Macworld:
The app that got the most attention during the iOS segment of Monday’s Apple WWDC keynote was Messages, the unassuming text-messaging tool. A lot of people might have been baffled by the strange emphasis on adding animations, sketches, stickers, big emoji, and even third-party app access to an app as inconsequential as Messages.
That sort of thinking is unsurprising: I’d bet that a huge percentage of people in the computer-nerd sphere–including a whole lot of people who work at Apple–don’t think of Messages as anything but boring. Why jazz up something that’s fundamentally so utilitarian?
This is just the beginning for major changes in Messages. Apple will follow in some ways and lead in others but, make no mistake, Messages in many forms will become its own significant platform in Apple’s Services category.
The only surprise is why it took Apple so long. When Facebook started snapping up Instagram, Whatsapp and allegedly also SnapChat, and also made Messenger independent from the Facebook app itself, it should have been obvious that messaging was oh so important. There is a chance the genie is out of the bottle already.
I’m an old man now, but for me this was the least impotent part of the entire keynote. iMessage apps is something I am genuinely dreading and just about every other new iMessage feature is likely to annoy me.
I just want to send a text – not fireworks. pointless waste of effort
I wish to hijack this thread to complain about Reminders (“a boring, utilitarian app lots of people use”).
It used to be, if you pasted in multi-line text (“an SMS of your grocery list”), it broke it up, one check-item per line of text.
Now it pastes it in as one multi-line item.
Which is completely useless for that case.
Why, Apple? Why not autocorrect option or press-and-hold-menu option for “paste as individual items”?
You had it working!
“I just want to send a text – not fireworks. pointless waste of effort”
Nothing in the changes to Messages prevents you from continuing to use it the way you always have. No one is forcing you to use emojis or graphics or bells and whistles.
I’m disappointed they didn’t open it up to Android users. Today, I’m forced to go to other tools like Whatsapp to be able to group chat with Android users.
Opening up iMessages to other platforms would allow them to dominate the space.
That’d be a benefit to Android users. Not to Apple.
I’m an iPhone user with friends on Android. Considering that Android dominates market share, I’m sure there are tons of other iOS users who would like to easily group chat their Android friends without having to use Whatsapp or another messaging app.
Possibly. But we both know that Apple doesn’t see providing the service to them as an advantage. It won’t sell more phones.
All these messaging ecosystems are in flux and Apple pushed a lot of chips onto it along with everyone else. What I find most amazing is that various messaging platforms now consume so much of new tech.
I think that’s true of most things, however, people will send them them and I can imagine situations where I may not want that.
I would have preferred if effort had been spent on bringing Messages to iCloud and Android.
“people will send them them and I can imagine situations where I may not want that.”
Then you can do what I plan to do. Tell people, “Sorry – would you mind not sending those graphics. I find them annoying and unreadable”. Easy as that.
I don’t know what you mean by “Messages to iCloud” but it makes no sense for Apple to bring Messages to Android. Apple sees Messages as a product differentiator and they don’t want to give that advantage to Android.
I’m not so sure Android users embrace Apple stuff with open arms. Just look at how Apple Music was received on Google Play by users, despite ACTUALLY being a good Android app and not just a port of the iOS design (unlike Googles iOS apps). Ironically, it’s almost the same way Mac users despised Microsoft software on the Mac back in the late 90s.
That’s not to say iMessage wouldn’t be a success on Android. It might. But what does Apple gain by doing so? Also one of the core components for the new iMessage is the iMessage App Store, how would that transfer over to Android? Every single iMessage app is built off of the powerful iOS extensibility frameworks, which isn’t possible to bring to Android (with the same level of security and privacy). It will probably happen eventually. I think for now at least, iMessage belongs on Apple products as another great highlight of the Apple ecosystem, part of the complete solution Apple builds for their users.
Apple will surely fix this right away, now that you’ve anonymously ranted on a random unrelated interweb comment thread. ;-P
It could repeat the good old “halo effect”: iMessages is just sooo much better than the alternatives, then the entire iOS system must be even more amazing…! (Very hypothetical example, mind you…)
“Least impotent part …”
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