Hey guys it’s Greg with Apple Explained, and today we’re going to explore how iMessage
has evolved since its release in 2011 and how it contributed to Apple being in a sticky
situation with the US government.
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So, iMessage is essentially a replacement for SMS that works between Apple devices.
Like all great instant messaging platforms, it allows users to send and receive messages,
stickers, emojis, images, and all sorts of attachments using WiFi, ethernet, or mobile
data.
In its current form, iMessage works any on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch running iOS 5
and up or any Mac with OS X Mountain Lion and up.
You can register your account to your phone number like SMS or to your email address – or
to a bunch of email addresses, if that’s your thing.Before I get into the history and
some of the controversies that have come up, I want to go a little deeper into what iMessage
actually does.
So, the iMessage protocol is a binary protocol based off the Apple Push Notification Service.
Messages are encrypted end-to-end and have delivery receipts that you can access through
read receipts.
On iPhones, messages can be sent via SMS/MMS, which show up in green text bubbles, or data,
which show up as blue.
Sent messages show up on the right, replies on the left – pretty intuitive for anyone
who’s ever used iMessage or any other messaging app.
One of the nice features over a strict SMS service is that you can see when another user
is typing a message to you.
Originally, there were some issues with non-iPhone users not receiving messages sent through
iMessage, I’ll get into that a little later, but that’s been fixed now and messages sent
via data to a non iOS user now get automatically converted to SMS.
Alright, so now I’m going to get into the actual history of iMessage.
It was first announced at the Apple Worldwide Developer’s Conference in 2011.
Scott Forstall revealed it during his keynote on June 6th and it was released in the iOS
5 update just a few months later in October.
It was the same year that iCloud, OS X Lion, AirDrop, Launchpad, and Mission Control were
announced, so, a lot of important things happened that year.
This first version was already pretty impressive already.
It was designed to take the place of SMS without changing apps so that users would have a seamless
transition to the iMessage protocol, and it included the ability to send everything from
basic text messages to contact information, real-time locations, and read receipts.
It also transferred pictures way faster and in much higher resolution than SMS because
it took advantage of the iPhone’s data connection.
One of the changes that came with iOS 6 in 2012 was the ability to send iMessages from
devices linked to your phone number.
That meant you could send and receive texts from your iPad, iPod touch, or Mac.
Along with some aesthetic changes there wasn’t much more that changed until 2015 with the
release of iOS 9.
In this update, Apple made the wise choice to rearrange the Notifications Center to chronological
order instead of having notifications grouped by app.
This made navigating notifications – especially messages – way easier for users, especially
those who had messages coming in from multiple apps.
Apple also introduced a bunch of other ease-of-use updates like quick replies (which let users
respond to messages without even opening the iMessage app) and improved the search function.
Now we get to the current state of things.
iMessage is now part of the broader Messages apps available on iOS and macOS – that includes
iMessage Apps, the Messages App, iMessage Service, the Messages framework, and the App
Store for iMessage, a bunch of which were added later on for iOS 10.
There are a ton of new features that make it stand out from other messaging apps.
Recent versions include screen effects like bubbles, fireworks, and lasers that you can
select to show up on your own and the message recipient’s screen.
There are also, of course, stickers and emojis, but also massive 3X emojis, access to GIFs,
and tapback responses that include a heart, thumbs up, thumbs down, and more.
iOS 10 also introduced Digital Touch, which lets you sketch images directly on the screen,
us Haptic Tap, and send your live heartbeat through the iPhone and iPad interface – a
feature that was originally limited to Apple watches.
Basically, you can send just about anything through iMessage, from any Apple device, to
any device period.
To add even more to the list, users can now download quite a few extensions that add even
more features.
Secret for iMessage allows users to send messages that disappear from the app after a period
of time, like Snapchat or Signal disappearing messages.
Circle for iMessage adds an extension to send money in dollars, euros, pounds, or bitcoin
to any other use.
iMessage Analyzer lets users take a peek into their own messaging habits with detailed specifics
about word usage, how often you get contacted, and so on.
This a pretty big development for the app, which didn’t allow add-on apps until iOS
10.
This step not only means that users have more flexibility with how they send messages, but
that the iMessage system is building into a more self-sustaining platform with functionality
far beyond just instant messaging.
Since iMessage has a ton of features and is designed to work with Apple products, you’d
think it would be the go-to choice for Apple users when it comes to sending messages.
Unfortunately for Apple, it’s not.
Depending on the country, most users stick to alternative apps for their messaging.
WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are in the lead there, with LINE, Telegram, WeChat and
Viber as some of the other popular runner ups.
Despite all of its features, a lot of iPhone users install an alternative messaging app
almost as soon as they pull it out of the box, which might be why Apple has been working
so hard to increase functionality and access to additional apps.
The exception to this rule seems to be with U.S. teens, who average about 25 iMessages
a day according to an analysis by the CEO of the Fam messaging app, Giuseppe Stuto.
A lot of adults, though, are looking for safer and more independent messaging alternatives
– especially in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
In particular, a lot of people are looking to messaging apps with heavy encryption and
some extra security features included like Signal – and iMessage has a bit of history
with data vulnerabilities.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, the EFF, gives apps security ratings based on features
like encryption, forward secrecy, history of security audits, documentation of existing
security measures, identity verification, and ability for independent review.
iMessage got included in these ratings in the 2014 Secure Messaging Scorecard and got
a 5 out of 7 score.
It ranked high in most areas, but Apple’s code secrecy prevented a lot of independent
auditing and it was impossible for users to verify contacts’ identities.
Some cryptographers argued that there were some hidden, but big vulnerabilities in iMessage
– especially for man-in-the-middle attacks – and that some of the features Apple claimed,
like forward secrecy, weren’t as strong as they were claimed to be.
Other reviewers had similar complaints, and a big independent audit showed that the end-to-end
encryption iMessage used wasn’t actually very strong at all.
So, in March of 2016 this report came out from a group of researchers at Johns Hopkins
University led by Matthew D. Green.
It showed that the bulletproof commercial encryption offered by Apple for instant messages,
pictures, and videos wasn’t so bulletproof after all.
The report was in a big part in response to the San Bernardino terrorist attack earlier
that year when two shooters killed 14 people – and the justice department attempted to
force Apple to give up encrypted data on the shooters’ phones and loosen up encryption
in the future.
As it turns out, there were already plenty of vulnerabilities that the FBI – and hackers
– could exploit to get to sensitive data past Apple’s encryption.
Basically, anyone who could access ciphertexts could potentially decrypt photos and videos
– whether that be a government official or a hacker.
Apple didn’t loosen their encryption in iMessage in response to the San Bernardino
incident, though, and they actually patched up this vulnerability before the Johns Hopkins
report was released to the public.
The 2016 vulnerability report wasn’t the only controversy surrounding iMessage.
In 2014, an customer filed a lawsuit against Apple after turning in her iPhone for an Android
model.
She, along with thousands of other ex-iPhone users discovered that they weren’t receiving
messages from Apple users anymore once they made the switch.
Because iMessage handles SMS differently than other texting apps, messages sent to ex-iPhone
users from current Apple users were disappearing and causing all sorts of issues – from loss
of business to marriage issues.
Some users felt forced to go back to iPhone from Android, others had to change their phone
numbers to solve the issue.
Apple employees admitted to the problem openly, and many users felt that it was deliberate
on the part of Apple to keep more money in their pockets.
The original case failed to make class-action status and was heard by a federal court in
San Jose, California where the claimant argued that she was being “penalized” by Apple
for switching to a different product.
Ultimately, though, the case was dismissed.
Apple offered a solution to the problem by posting a help article on their website that
describes the fix – all you have to do is log into your Apple account and remove your
phone number from your profile.
Independent developers have offered their own solutions to the cross-platform problem,
too.
Eric Chee, an open-source developer, launched “PieMessage,” a project that allows iMessage
to connect with Android devices.
With this code, Android phones can send and receive messages through iMessage, which not
only solves the problem of lost messages for ex-iPhone users but offers a whole new set
of messaging options for non-Apple users in general.
The other major controversy facing the iMessage app is massive patent lawsuit that’s still
ongoing.
This lawsuit started in 2010 when VirnetX, a company mostly involved in the collection
of patents, accused Apple of infringing on its intellectual property.
VirnetX is a patent-assertion entity, or what some people refer to as a “patent troll”
– its primary purpose seems to be to accumulate patents and then sue tech companies that use
similar technology.
In this case, VirnetX sued Apple over patent infringements for FaceTime, VPN on Demand,
and, of course, iMessage.
The case has gone through several different decisions and an incredible number of appeals.
Early on, a jury awarded VirnetX $302 million in damages from Apple, which then increased
to $439.7 million by a judge’s decision.
The case was appealed by Apple, but with over 400 million devices with the alleged offending
tech sold since then, few courts have been sympathetic.
In April, a Texas federal jury increased the damages even more – to over $500 million
dollars.
Apple’s lawyers haven’t commented yet if they plan to make another appeal, but since
they brought in $20 billion in the first quarter of 2018, they may just pay the damages to
end the nearly decade-long dispute.
I wanted to wrap up with a few stats about iMessage and instant messaging as a whole.
The consulting firm Chetan Sharma has shown that SMS texting has declined pretty significantly
in the last several years – and it attributes some of this international decline to more
inclusive, well-rounded apps like iMessage.
That’s not really surprising considering how many messages are sent through this platform
every day.
As of 2012, just one year after its release, 300 billion messages had been sent in iMessage,
averaging about 28,000 messages per second.
In 2016, that number had grown to 200,000 messages per second – and a staggering 63
quadrillion iMessages sent per year.
Today, there are no official usage reports released – but it’s safe to assume that
that number is higher than ever before.So that is the history of iMessage, and if you
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Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next time.