Microsoft has simply begun rolling out an up to date model of its Telephone Hyperlink instrument that provides help for the iPhone — together with the power to ship and obtain messages from PCs operating Home windows 11.
This is identical app that confirmed up as an early preview launch in February. That model was successfully a “beta” made obtainable solely to pick Home windows Insiders. At the moment’s launch opens it to all.
Earlier than you get too excited, although, there are fairly a number of limitations to how this works. So, whereas it’s true it is possible for you to to ship and obtain iMessages and SMS/MMS messages by means of your iPhone out of your Home windows PC, that’s just about all the extent of what this app permits.
Put merely, it’s not even near the absolutely built-in expertise of utilizing Apple’s Messages app on a Mac. That’s as a result of Apple isn’t about to let third-party apps play in its iMessage sandbox, so solely Apple’s apps and gadgets can speak to the iMessage servers. Everyone else is left to determine issues out on their very own.
Whereas life could be fantastic if Apple would launch iMessage for different platforms, it appears like it will likely be an ice age in Cupertino earlier than that occurs. Apple is aware of that iMessage quantities to severe lock-in that retains individuals utilizing its merchandise — and shopping for extra of them for his or her youngsters and different relations.
Microsoft’s Telephone Hyperlink isn’t a brand new app; it’s been obtainable to assist Home windows customers sync with Android for a number of years, however that is the primary time it’s welcomed iPhone customers into the fold.
The iPhone help mimics what people have been in a position to do with Android handsets for some time, together with receiving notifications in your desktop, inserting and receiving calls by way of Bluetooth, accessing contacts, and sending and receiving textual content messages. Transferring images can also be supported, however that works by way of iCloud integration within the Home windows 11 Photographs app moderately than transferring photos immediately out of your iPhone to your PC.
Whereas that final level could have you ever questioning how Microsoft has managed to tunnel its manner into Apple’s walled backyard, the reply is definitely easier than you’d count on: Microsoft is strolling by means of a gate that Apple had made obtainable for years.
As a lot as Apple likes to manage issues, it has to make allowances for industry-standard communication options that folks count on from their telephones. For example, no person would need an iPhone if it couldn’t connect with a automotive’s Bluetooth system to make hands-free calls. Likewise, regardless that Apple’s AirPods supply some fairly slick integration with the iPhone, at coronary heart, they’re nonetheless only a pair of Bluetooth headphones.
Alongside the identical traces, the iPhone helps a normal often called the Bluetooth Message Entry Profile (MAP). It’s this extension to the Bluetooth protocol that lets textual content messages out of your telephone seem in your automotive dashboard even while you don’t have CarPlay.
Help for this function goes all the best way again to 2012 when iOS 6 was launched, and it’s been obtainable for each mannequin for the reason that iPhone 4. Apple truly beat Google to this since Bluetooth MAP didn’t come to Android till Android 4.4 “KitKat” debuted in 2013.
For sure, this isn’t a function that Apple is more likely to abandon any time quickly, and though it’s mostly utilized in automobiles, there’s additionally nothing within the Bluetooth spec that claims MAP can be utilized solely with in-car programs.
Therefore, Bluetooth MAP gives a path into the iPhone messaging system, however it’s a reasonably slender one. Solely essentially the most primary messaging options are supported.
For one, Microsoft’s Telephone Hyperlink can’t distinguish between an iMessage or an old-school SMS textual content message. It sees every little thing that comes from the iPhone as merely a “message” and shows all of them in gray bubbles. There’s additionally no help for group chats or wealthy media, which is comprehensible if you concentrate on what you’d sometimes see on a automotive’s dashboard.
There’s additionally no synchronization or downloading of messages out of your iPhone to your Home windows PC. Messages that are available whereas your iPhone is in Bluetooth proximity will seem in your pc, however those who present up whilst you’re out of vary will stay in your iPhone. These are all identified limitations of Bluetooth MAP, which is designed just for transmitting messages to a different machine as quickly as they’re obtained.
Oddly, though Bluetooth MAP has been round on the iPhone since iOS 6, Microsoft notes that Telephone Hyperlink requires an iPhone operating iOS 14 or later. Nonetheless, it is a basic compatibility requirement for the Telephone Hyperlink app as an entire, and it’s doable among the different options could also be depending on iOS 14.