I can’t see a business reason why Apple would degrade image sending purposefully- it would drive its own users to get third party apps.

Depends on what the majority of people are using.

In markets where iPhone users are not in the majority, that’s exactly what’s happening: iPhone users are switching to third party apps.

If iPhones users are in the majority, though, then people will just default to iMessage, and non-Apple phones get associated with poor messaging quality. Which creates social pressure for non-iPhone users to buy an iPhone.

So it makes perfect business sense for Apple to degrade the messaging quality when a non-Apple phone joins the conversation.

Must eradicate it.

For the safety and security of our users!

Not all iMessage features can be mapped to RCS, so unless Apple brings iMessage to other platforms, non-Apple phones will always be associated with an inferior messaging experience.

Is it intentionally hostile on Apple’s part to bar androids from joining? Yes. But the reactions from Apple users aren’t entirely unjustified

The reaction from Apple users is to blame Android users - which is entirely unjustified.

But of course, post purchase rationalization and brand loyalty play a big part in why people want to externalize blame rather than questioning their own decision or blaming their favorite company for providing a shitty cross-platform messaging experience.

Beeper already deregistered the numbers, but it takes 24 to 36 hours for Apple servers to forget the deregistered numbers.

The two things go hand in hand, though.

Degraded messaging gets branded with green bubbles. Green bubbles - i.e. non-Apple phones - get associated with degraded messaging. Non-Apple phones get pidgeon-holed as crappy phones for messaging. People get bullied into buying iPhones.

It’s probably just a definition thing.

To me, constructive criticism means that the criticism doesn’t just point out failure, but that it then also shows how to correct that failure.

By itself, “you’re doing it wrong” is just destructive: it takes something apart, it destroys it. Without a subsequent “and here’s how you would do it right,” it doesn’t become constructive, it doesn’t help in putting things back together in the correct way.

Sure, as a first step, “you’re doing it wrong” is completely justified when something is actually wrong.

But without the second step - the constructive part - it just doesn’t constitute constructive criticism. By itself, it’s just criticism.

Is saying “you’re doing it wrong” really constructive?

I’m not the one justifying any mass murder.

Yeah, you’re right. If you put it like that, that totally justifies the cold blooded murder of 265 people.

Most people will buy a computer, that computer will have Windows 11 on it, they’ll start using that computer and the pre-installed OS that came with it, and maybe, occasionally, they will complain that “this is different now” and that “they always change things, it’s so annoying” and that will be the end of it.

If you’re talking about people who install or even just upgrade the OS on their computer by themselves, are aware of such a concept as “alternative operating systems,” engage in any kind of conversation about operating systems on social media, and then care enough about the topic to downvote people who disagree with them on purely ideological grounds, you’re already talking about a tiny, tiny minority of computer users.

Google Chat is essentially Google’s take on Slack: group collaboration with chat and app/platform integrations.

Roman concrete structures still exist after 2000 years. If you want to “hide” the CO2 somehow, then concrete doesn’t seem like a bad idea.

Yeah. Wanting a Tesla 5 years ago is very different from still wanting a Tesla today, in 2023, after Elon has told everyone, in public, exactly who he was.

Since you seem to know a lot about Tesla: when people pay those $12,000 for the “Full Self-Driving package,” does Tesla tell them they can’t use it when it gets cold outside?

These are basically small concrete boxes sunk into the ground. They’re only meant to stick out a bushfire for a few hours.

You could probably just keep a few bottles of oxygen or a carbon dioxide scrubber stashed in there, just in case. If you can spend $10,000 on one of these bunkers, spending a few hundred more isn’t going to make a difference.

Anything longer than a few hours would get dicey anyway without room to move around, without room to stash water or food, without a toilet or beds.

There’s not one single person in the world who should own a thousand million dollars, never mind hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars.

The pure existence of billionaires is unethical and immoral - doesn’t matter whether they’re being stupid and fascist in public, or quietly pulling strings and bending society to their will in the background.

Well, it’s an option.

You can decide to leave it set to countdown + calling without further interaction.

If it’s not processed on device, there shouldn’t be any reason why this feature has to be limited to the Pixel 7 and 8, right?

At this point, one of the things keeping Twitter alive is that 99 percent of journalists and media outlets have refused to leave, despite all the evidence that there’s nothing to be gained for them on that platform.

It’s just their own FOMO that keeps them there.

I’d wish they’d follow the lead of those organizations who simply left, or, better yet, started up their own Mastodon instances.