It IS bespoke internal development, not for deployment outside of the facility.
The computers running the software exist only to run this software and have no business talking to the internet at all.
IT is provided by an external third party vendor who operate on an inflexible “best practices dogma”.
In a rapidly churning startup phase, where new releases can and do come out constantly to meet production requirements, this one size fits all mentality is impractical.
If you refuse to whitelist the deployment directory, you will be taking 2am calls to whitelist the emergency releases.
No it can’t wait until Monday at 9am, no there will not be a staged roll out and multiple rounds of testing.
I am more than willing to have a chat; you, me and the CEO.
I have a friend group that insist on all events being planned through facebook.
I’ve missed out on events in the past due to not taking part.
It’s no longer a hill I wish to die on.
I agree and use Signal myself.
But people like the extra features of WhatsApp like desktop/web clients with seamless history sync and all the other little things that WhatsApp provides.
The average Joe doesn’t even think about security or privacy, they just know that the results of using WhatsApp are superior than using SMS.
iMessage is a non starter everywhere out of the US, it just doesn’t have the market penetration.
As an Australian, no one I know (many of whom own iPhones) talk about the blue-green bubble stuff.
They recognise where the fault lies and simply don’t use the app.
In certain places like India, WhatsApp is the default means of communication for everyone.
You can use it without phone data if you are on wifi, it supports better quality than sms for sending images, you can video chat with it, it’s cross platform, etc etc.
What’s more amazing to me is that it’s not more popular in western countries.
Funnily enough, I’ve got a few friends who are long time iPhone users, who actually point this stuff out themselves:
“OMG! Have you seen the eye watering price of the new one?”
“Yay, I finally get stuff you’ve had for years.”
Neither party would ever consider anything else, and they both buy the new model every year. 🤷
At this point I admit that my reasons for choosing Android all those years ago no longer exist or matter, but I can’t imagine changing ecosystem either.
it’ll work just like SMS does now
I agree with this part of your statement 100%.
It will work POORLY.
Whether it’s in the same app or simply a different colour like SMS is currently, it’ll be a half assed implementation, designed to segregate your iphone and android friends.
Got an existing iphone group chat? Bet you can’t add an RCS participant to it.
Create a new RCS group chat so you can include everyone? Bet it’s missing features that you’d get in imessage.
Receive a high resolution video from a friend via imessage? Forward that to another friend via RCS and they’ll receive 5 blurry pixels.
And throughout all of this, apple will blame the RCS protocol and say “We’re actively working with GSMA to improve RCS”.
No one trusts apple for the very simple reason that they have a habit of saying the quiet part out loud: Tim Cook Says ‘Buy Your Mom An iPhone’
There’s some gotchas in Apples statement:
They have promised to implement “RCS Universal Profile”
This means the bare minimum, not the advanced features implemented by Google and Samsung etc.
An example of a missing feature from Universal Profile is end to end encryption.
They also said: “This will work alongside iMessage, which will continue to be the best and most secure messaging experience for Apple users.”
The implication of this is that it won’t be in the iMessage app, it will be in a separate but official app, siloing your Android friends from your iPhone friends.
When this comes out, every European is going to shrug and keep using Whatsapp.
It’s not the android side that’s failing, it’s Apples refusal to implement anything other than SMS for cross ecosystem compatibility.
Worst/Pragmatic.
If I get a timeline for a feature request, then everything can be scheduled, tested, whitelisted, delivered at a reasonable time.
That’s the rarer event - normally it’s more like “the scale head has died and a technician is on the way to replace it” and whilst I modify the program in question to handle this new input, hundreds of staff are standing around and delivery quotas won’t be met.
Is my position arrogant? This is the job.
I’ll see if this is possible at the site in question, thank you.