> But shutting down the API and Android apps feels like an egregious move by Apple.
Yes but that's inline with what you'd expect Apple to do though. They won't support any non-Apple ecosystem unless they have to - it's just their way of doing things
>Yes but that's inline with what you'd expect Apple to do though.
I'd argue the exact opposite. They keep pronouncing they're now a services company. If that's TRULY their go-forward model, they should be selling services to the broadest possible audience. Shutting it down to other audiences tells me they're still a hardware company that can't see past their walled garden.
If anyone at Apple is listening, I'll say it for the thousandth time: Support Messages on Android and Windows and you will own the messaging market. If you keep kicking the can, someone will eventually take it from you. Just look at Blackberry and what you did to them... it can and will happen to you as well. BES was thought to be an impenetrable wall. Narrator: It wasn't.
This coming from someone who switched back to iPhone after the last round of goog privacy snafu's.
Apple has shown they are not afraid to build products that are 100% services (TV+, Music, etc). Just because a product is delivered as a service doesn't mean the correct strategy is to spray it everywhere.
It's not a matter of seeing past the walled garden. So long as there is a roadmap for deep platform integrations (identity, payments, AR, GPU, etc) and the desire for those integrations to be 100% available to _anyone_ with a blue bubble, the service will not leave Apple. IMO, it's about protecting the path of innovation while keeping a key feature (compatibility across all users) in play. Available is key because feature adoption spreads virally. Nobody wants to see someone do something in iMessage and then learn they can't do it.
You sound like you're reading from the RIM playbook circa 2004. It's not a matter of IF, it's a matter of WHEN the product that kills them shows up. The only reason that Facebook hasn't already supplanted them is their horrendous record on security - eventually a player without that track record will come along and eat their lunch. Facebook messenger became "good enough" just about at the exact time the Cambridge Analytica scandal happened - at which point even the non-nerds started deleting their accounts and abandoning their messaging platform.
I think the mistake you’re making is thinking Apple cares about messaging. They don’t. They care about the iOS platform. Messages gives them a competitive advantage in that sector. Yes a competing messaging service might surpass it, in fact this has already happened in China with WeChat. This goes some way to level of the playing field with Android over there.
But putting Messages on Android would level the playing field as well. It might give them the dominant messaging platform, at least outside a China, but so what? There’s no reason for them to care about that. They’re not Facebook.
I think if Apple didn't care about messaging they would just kill their investment and let SMS and 3P apps do the job. They wouldn't just throw money away to make something they didn't care about.
No product is going to come around and kill iMessage because it isn't zero sum. iMessage has a guaranteed priority slot in the OS because Apple owns it. As an Apple user, I prefer iMessage over every other messaging platform. It is just more fun and has better expression. Period. It's too bad I can't iMessage everyone, but hey, I can iMessage lots of people. Don't think that will _ever_ go away.
What’s the purpose of “owning messaging?” All of the popular messaging companies make money via advertising.
Messaging needs a network effect. The other alternative besides advertising is charging customers. Can you point to one successful platform that has a network effect and charges customers?
This is why we should be hostile to Swift being used outside of the Apple ecosystem.
To all the folks trying to make Swift server development compelling: please stop. Use Golang or Rust instead.
Apple is an antagonist of other platforms/ecosystems, and there's no reason to believe they won't use Swift to force developers to buy and run Macbooks.
Edit: Would the multitude of downvoters provide a counter argument? Why should we tolerate this behavior from Apple?
I'm upset when other companies use the same playbook. There's an equal opportunity for all companies to behave better here. As it stands, I do not support this.
Where does Dark Sky get its weather data? Do they crowdsource any data from their apps? If so, then continuing to support Android devices could still provide value to Apple.
This is pure speculation but Shazam is a UK company and I'm 99% convinced that if they had locked the app to iOS, the European Commission would have blocked the deal and maybe sued them for anti-competitive practices.
This really sucks, I work for a stormwater environmental company and we were looking at darksky to replace our existing provider; DarkSky is one of the best providers of weather data.IBM also bought weather underground, I am really what these big tech companies want with forecasting/weather companies.
Have you considered using the National Weather Service API directly? To someone with only a casual interest in this stuff it seems like it has what I would want, curious about shortcomings compared with the many commercial offerings? Especially considering it's their data that e.g. DarkSky resells.
The Dark Sky API combines lots of data sources, and its weather data is not limited to the US. I use it for cities all around the world. The US National Weather Service API cannot replace it.
Sorry, I didn't see your question until now. Unless I'm mistaken, they had a list of their sources somewhere on their website that I saw a few years ago. I don't think they said where their minute-by-minute came from, but I'm quite sure they calculated that data themselves.
How does Darksky do it's minute-by-minute precipitation forecasts, though? I only see hourly forecasts in the API. I'm guessing they are doing some of their own forecasting.
Yes but that's inline with what you'd expect Apple to do though. They won't support any non-Apple ecosystem unless they have to - it's just their way of doing things