I don’t get it. iMessage is Apple’s service. Why are they obliged to open it up for everyone to use? Would it be nice? Yes, of course. Should Apple be legally required to open up access to their service?
At the root of this issue is that Google never built a messaging service that could survive Google's management shuffle. I understand people want Apple to bend the knee, but this is not their problem. It's perfectly fine for them to intercede Beeper's reverse engineering.
If you're an Android user and you need a messaging app, Signal is 100% open source, secure, and it works on iOS too, so tell your friends!
More like senators are trying to make another show trial of BS they really have no plans to do anything about, and probably shouldn't be getting in the middle of, to make it seem like they are being productive in some way.
Why would they need to look into Apple's conduct here? Investigate Beeper for CFAA violations since they cracked into Apple's internal APIs and ignored large chunks of their ToS in the process.
Of course Apple is going to shut down unauthorized access to their messaging system. They'd lose all customer trust instantly if they didn't.
Yeah good luck with that. It's very much a dick move but I don't think you'll have success arguing in court that Apple is obligated to open their personal messaging system to competitors.
You'd have much better luck arguing that they need to open up SMS use to other apps, and that that they need to allow sideloading and other app stores. These are the REAL anticompetitive concerns.
Man... Some of the Apple fans in this thread are making me lose faith in humanity. They have no idea how technology works, but they are defending an objectively shitty behavior from the world's most wealthy corporation based on... I don't know... their feelings?
I wonder if this case affects the tug of war Apple has with the EU about opening gatekeeping services up. I wonder if it occurs to some power that be that they might use this case (no matter how stupid it is) to argue Apple is a gatekeeper and has to open up iMessage at some point.
Likely won't happen though since it's not an EU problem really. The thing that's more possible is that California or some other progressive-ish US state follows the EU's lead in busting monopolies as they did with the GDPR, and does something about this in two decades.