Here’s the analogy I’ve been thinking best applies. American Express operates Centurion Lounges at a few dozen airports around the world, exclusively for the use of their Platinum Card holders. Other premium credit cards offer similar access to other lounges. If you have an American Express Platinum Card, you just show up, show them your card and boarding pass, and you’re in. You get free Wi-Fi; free food (pretty good); free beverages (including a full-service bar); and comfortable seats, tables, and desks. They even have showers for travelers on extended trips. They’re great — and a cut above even most airlines’ own lounges for their premium frequent travelers. Centurion Lounge access is presented as a free benefit, but, of course, there’s no more such a thing as a free premium lounge as there is a free lunch: the cost of the lounges is baked into the annual fees Platinum Card holders pay.
iMessage is like a Centurion Lounge. It’s a free premium messaging service, exclusively for the use of people who own iPhones, iPads, and Macs. SMS, in this analogy, is like waiting for your plane out in the public airport terminal: not as nice, the Wi-Fi is worse, there’s no free food or drinks, but it’s available to everyone.
iMessage users in a group chat who are annoyed by Android-owning group members relegating the conversation to SMS are like a group of friends travelling together — some of whom have Amex Platinum Cards, some of whom don’t — who need to wait in the public terminal if the group wants to wait for their flight together.
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Beeper Mini presenting itself as Messages on a Mac to gain access to iMessage is as dishonest as presenting a forged Amex Platinum Card to gain access to a Centurion Lounge.
This is a good analogy that captures why Apple is justified in cracking down. But it doesn’t capture the way SMS can only be used within Messages.app, and I think it misses the feel of the situation from the customer’s point of view. iMessage does not feel like a premium experience, both because there’s a much higher percentage of iPhone users than Platinum Card holders and because the service itself is so unreliable. Sometimes it feels more like a scourge than a perk.
Also unlike Amex, it’s not something that people consciously opted into. They just bought a phone and got the bundled messaging service. Now they have a poor experience communicating with half of their friends. It’s as if people with names from one half of the alphabet can’t get into the lounge. The lounge doesn’t offer guest passes; they expect you to change your name to get in. That’s technically possible, but hardly anyone wants to do it. Meanwhile, once you’ve entered the lounge, it’s hard to ever leave. The airlines will no longer make your flight status available in other parts of the airport, so if you start hanging out in the public terminal you could miss your plane.
This paragraph would make sense in a world where Apple, say, didn’t allow WhatsApp, Signal, Line, Telegram, and Messenger in the App Store. But the market for messaging apps is incredibly competitive, and Apple’s App Store hosts all of them.
Many airlines offer lounges for their premium fliers, but try getting everyone you know to meet up at the United Club. It might be in the wrong terminal or they might only have frequent flier status on another airline. Meanwhile, Amex owns the airport, and they make sure that the Centurion is the only lounge located inside of the TSA screening.
Previously:
- Beeper’s Final Fixes and Government Investigations
- Apple Blocks Beeper Mini
- Apple to Add RCS Messaging in iOS 17 Update
- Sending a Text Message Instead of an iMessage
- Why There’s No iMessage for Android
Update (2024-01-03): See also: Manton Reece.
Update (2024-01-10): Eric Migicovsky:
Getting champagne at a bar in an airport. This is about people’s everyday lives: How you chat with your friends, your family, your colleagues, is the core experience of your phone. And for most people, if they want to contact their friends or family, they don’t think about all the different apps or the multitude of ways they can contact someone. They send a text.
The argument that Gruber was trying to put together is that this is some sort of luxury experience that only some people should have. It’s out of touch, and in fact it’s pretty insulting.
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How about the telephone? Imagine if you couldn’t phone certain people. Would we allow that? Back in the 1990s, before interoperability, you couldn’t send a text message to someone on a different mobile carrier. If you had an AT&T phone number, you could only text people on AT&T. It’s kind of the stakes we’re at right now.
Via Eric Schwarz:
While an airport lounge isn’t the most relatable analogy, it does demonstrate something that is exclusive for members that have either paid or are continuing revenue streams.
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Like I said, I can appreciate the intent of Beeper Mini, but in my checking around with Android-using friends, the anecdata isn’t exactly in Beeper Mini’s favor either. Most Android users either hate anything that Apple stands for or seem disinterested in downloading and paying for something to have better messaging with their iPhone-using buddies. I can agree with that—it’s clearly a problem Apple has let simmer and the burden of fixing should be on Apple, not Android users. That’s where something like Beeper Mini is not going to be the fix, but rather embracing RCS, effectively bringing iPhones up to par with Android devices makes the most sense.