone else. Designed to as shit as iMessage. Not worth it imo

[goodtofufriday]

6 minutes ago, suicidalfranco said:

because google message is like iMessage, IP texts to everyone who has google message installed, SMS to everyone else. Designed to as shit as iMessage. Not worth it imo

I with all honesty don't understand why it's not?

I don't have to download any additional apps. 

 

Tho I'll be honest I didn't realize imessage and RCS didn't talk to each other even with text only messages. 

 

 

[suicidalfranco]

25 minutes ago, goodtofufriday said:

I with all honesty don't understand why it's not?

I don't have to download any additional apps. 

 

Tho I'll be honest I didn't realize imessage and RCS didn't talk to each other even with text only messages. 

 

 

and i dont get people fascination with not downloading extra, better apps

[goodtofufriday]

12 minutes ago, suicidalfranco said:

and i dont people fascination with not downloading extra, better apps

I just dont want 100 accounts doing similar things on 100 different apps. for this instance google messages does literally everything i need. If someone needs a larger file then i email them.

[Eigenvektor]

1 hour ago, goodtofufriday said:

Google messages with RCS turned on gives me all those additional things though. Also at no additional cost. And uses data instead of text cost. 

So i still don't see why you'd need to download something like whatsapp. 

Yes but RCS only works between (supported) Android devices. Just as iMessage only works between iOS devices. So neither solution works across both Android and iOS. That's why some people want iMessage for Android, while others simply use alternative apps.

 

The fallback to SMS/MMS can be costly and doesn't necessarily support everything those alternative apps do (like voice calls over Internet or sending many large photos or even videos)

[Dracarris]

2 hours ago, goodtofufriday said:

I just dont want 100 accounts doing similar things on 100 different apps. for this instance google messages does literally everything i need. If someone needs a larger file then i email them.

How about one extra account that also is your phone number?

7 hours ago, suicidalfranco said:

cause outside of the US SMS texting is a dead technology

hmm, paychecks are also a dead technology outside of the US, I wonder if there is a pattern? /s

[suicidalfranco]

27 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

hmm, paychecks are also a dead technology outside of the US, I wonder if there is a pattern? /s

I know it's sarcasm... But I didn't get it ...