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Me, yesterday:

What’s next for Long, a spot in a Huawei commercial slagging on the Qualcomm modems in iPhones?

Business Insider in 2017:

Justin Long, the actor probably best known for his role as the “I’m a Mac” guy from Apple’s classic TV commercials, is now appearing in a commercial promoting the Huawei Mate 9 Android phone.

 ★ 

Me, yesterday:

What’s next for Long, a spot in a Huawei commercial slagging on the Qualcomm modems in iPhones?

Business Insider in 2017:

Justin Long, the actor probably best known for his role as the “I’m a Mac” guy from Apple’s classic TV commercials, is now appearing in a commercial promoting the Huawei Mate 9 Android phone.

Read More 

The core genius at the heart of the original “Get a Mac” campaign is that while Long’s Mac character was likable, John Hodgman’s PC — ostensibly the foil — was lovable.

At the conclusion of Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon’s keynote yesterday at Computex 2024 in Taipei, he unveiled a new ad starring Justin Long, who played the Mac in Apple’s long-running “Get a Mac” (“I’m a Mac …” / “… and I’m a PC”) campaign in the mid-2000s. The 30-second bit was seemingly removed today, by Qualcomm, from the YouTube video of Amon’s keynote, but there’s a copy of just the ad here. Warning: it’s excruciatingly awkward.

I don’t know what Qualcomm was thinking here (nor what has happened to Long’s acting career), but the most bizarre aspect of this is that Intel used Long in the exact same way just three years ago. I wrote then, of the Intel take on this dumb idea:

I find it cringey, and kind of hard to watch. It’s neither parody
nor sequel. It’s an attempt at comedy from writers who have no
sense of humor. The concept isn’t actually anything beyond
“Let’s hire Justin Long as our new pitchman, that’ll show
them.” One gets the feeling, early on, that there was an
uncomfortable phone call to Justin Long from his agent that
began, “Before you say ‘no’, at least let me tell you how much
money they’re offering.” The concept wouldn’t really work with
anyone other than Justin Long.

Qualcomm’s spot is even worse. The premise is that Long is searching the web for “where can i find a snapdragon powered pc?” because his MacBook is inundating him with a nonstop barrage of notifications and warnings for things like his printer not being found because he’s not connected to Wi-Fi (yet somehow he’s searching the web?), an app that needs to be “optimized” for his Mac, and an email from his mom asking if he’s eaten lunch yet. These supposed technical problems aren’t actually problems on MacOS, and switching to a Snapdragon-powered Windows PC isn’t going to stop his mom from emailing him.

It’s not like there’s a joke here that falls flat. There is no joke, nor even an attempt at one. It’s just “Hey look, we hired the ‘I’m a Mac’ guy.” Even the production values on the commercial are bad. How is Greg Joswiak going to sleep at night?

The core genius at the heart of the original “Get a Mac” campaign is that while Long’s Mac character was likable, John Hodgman’s PC — ostensibly the foil — was downright lovable. In lesser creative hands, the Mac character would’ve been the hero and the PC would’ve been downright loathsome — and the campaign would have consisted of a single ad that ran for one month, tops, and no one would remember it today. Instead, by making Hodgman’s PC the lovable-but-doomed-to-lose protagonist — a la Rodney Dangerfield’s genius can’t-get-no-respect comic persona — the campaign wasn’t just funny, it worked. It actually did what for two decades had seemed impossible — it convinced PC users to switch to the Mac.

In 2020, a year before Justin Long went rogue for Intel, it was Hodgman, solo, whom Apple brought back for a “one more thing” coda to the announcement of the first batch of Apple silicon-based Macs.1 Now that spot was funny, and that’s the character whom everyone remembers with abiding affection.

If Apple were to work in a bit with Hodgman on screen in this Monday’s WWDC keynote, the crowd at Apple Park would go bananas, and the clip would go viral on social media. If they put Long on screen, by himself — which, clearly, after his serial brand betrayals,2 is never going to happen — there’d be a lot of “Who’s that?”

Read More 

Wayne Ma, reporting for The Information (paywalled, alas; 9to5Mac has a summary):

Apple was in talks last year to launch its Apple TV+ video
streaming service in China via a deal with China Mobile, the
country’s largest telecommunications provider, according to people
with knowledge of the matter. If successful, the talks would make
Apple TV+ the only U.S. streaming service to be available in
China, one of the world’s biggest markets. The status of the talks
is unknown. […]

Under the terms of the deal being discussed last year, China
Mobile would offer Apple TV+ for a monthly fee and feature Apple’s
video content prominently on Mobile HD, a set-top box that is
included with China Mobile’s broadband service. Apple and China
Mobile would split revenue from Apple TV+ subscriptions, the
person said.

Apple charges $9.99 for its video streaming service in the U.S.,
but it would likely have to charge less in China due to the weaker
purchasing power of its consumers. For example, Apple Music costs
only $1.55 a month in China, compared with $10.99 in the U.S.
Video-streaming subscription services in China cost anywhere from
between $3 to $5 a month on average.

Ma focuses on the business implications of such a deal. My mind wonders about the content implications. Remember this report by Alex Kantrowitz and John Paczkowski for BuzzFeed News back in 2019, with the subhead “We thought trade would bring Western values to China. Instead, it brought Chinese values to Apple”:

In early 2018 as development on Apple’s slate of exclusive Apple
TV+ programming was underway, the company’s leadership gave
guidance to the creators of some of those shows to avoid
portraying China in a poor light, BuzzFeed News has learned.
Sources in position to know said the instruction was communicated
by Eddy Cue, Apple’s SVP of internet software and services, and
Morgan Wandell, its head of international content development. It
was part of Apple’s ongoing efforts to remain in China’s good
graces after a 2016 incident in which Beijing shut down
Apple’s iBooks Store and iTunes Movies six months after they
debuted in the country. […]

Apple’s tiptoeing around the Chinese government isn’t unusual in
Hollywood. It’s an accepted practice. “They all do
it,” one showrunner who was not affiliated with Apple told
BuzzFeed News. “They have to if they want to play in that market.
And they all want to play in that market. Who wouldn’t?”

I wouldn’t. To hell with the money. The entire rest of the world is more than large enough. It’s a disgrace to have rules in place to avoid upsetting the thin-skinned tyrants who rule the largest totalitarian regime in the history of the world. How is it anything less than cowardice to forbid portraying China as the villains in a movie or show when the CCP is, in fact, villainous? Back in 2020 I wrote:

Ben Thompson beat me to the punch on yesterday’s edition of
Dithering, observing that a rule like this about Russia
during the Cold War would have blocked the entire James Bond
franchise from existing, not to mention just about any lesser spy
movies from the era. Or what of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr.
Strangelove? Like the Soviet Union in the decades after WWII,
China is not some obscure small player on the world stage, and
they systematically do things that deserve to be portrayed “in a
poor light”. To take China off the table is to take much of what’s
going on geopolitically in the world today off the table.

I get it, of course. I don’t agree with it, artistically or
ethically, but I get it: money talks, and China is where Apple
assembles most of its products and a big market where it sells
them, too. But just because it’s so transparently obvious why
Apple would forbid any negative portrayals of China doesn’t make
it any less outrageous. […]

Which studios or streaming services would bankroll today’s
equivalent of Charlie Chaplin’s classic The Great
Dictator, with Xi Jinping in Hitler’s place as the
deserving target of satiric mockery? Netflix — which doesn’t
offer its service in China and has no dependence on
theatrical box office revenue — maybe?

What’s next, removing the Taiwanese flag emoji from the keyboard for users in Hong Kong because Winnie the Xi’s feelings are hurt that Taiwan remains staunchly independent? Oh, wait, that happened 5 years ago.

 ★ 

Wayne Ma, reporting for The Information (paywalled, alas; 9to5Mac has a summary):

Apple was in talks last year to launch its Apple TV+ video
streaming service in China via a deal with China Mobile, the
country’s largest telecommunications provider, according to people
with knowledge of the matter. If successful, the talks would make
Apple TV+ the only U.S. streaming service to be available in
China, one of the world’s biggest markets. The status of the talks
is unknown. […]

Under the terms of the deal being discussed last year, China
Mobile would offer Apple TV+ for a monthly fee and feature Apple’s
video content prominently on Mobile HD, a set-top box that is
included with China Mobile’s broadband service. Apple and China
Mobile would split revenue from Apple TV+ subscriptions, the
person said.

Apple charges $9.99 for its video streaming service in the U.S.,
but it would likely have to charge less in China due to the weaker
purchasing power of its consumers. For example, Apple Music costs
only $1.55 a month in China, compared with $10.99 in the U.S.
Video-streaming subscription services in China cost anywhere from
between $3 to $5 a month on average.

Ma focuses on the business implications of such a deal. My mind wonders about the content implications. Remember this report by Alex Kantrowitz and John Paczkowski for BuzzFeed News back in 2019, with the subhead “We thought trade would bring Western values to China. Instead, it brought Chinese values to Apple”:

In early 2018 as development on Apple’s slate of exclusive Apple
TV+ programming was underway, the company’s leadership gave
guidance to the creators of some of those shows to avoid
portraying China in a poor light, BuzzFeed News has learned.
Sources in position to know said the instruction was communicated
by Eddy Cue, Apple’s SVP of internet software and services, and
Morgan Wandell, its head of international content development. It
was part of Apple’s ongoing efforts to remain in China’s good
graces after a 2016 incident in which Beijing shut down
Apple’s iBooks Store and iTunes Movies six months after they
debuted in the country. […]

Apple’s tiptoeing around the Chinese government isn’t unusual in
Hollywood. It’s an accepted practice. “They all do
it,” one showrunner who was not affiliated with Apple told
BuzzFeed News. “They have to if they want to play in that market.
And they all want to play in that market. Who wouldn’t?”

I wouldn’t. To hell with the money. The entire rest of the world is more than large enough. It’s a disgrace to have rules in place to avoid upsetting the thin-skinned tyrants who rule the largest totalitarian regime in the history of the world. How is it anything less than cowardice to forbid portraying China as the villains in a movie or show when the CCP is, in fact, villainous? Back in 2020 I wrote:

Ben Thompson beat me to the punch on yesterday’s edition of
Dithering, observing that a rule like this about Russia
during the Cold War would have blocked the entire James Bond
franchise from existing, not to mention just about any lesser spy
movies from the era. Or what of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr.
Strangelove? Like the Soviet Union in the decades after WWII,
China is not some obscure small player on the world stage, and
they systematically do things that deserve to be portrayed “in a
poor light”. To take China off the table is to take much of what’s
going on geopolitically in the world today off the table.

I get it, of course. I don’t agree with it, artistically or
ethically, but I get it: money talks, and China is where Apple
assembles most of its products and a big market where it sells
them, too. But just because it’s so transparently obvious why
Apple would forbid any negative portrayals of China doesn’t make
it any less outrageous. […]

Which studios or streaming services would bankroll today’s
equivalent of Charlie Chaplin’s classic The Great
Dictator, with Xi Jinping in Hitler’s place as the
deserving target of satiric mockery? Netflix — which doesn’t
offer its service in China and has no dependence on
theatrical box office revenue — maybe?

What’s next, removing the Taiwanese flag emoji from the keyboard for users in Hong Kong because Winnie the Xi’s feelings are hurt that Taiwan remains staunchly independent? Oh, wait, that happened 5 years ago.

Read More 

Lora Kolodny, reporting for CNBC:

On Tesla’s first-quarter earnings call in April, Musk
said the electric vehicle company will increase the number of
active H100s — Nvidia’s flagship artificial intelligence chip — from 35,000 to 85,000 by the end of this year. He also
wrote in a post on X a few days later that Tesla
would spend $10 billion this year “in combined training and
inference AI.”

But emails written by Nvidia senior staff and widely shared inside
the company suggest that Musk presented an exaggerated picture of
Tesla’s procurement to shareholders. Correspondence from Nvidia
staffers also indicates that Musk diverted a sizable shipment of
AI processors that had been reserved for Tesla to his social media
company X, formerly known as Twitter. […]

By ordering Nvidia to let privately held X jump the line ahead of
Tesla, Musk pushed back the automaker’s receipt of more than $500
million in graphics processing units, or GPUs, by months, likely
adding to delays in setting up the supercomputers Tesla says it
needs to develop autonomous vehicles and humanoid robots.

The argument against one person being the CEO of multiple companies is generally about distraction/attention — that each CEO gig demands all of one’s available time. But here’s a case where two of Musk’s companies are in direct conflict with each other. Musk seemingly treats all of his companies as subsidiaries of his own personal fiefdom conglomerate, but that’s not the case. And unlike X Corp, Tesla Motors is publicly traded.

Matt Levine, in his Money Stuff column:

The extremely obvious answer is that you should not be the CEO and
controlling shareholder of two different companies that compete
for the same inputs! There is not a good answer! You can’t,
like, put this problem into the Good Governance Machine and have
it come out clean. The problem is that you have a fiduciary
obligation to the shareholders of one company to put their
interests first, and you have a fiduciary obligation to the
shareholders of the other company to put their interests first,
and you cannot do both. This is why one person is not usually the
CEO of two different companies that compete with each other, and,
when someone is, people get mad at him all the time.

I can’t recall a situation like this when, say, Jack Dorsey was CEO of Twitter and Square, or, going back further, when Steve Jobs was CEO of Apple and Pixar. In those cases it was more like an athlete who played two different sports, like Bo Jackson or Deion Sanders. Fans of one their teams might argue that they could do even better in that one sport by concentrating on it year-round, but you couldn’t argue that the Kansas City Royals were competing against the Oakland Raiders. With Musk and AI, it’s like he’s playing on several competing teams within the same league.

 ★ 

Lora Kolodny, reporting for CNBC:

On Tesla’s first-quarter earnings call in April, Musk
said the electric vehicle company will increase the number of
active H100s — Nvidia’s flagship artificial intelligence chip — from 35,000 to 85,000 by the end of this year. He also
wrote in a post on X a few days later that Tesla
would spend $10 billion this year “in combined training and
inference AI.”

But emails written by Nvidia senior staff and widely shared inside
the company suggest that Musk presented an exaggerated picture of
Tesla’s procurement to shareholders. Correspondence from Nvidia
staffers also indicates that Musk diverted a sizable shipment of
AI processors that had been reserved for Tesla to his social media
company X, formerly known as Twitter. […]

By ordering Nvidia to let privately held X jump the line ahead of
Tesla, Musk pushed back the automaker’s receipt of more than $500
million in graphics processing units, or GPUs, by months, likely
adding to delays in setting up the supercomputers Tesla says it
needs to develop autonomous vehicles and humanoid robots.

The argument against one person being the CEO of multiple companies is generally about distraction/attention — that each CEO gig demands all of one’s available time. But here’s a case where two of Musk’s companies are in direct conflict with each other. Musk seemingly treats all of his companies as subsidiaries of his own personal fiefdom conglomerate, but that’s not the case. And unlike X Corp, Tesla Motors is publicly traded.

Matt Levine, in his Money Stuff column:

The extremely obvious answer is that you should not be the CEO and
controlling shareholder of two different companies that compete
for the same inputs! There is not a good answer! You can’t,
like, put this problem into the Good Governance Machine and have
it come out clean. The problem is that you have a fiduciary
obligation to the shareholders of one company to put their
interests first, and you have a fiduciary obligation to the
shareholders of the other company to put their interests first,
and you cannot do both. This is why one person is not usually the
CEO of two different companies that compete with each other, and,
when someone is, people get mad at him all the time.

I can’t recall a situation like this when, say, Jack Dorsey was CEO of Twitter and Square, or, going back further, when Steve Jobs was CEO of Apple and Pixar. In those cases it was more like an athlete who played two different sports, like Bo Jackson or Deion Sanders. Fans of one their teams might argue that they could do even better in that one sport by concentrating on it year-round, but you couldn’t argue that the Kansas City Royals were competing against the Oakland Raiders. With Musk and AI, it’s like he’s playing on several competing teams within the same league.

Read More 

New open letter from current and former researchers at OpenAI and Google DeepMind:

AI companies possess substantial non-public information about the capabilities and limitations of their systems, the adequacy of their protective measures, and the risk levels of different kinds of harm. However, they currently have only weak obligations to share some of this information with governments, and none with civil society. We do not think they can all be relied upon to share it voluntarily.

So long as there is no effective government oversight of these corporations, current and former employees are among the few people who can hold them accountable to the public. Yet broad confidentiality agreements block us from voicing our concerns, except to the very companies that may be failing to address these issues. Ordinary whistleblower protections are insufficient because they focus on illegal activity, whereas many of the risks we are concerned about are not yet regulated. Some of us reasonably fear various forms of retaliation, given the history of such cases across the industry.

The 7 named signers are all former OpenAI or Google DeepMind employees. The 6 anonymous signers are all currently at OpenAI.

See also: Techmeme’s roundup of coverage and commentary.

 ★ 

New open letter from current and former researchers at OpenAI and Google DeepMind:

AI companies possess substantial non-public information about the capabilities and limitations of their systems, the adequacy of their protective measures, and the risk levels of different kinds of harm. However, they currently have only weak obligations to share some of this information with governments, and none with civil society. We do not think they can all be relied upon to share it voluntarily.

So long as there is no effective government oversight of these corporations, current and former employees are among the few people who can hold them accountable to the public. Yet broad confidentiality agreements block us from voicing our concerns, except to the very companies that may be failing to address these issues. Ordinary whistleblower protections are insufficient because they focus on illegal activity, whereas many of the risks we are concerned about are not yet regulated. Some of us reasonably fear various forms of retaliation, given the history of such cases across the industry.

The 7 named signers are all former OpenAI or Google DeepMind employees. The 6 anonymous signers are all currently at OpenAI.

See also: Techmeme’s roundup of coverage and commentary.

Read More 

Jennifer Maloney, reporting for The Wall Street Journal (News+):

There is a new contender in the cola wars, and it isn’t a cola.
It’s Dr Pepper.

The 139-year-old soda brand is now tied with Pepsi-Cola as the No.
2 carbonated soft drink brand in America behind Coke. The regular
versions of Pepsi and Dr Pepper are neck and neck in a spot that
Pepsi has held nearly every year for the past four decades,
according to sales-volume data from Beverage Digest.

Dr Pepper’s new ranking follows a steady climb over the past 20
years. Its ascent is a product of big marketing investments, novel
flavors and a quirk in Dr Pepper’s distribution that has put it on
more soda fountains than any other soft drink in the U.S. At the
same time, consumption of regular Pepsi has fallen as its drinkers
switch to Pepsi Zero Sugar or migrate to other drinks.

The overall Pepsi brand, including Diet Pepsi and Pepsi Zero
Sugar, remains the No. 2 soda trademark in the U.S., though its
market share has been slipping. Coke is the largest, with more
than twice the market share by volume of any of its rivals.

I seldom drink sugared soda anymore, but when I do, I’ve had a lifelong affection for both Coke and Dr Pepper. (If you’re at a place that lets you pour your own fountain drinks, trying mixing Coke and Dr Pepper half-and-half — delicious.) And I’ve always despised both the taste and branding of Pepsi. Dr Pepper, on the other hand, has long handled its status as the upstart in a fun way.

Via Kevin Drum, who, like me, is surprised that the no-sugar variants of these brands aren’t more popular.

Lastly, from the DF archive back in 2003: “Pop Culture”.

 ★ 

Jennifer Maloney, reporting for The Wall Street Journal (News+):

There is a new contender in the cola wars, and it isn’t a cola.
It’s Dr Pepper.

The 139-year-old soda brand is now tied with Pepsi-Cola as the No.
2 carbonated soft drink brand in America behind Coke. The regular
versions of Pepsi and Dr Pepper are neck and neck in a spot that
Pepsi has held nearly every year for the past four decades,
according to sales-volume data from Beverage Digest.

Dr Pepper’s new ranking follows a steady climb over the past 20
years. Its ascent is a product of big marketing investments, novel
flavors and a quirk in Dr Pepper’s distribution that has put it on
more soda fountains than any other soft drink in the U.S. At the
same time, consumption of regular Pepsi has fallen as its drinkers
switch to Pepsi Zero Sugar or migrate to other drinks.

The overall Pepsi brand, including Diet Pepsi and Pepsi Zero
Sugar, remains the No. 2 soda trademark in the U.S., though its
market share has been slipping. Coke is the largest, with more
than twice the market share by volume of any of its rivals.

I seldom drink sugared soda anymore, but when I do, I’ve had a lifelong affection for both Coke and Dr Pepper. (If you’re at a place that lets you pour your own fountain drinks, trying mixing Coke and Dr Pepper half-and-half — delicious.) And I’ve always despised both the taste and branding of Pepsi. Dr Pepper, on the other hand, has long handled its status as the upstart in a fun way.

Via Kevin Drum, who, like me, is surprised that the no-sugar variants of these brands aren’t more popular.

Lastly, from the DF archive back in 2003: “Pop Culture”.

Read More 

In iOS 17, Apple introduced an all-new design in Messages for adding attachments like photos or stickers. Everything you can attach — new images from Camera, old images from your Photos library, location-sharing, stickers, or iMessage “apps” — is accessed from an unusual-looking menu that opens when you tap the “+” button. Just one button, “+”, that opens a menu with everything. It’s an unusual-looking menu. It’s simple, and while not flashy, it’s not unattractive — but it doesn’t look or feel like any other menu or scrolling list in iOS. Even after almost year of using it (dating back to iOS 17 betas) I still think it looks … unfinished? Like an early mockup that hasn’t yet been polished or refined. I’m genuinely curious if we will see more menus like this in iOS 18, or if this unique design only lasts one year and Apple comes up with something better (or at least more consistent with the rest of the system).

The number one complaint people have with this menu is that in earlier versions of iOS, it was easier to get to the Photo library picker, because there was a dedicated button for it. The new design is a much better presentation for the entire plethora of attachment types, but it adds an extra step to get to your own photos.

But, there’s a shortcut: long-press on the “+” button and you’ll jump right to the photo picker. (Also, you can long-press then drag to reorder the items in the menu itself.)

 ★ 

In iOS 17, Apple introduced an all-new design in Messages for adding attachments like photos or stickers. Everything you can attach — new images from Camera, old images from your Photos library, location-sharing, stickers, or iMessage “apps” — is accessed from an unusual-looking menu that opens when you tap the “+” button. Just one button, “+”, that opens a menu with everything. It’s an unusual-looking menu. It’s simple, and while not flashy, it’s not unattractive — but it doesn’t look or feel like any other menu or scrolling list in iOS. Even after almost year of using it (dating back to iOS 17 betas) I still think it looks … unfinished? Like an early mockup that hasn’t yet been polished or refined. I’m genuinely curious if we will see more menus like this in iOS 18, or if this unique design only lasts one year and Apple comes up with something better (or at least more consistent with the rest of the system).

The number one complaint people have with this menu is that in earlier versions of iOS, it was easier to get to the Photo library picker, because there was a dedicated button for it. The new design is a much better presentation for the entire plethora of attachment types, but it adds an extra step to get to your own photos.

But, there’s a shortcut: long-press on the “+” button and you’ll jump right to the photo picker. (Also, you can long-press then drag to reorder the items in the menu itself.)

Read More 

My thanks to Atoms for sponsoring last week at DF to promote their second collaboration with Marques Brownlee, the limited edition Model 251.1. Matte black high-tops with reflective details and red highlights (natch, for MKBHD), they blend function and style. Designed for everyday comfort, the 251.1 also includes a water-repellent upper and membrane, making it one of the most versatile sneakers you can own.

I’m wearing a pair as I type this, and feel cooler than I have any right to feel at my age. These are great sneakers.

 ★ 

My thanks to Atoms for sponsoring last week at DF to promote their second collaboration with Marques Brownlee, the limited edition Model 251.1. Matte black high-tops with reflective details and red highlights (natch, for MKBHD), they blend function and style. Designed for everyday comfort, the 251.1 also includes a water-repellent upper and membrane, making it one of the most versatile sneakers you can own.

I’m wearing a pair as I type this, and feel cooler than I have any right to feel at my age. These are great sneakers.

Read More 

A bunch of inspiring choices, as usual, including previous DF sponsors Procreate and Copilot.

 ★ 

A bunch of inspiring choices, as usual, including previous DF sponsors Procreate and Copilot.

Read More 

Michael Kan, PC Mag:

On Friday, the ICQ website posted a simple message: “ICQ
will stop working from June 26.” It now recommends users migrate
to the messaging platforms from VK, the Russian social media
company that acquired ICQ from AOL in 2010, but under a different
corporate name.

It’s an unceremonious end for a software program that helped kick
off instant messaging on PCs in the 1990s. ICQ, which stands for
“I Seek You,” was originally developed at an Israeli company
called Mirabilis before AOL bought it in 1998 for $407
million.

Perhaps no area of computing was more disrupted by the smartphone revolution than messaging. Pre-mobile, “instant messaging” had a surprising number of popular platforms. AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) was tops amongst my cohort, almost certainly because Apple’s iChat — the Mac-only predecessor to the app we now call Messages — started in 2002 exclusively as an AIM client. But Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, and ICQ were all popular too. The list of protocols that the popular Mac chat app Adium supported was very long.

They all worked more or less the same way, and using any of these protocols was a lot like messaging today with iMessage, WhatsApp, or Signal. But there was one big difference: with the old “instant” messengers, you were only available while your computer was online. And even then, you could set your “status” — green for “sure, hit me up, I’m free”, and red for “I’m online, but don’t bother me right now”. And if you quit your messaging client or, you know, closed your laptop, poof, you were offline and unavailable.

If you wanted to contact someone asynchronously, you sent them an email. If you wanted to chat with messaging, you both needed to be online simultaneously. Modern messaging is like a cross between email and instant messaging: you can chat, live, just like with instant messaging, but you can send a new message any time you want. There is no distinction between your being “online” or “offline”. You are just an identity with modern messaging, not a presence.

You can see why modern messaging platforms took over. Always-available protocols were destined to win out over only-available-when-you’re-logged-in protocols. And the nature of how smartphones work compared to PCs made the transition swift. But you can also see why classic instant messaging platforms evoke nostalgia: it was nice to be able to go offline.

 ★ 

Michael Kan, PC Mag:

On Friday, the ICQ website posted a simple message: “ICQ
will stop working from June 26.” It now recommends users migrate
to the messaging platforms from VK, the Russian social media
company that acquired ICQ from AOL in 2010, but under a different
corporate name.

It’s an unceremonious end for a software program that helped kick
off instant messaging on PCs in the 1990s. ICQ, which stands for
“I Seek You,” was originally developed at an Israeli company
called Mirabilis before AOL bought it in 1998 for $407
million.

Perhaps no area of computing was more disrupted by the smartphone revolution than messaging. Pre-mobile, “instant messaging” had a surprising number of popular platforms. AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) was tops amongst my cohort, almost certainly because Apple’s iChat — the Mac-only predecessor to the app we now call Messages — started in 2002 exclusively as an AIM client. But Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, and ICQ were all popular too. The list of protocols that the popular Mac chat app Adium supported was very long.

They all worked more or less the same way, and using any of these protocols was a lot like messaging today with iMessage, WhatsApp, or Signal. But there was one big difference: with the old “instant” messengers, you were only available while your computer was online. And even then, you could set your “status” — green for “sure, hit me up, I’m free”, and red for “I’m online, but don’t bother me right now”. And if you quit your messaging client or, you know, closed your laptop, poof, you were offline and unavailable.

If you wanted to contact someone asynchronously, you sent them an email. If you wanted to chat with messaging, you both needed to be online simultaneously. Modern messaging is like a cross between email and instant messaging: you can chat, live, just like with instant messaging, but you can send a new message any time you want. There is no distinction between your being “online” or “offline”. You are just an identity with modern messaging, not a presence.

You can see why modern messaging platforms took over. Always-available protocols were destined to win out over only-available-when-you’re-logged-in protocols. And the nature of how smartphones work compared to PCs made the transition swift. But you can also see why classic instant messaging platforms evoke nostalgia: it was nice to be able to go offline.

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