Honestly let’s have some dignity and not buy into this vapid pretentious idiocy.
Right, I don’t understand why these weird hacky services are making headlines. If you want to have a blue bubble, just buy an iPhone. They’re not actually THAT expensive, you can usually buy last year’s model for under $500 if you wait for a deal and you’re willing to commit to a carrier. Or if you really can’t afford that, you can get an older iPhone basically for free. Even a 3 year old model gets you a blue bubble.
Or, if you’re not an insecure child that gives in to peer pressure, get whatever phone you want.
If you want to have a blue bubble, just buy an iPhone.
Expense aside they’re simply worse products. Can’t choose what software to put on it. Can’t repair it. Can’t change your dialer or your SMS app. I mean the list goes on.
lol ok.
The vast majority of androids are worse for repairability. The ones that get more than a year or two of support don’t have any parts available. The ones that do get support have far worse physical restrictions like straight up gluing parts in.
The rest you mention, >99% of people don’t do anyway.
Illegal Anti-Competitive / Cartel behaviour, yes??
Apple, you are only exempt-from-law UNTIL the regulators decide to do their jobs honestly.
THEN, you’re hosed.
_ /\ _
I mean, even the EU already exempted iMessage from the new rules.
Because they already follow a standard. SMS and MMS.
And with them adopting RCS? There’s nothing they can force to open iMessage.
They exempted iMessage because it’s not big in Europe. If it were as big as in the US it would’ve fallen under the DMA.
Apples was and is still extremely anti-competitive and anti-consumers oriented.
I remember in the ipod days plugging a CD into the aul PC and ripping all the files as aac… A format that would only play in iTunes
I had an arcos jukebox before the first iPod came out, every time they’d release a new version it’s big feature would be something my jukebox had always done. Except it didn’t have an awkward spinning selector wheel or celebrity endorsements.
I could connect it to the cd player and record the whole thing as mp3s, I think it even used to split the tracks automatically but I might be wrong. Plug it into usb and it’s a HDD ready to have anything copied to it without hassle… No need for shitty iTunes, no complaints about wav files and never found an MP3 it couldn’t play.
I remember thinking that surely people will realize over priced and feature limited products are an insult but no, the kids of the future I had so much hope for turned out to be gen z who care more about brand recognition than anyone ever before. I still think the feature rich generics will have their day, maybe generation alpha…
“Awkward spinning selector wheel”
Say what you want, but the iPod click wheel was anything but awkward. It was the most approachable and efficient interface and hardware on the market by miles and miles. Navigating other similar devices without it is an awful experience of buttons and layered menus that feel clunky and slow.
I won’t deny that the Arcos and other jukeboxes were incredible devices, but they lacked accessibility and mass appeal. Their size and expense kept most people from even considering getting one. They were absolutely an enthusiast’s device and nothing more.
The iPod ushered in the boom of portable media players and paved the road for Apple’s performance in the mobile phone space by establishing them as purveyors of a superior form factor and experience when it came to those devices. Apple owes its continued success in its personal computer and tablet product lines to the iPod’s design and their decision to focus on creating a cohesive ecosystem across their products based on those design principles.
I think it’s a bit crazy to create a paid service on top of a reverse engineered product that isn’t static. Indivious, NewPipe and other youtube frontends aren’t going to create a paid youtube frontend, because they know Google could kill that at any point. Google could dedicate a full team to making youtube frontends non-functional.
Apple has a much bigger incentive to derail iMessage alternatives because they know that dumb parents have taught their kids how to live in a closed ecosystem and be slaves to Apple. 87% of USAian teenagers use Apple, which means it’s only a matter of time before Apple becomes the dominant player on the market. If you want to keep making fat stacks of cash, the best thing you can do is control the market, which means killing of competition.
The only reason Apple would ever stop killing competitors is if it became legally and financially detrimental to do so. They’d have to reach Microsoft levels of antitrust and bad press before even considering backpedaling.
Everyone buying their products is helping Apple along to their goal of market dominance.
Whoever gave it 24 hours gets a medal from me
