And it was first hosted at OpenDarwin — which was Apple-run and not available for arbitrary public hosting.

It was then hosted at OpenDarwin’s successor — Mac OS Forge. That was also Apple-run and not available for arbitrary project hosting.

MacPorts was an Apple-authored and ultimately Apple-supported project for ~15 years.

As for momentum, the project is still going strong 25 years later, so I’m not really sure what you’re referring to.

The final straw was when we had to hire a fixer to clear up a state regulatory error that would’ve destroyed our business. No amount of calls or letters over months — by me — fixed the issue. The guy we hired got it cleared up in a week.

That’s how I learned firsthand that the more involved the state tries to be in protecting everyone from everything, the more opportunity there is for bad actors and gross inefficiency, and the worse things get.

I would strongly reconsider pivoting unless you actually want to work for no-name companies and on the shady side of technology for at least the next decade.

This is in direct violation of the terms of service, and Apple invests a lot of money in keeping iMessage clean of this kind of misuse.

They control the servers, the client, certificate provisioning, hardware identification, and user identification. They can trivially trace a registered account to the point of sale and the card and PII used to buy the hardware on which the account was registered.

You will fly under the radar for just as long as it takes to annoy enough of their customers that Apple brings down a massive ban hammer.

https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/messages/

Seems pretty damn clear.

Push notifications, attached to an application or website, and controllable by a user on that basis, are the solution for corporate messaging at scale.

This will get you banned. It’s not a question of if, but when. Users will hit the report spam button. Apple will shut you down.

My iMessages are for conversations with people that I actually want to talk to. The notifications are high priority because it’s with people that I want to talk to.

I can’t imagine my annoyance if I were to receive an iMessage notification while I’m expecting an important message, only to find that it’s more spam.

My email inbox is already a wasteland because of this. The absolute last thing I need or want is for the same thing to happen to iMessage.

I don’t need more iMessage spam.

Step 2: Purchase an entire company for a product that, if you squint, might help paper over the entirely predictable problems that arise from using the wrong tools to implement the wrong architecture, because surely the solution isn’t reevaluating your original engineering choices.

Step 3: Perform a buggy, vibe-code rewrite of the tool you just bought. A tool you only need because — for whatever internal political reasons — sunk cost means you can only keep digging.

Step 4: ???

I would like to see some form of IP/property rights applied to user data, with treble damages for willful infringement.

The entire concept of collecting user data and calling it “telemetry” needs to be abandoned — including (especially) in the software industry. Collecting any user data ought to be something that makes corporate lawyers nervous.

Unfortunately, I expect that to happen roughly after hell freezes over.

[1] I couldn’t confirm that any car currently actually does this. Hypothetically, iPhone tethering is possible over both USB and Bluetooth if personal hotspot is enabled.

It’s not hard to get, and you need it to do everything from filling a scheduled prescription, buying alcohol, entering a bar, flying on a plane, or purchasing cold medicine. You literally cannot function as an independent adult without one.

You also need to show it — along with a second form of ID — to be hired at a job.

Anyone claiming a state ID requirement meaningfully prevents anyone from voting is being deeply unserious.

If they actually believed what they claim, they’d be campaigning to remove the ID requirements that are already pervasive in our daily lives. They are not.

I’ll also note that buying a gun requires not just multiple forms of ID, but also an entire background check. If we can do that for one constitutionally enumerated right, we can damn well require a photo ID to cast a ballot.

We can never be perfectly unbiased, but we can certainly try. We dedicated entire higher education programs to the process of doing exactly that — it was called journalism.

(1) Assume they’re irrational, uninformed, and wrong, or

(2) Reconsider your priors and attempt to understand why they think the way that they do.

Let’s take the “island of garbage”. It was said by a comedian during his set. The Trump campaign stated “this joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign”.

The way that you framed it, however, was very careful to be true while also being misleading.

He’s speaking to evangelical Christians that do not regularly vote, and in the context of instituting voter ID to secure future elections.

ID is required to vote in most (all?) EU states.

We’re two years into his term and democracy does not appear to be dismantled, or even remotely at risk of being dismantled. I also expect the same or similar accusations to be leveled at the next Republican candidate, who if elected, will also not “dismantle democracy”.