Microsoft has simply begun rolling out an up to date model of its Cellphone Hyperlink device that provides assist 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 out there solely to pick Home windows Insiders. Right this moment’s launch opens it to all.
Earlier than you get too excited, although, there are fairly just a few 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 your iPhone out of your Home windows PC, that’s just about your complete 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 units can speak to the iMessage servers. Everyone else is left to determine issues out on their very own.
Whereas life can be great if Apple would launch iMessage for different platforms, it appears like it is going to be an ice age in Cupertino earlier than that occurs. Apple is aware of that iMessage quantities to critical lock-in that retains folks utilizing its merchandise — and shopping for extra of them for his or her children and different members of the family.
Microsoft’s Cellphone Hyperlink isn’t a brand new app; it’s been out there 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 assist 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 pictures can be supported, however that works by way of iCloud integration within the Home windows 11 Pictures app reasonably than transferring photos straight out of your iPhone to your PC.
Whereas that final level could have you ever questioning how Microsoft has managed to tunnel its approach into Apple’s walled backyard, the reply is definitely easier than you’d count on: Microsoft is strolling by a gate that Apple had made out there for years.
As a lot as Apple likes to regulate issues, it has to make allowances for industry-standard communication options that individuals count on from their telephones. For example, no one would need an iPhone if it couldn’t hook up with a automotive’s Bluetooth system to make hands-free calls. Likewise, despite the fact that Apple’s AirPods provide 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 typical referred to as the Bluetooth Message Entry Profile (MAP). It’s this extension to the Bluetooth protocol that lets textual content messages out of your cellphone seem in your automotive dashboard even whenever you don’t have CarPlay.
Help for this characteristic goes all the way in which again to 2012 when iOS 6 was launched, and it’s been out there for each mannequin because the iPhone 4. Apple really beat Google to this since Bluetooth MAP didn’t come to Android till Android 4.4 “KitKat” debuted in 2013.
Evidently, this isn’t a characteristic that Apple is prone 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 techniques.
Therefore, Bluetooth MAP supplies a path into the iPhone messaging system, however it’s a reasonably slim one. Solely probably the most fundamental messaging options are supported.
For one, Microsoft’s Cellphone Hyperlink can’t distinguish between an iMessage or an old-school SMS textual content message. It sees the whole lot that comes from the iPhone as merely a “message” and shows all of them in gray bubbles. There’s additionally no assist for group chats or wealthy media, which is comprehensible if you consider 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 in whereas your iPhone is in Bluetooth proximity will seem in your laptop, however those who present up whilst you’re out of vary will stay in your iPhone. These are all recognized 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 Cellphone Hyperlink requires an iPhone operating iOS 14 or later. Nonetheless, it is a basic compatibility requirement for the Cellphone Hyperlink app as a complete, and it’s attainable a number of the different options could also be depending on iOS 14.