Epic croit que Apple a est délibérément tente de piéger ses utilisateurs dans son dispositif environnement et que iMessage est l' un de ses principaux services publics pour réaliser cela.Il fait référence aux remarques faites par Eddie Cue, vice- président principal des applications et services Internet , Craig Federighi , vice- président principal et Phil Schiller Senior Fellow d' Apple pour soutenir son point de vue.
“The #1 most difficult [reason] to leave the Apple universe app is iMessage ... iMessage amounts to serious lock-in,” was how one unnamed former Apple employee put it in an email in 2016, prompting Schiller to respond that, “moving iMessage to Android will hurt us more than help us, this email illustrates why.”
The Federighi's complaint according to the epic filing was: "IMessage for Android will clearly eliminate [a] barrier the families with iPhones give Android phones to their children." While iMessage workarounds on Android have been developed over the years, none of them were especially handy or accurate.
According to Epic’s filing, citing Eddie Cue, Apple decided not to develop iMessage for Android as early as 2013, following the launch of the messaging service with iOS 5 in 2011. Cue admits that Apple “could have made a version on Android that worked with iOS” so that “users of both platforms would have been able to exchange messages with one another seamlessly.” Evidently, such a version was never developed.
Along with iMessage, Epic cites a series of other Apple services that it argues contribute to lock-in. Notably, these include its video chat service FaceTime, which Steve Jobs announced would be an open industry standard back at WWDC 2010. FaceTime subsequently released across iPhones, iPads, and Macs, but it’s not officially available for any non-Apple devices.