back to article Microsoft: We've almost dug Your Phone out behind sofa. But will it make Insiders app-y?

Microsoft gave us a clue yesterday as to the whereabouts of its Your Phone app, demoed to much fanfare during Build 2018 and conspicuously absent ever since. In an announcement on 7 May, VP of Windows, Joe Belfiore, reckoned the technology would be hitting the Windows Insider program “soon”. Three months later, with the …

  1. werdsmith Silver badge

    It's such progress that to talk to contact 1 I have to use Telegram, contact 2 I have to open WhatsApp, contact 3 is on iMessage, contact 4 uses FB Messenger and so on.

    Just create a unified messaging app or cross app protocol and stop taking the piss.

    1. WonkoTheSane
      Linux

      This isn't about messaging at all. It's more like the Linux program "KDEConnect", which displays your phone notifications on your desktop, provided both are connected to the same local network/wifi.

      KDEConnect, however, also does things like battery state monitoring, file transfer, using the phone's touchscreen as a trackpad, etc.

      For "unified" messaging, look into Pidgin

    2. Teiwaz

      Just create a unified messaging app or cross app protocol and stop taking the piss.

      Facebook and their ilk used to allow connection through XMPP I seem to remember, then they realised they could get away with taking the piss, and shut that down (around 2015 I seem to recall)

      Their audience merely acquiesced to using things like the dedicated one service only apps like Messenger. I generally don't like terms like 'sheeple' used willy-nilly, but there was hardly a 'baa' over that, because the majority didn't use multi-service apps anyway, we'd already reached the point where most users were on the same one or two services run by megacorps that could afford to snap up any upstart merging rivals.

    3. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Google have done just that, now they just have to get phone carriers and Apple (and other non-Androud phone makers) to adopt it. Google RCS:

      https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/23/google-rcs/

      1. JohnFen

        Google's RCS is a disease.

    4. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
      Facepalm

      re: Stop taking the piss

      It is not about that at all. It is about how much advertising and data slurping that the different platforms can do.

      Putting them all under one roof so to speak would just not work. The platform owners would not let you do it. They are already very twitchy (sic) about third party clients bypassing their lovely and essential (even sickier) adverts.

      1. Dave 126 Silver badge

        Re: re: Stop taking the piss

        The RCS system is intended as an alternative to SMS - designed and promoted by Google but implemented by network carriers. I'm not sure it passes through Google's servers. You'll have to read up on it to see what sort of encryption - if any - it uses.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          It still astounds me

          That Google never seemed to 'get' messaging. The one thing you'd think they would have copied from Apple was iMessage, as it would have been so simple to create something similar and put it on Android by default. It would have killed WhatsApp before it really got going, and would undoubtedly be the most-used messaging platform in the world today simply by the sheer numbers of Android users.

          Instead they seem to create a new messaging platform every year or two, promote it as the next big thing, and then let it die on the vine because someone inside Google has a better idea, which somehow requires tossing out the old platform, bathwater and all.

          I can see RCS replacing SMS from a carrier perspective, as it makes sense in today's 'everything in data' model that arrived with LTE and will be in full force once 2G/3G are permanently extinguished in a few years. But I have a feeling Google will find something shiny that will cause them to forget all about RCS in a couple years, and be pushing that instead.

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Just create a unified messaging app

      We have this messaging protocol long ago, it's called talking face-to-face in-real-life.

      I'll take my coat. It's the one with a talking pigeon on top.

      1. Graham Dawson Silver badge

        @face-to-face

        Because that's so easy when I'm here and the wife is in Scandinavia.

  2. big_D Silver badge

    Text message?

    Wow, how 1990s of you. I think I've sent 1 SMS in the last 12 months, and that was because I lost the email address of the phone's owner.

    I generally use Threema or Signal these days.

    1. JohnFen

      Re: Text message?

      I use text messaging daily -- by doing that, I don't have to expose myself to even more slurpage by even more companies, and I don't have to worry about who is using what (if any) messaging platform.

      Texting always works.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Text message?

        I would like to use Signal more, but only a handful of my friends use it, and attempts to encourage others to join still fall on deaf ears.

        For obvious reasons, I don’t and won’t use Facebook’s WhatsApp, so, yes, plain old (but standard old) text messages it often is (and I still have a couple of friends who see no need for a smart phone (unfortunately, in my opinion)).

        (For communicating with other iOS friends, iMessage is pretty nice, even if it’s not as security minded as Signal, unfortunately.)

    2. phuzz Silver badge

      Re: Text message?

      I have a friend who's recently moved house, and doesn't have internet yet, so, she keeps going over her data allowance and has to resort to texts. I have other friends who have old phones that can't run a messaging program, again, texts work just fine.

      Texting works in some situations where other messaging programs don't, hence, it still has a place.

  3. Radio Wales
    Mushroom

    It is hard to forgive

    M$ have succeeded again in making me wonder where their heads are.

    First they spend millions trying to float the Windows phone and as soon as I get one - they - calm as you like - announce they are dropping support for them.

    So this is 'Plan B' then? (or Plan C?) a generation behind everyone else - and still not working yet. What have they been doing with all their ill-gotten gains?

    They would need to pay for my holidays to tempt me to use any of their apps again, especially if it had the word 'Phone' in it.

  4. BenDwire Silver badge
    WTF?

    No thanks...

    I'll just keep using AirDroid.

  5. Avatar of They
    Happy

    Title.

    "Admittedly, those days were already over as soon as a user worked out which way round to plug in a USB cable."

    Brilliantly put and so true.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      After plugging in a USB cable

      Although I prefer iOS to Android, it is definitely one of the most frustrating things about iOS devices that they don’t just show up as a file system when you connect them to a computer.

      That and the fact you can’t just Bluetooth stuff to other friends’ phones, AirDrop is a pointlessly reinvented square wheel, bah!

  6. Warm Braw

    Android Messages

    First I'd heard of it, but it sounds remarkably clunky:

    You can pair your Messages account on multiple devices, but only one will be active at a time. When you open Messages for web on a computer, your conversations on any other computers or browser tabs will become inactive.

    Judging by the frequency with which Google's security decides I'm logging in from an unknown device since my security involves not storing their cookies, it promises to be a nightmare of unusability. I'm sure even Microsoft will be able to do better.

  7. IGnatius T Foobar !

    AirDroid

    All of this "integration" is already available for free with the AirDroid app, and it doesn't require any software on the desktop other than a web browser.

    1. 27escape

      Re: AirDroid consider pushbullet

      Pushbullet also allows me to send/receive SMS and push webpages between devices and broswers and direct message other pushbullet users, works well enough

  8. Flakk

    The vision of the Your Phone technology is to allow access to Microsoft to slurp text messages, photos and notifications from an Android or iOS device on a Windows 10 desktop, without having to plug the thing in.

  9. Gordon 10

    photo uploader!!!!

    You mean it does exactly the same job as the OneDrive App?

    Except with that I get almost immediate sync with all my online devices iOS, Macos and Winderrz.

    Why on earth did they start with such redundant functionality?

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