The same way you measure anybody else: performance reviews, which are usually executed around here by an administrator or 2 coming to observe a class every semester. Coupled with standardized tests as a secondary measurement, it's pretty easy to tell who's good at their job.
I'm curious if they have a farm of iPhones somewhere to host this off of. They are sending the iMessages from phone numbers -- not email addresses, which means they didn't just get a bunch of Mac Minis and do it the (probably easier) way.
Jailbroken iPhones where you can automate the UI and (maybe?) access any private Messaging API Apple left laying around would make this scalable though.
It uses some combination of the serial number and the NIC (at least on Macs, probably not on iOS) to authenticate with Apple. That's why it's fiddly on Hackintoshes.
They couldn't use the enclave because not all currently supported Macs have it, but maybe in 10 years when all of the old ones fall off the support tree.
MMS and SMS are extremely unreliable, especially if you were out of the coverage area when a message was sent (half the time I only receive some of a conversation and have to try to interpret what happened). RCS is supposed to fix this, but no carrier seems intent on sunsetting SMS to force Apple’s hand. At least with iMessage, I’ll eventually get the message (they’ll hold it server side, encrypted, until I get back online).
I still use SMS a lot, because it’s more important to me that I can talk and send pictures to people than worrying about them being on a certain platform or app (Discord’s notifications aren’t great on mobile if you haven’t opened the app for a while). But it’s super annoying, and if Apple made iMessage an open standard (they probably won’t, since people buy iPhones for it), I think many people on Android would move to it.
The only problem is that any messages that the iPhone received while the middleman was out of range won’t get to your PC, but this’d still be extremely useful for quick replies.
I wonder if the iPhone will accept photos over MAP....
That's interesting, here we use SMS so nobody is left out. You don't have to download an app for it and just about every plan for the last decade has had unlimited texting (or a ridiculously high limit).
I don't know how much Apple has to do with it, I think most of the problem is that SMS is hot trash and nobody seems too concerned with getting a replacement out network-wide (if AT&T said that they were getting rid of SMS for RCS, Apple would build it into the phone. But due to the fragmentation of the current implementation(s), nobody seems too concerned).
Most people don't think about that, they just think green bubble bad, blue bubble good, but this is one of those rare instances where it's actual technical issues causing the hangup.
CDW still sells non smart TV versions of the latest and greatest from the manufacturers for environments that don’t want Samsung coming on the network.
Have you used the ThinkPad X1, or the old-school X220/T420? Those can hold their own with the retina MacBook Pro (display quality notwithstanding), and I'd take any of them over the current-gen with the butterfly keyboard.