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Comments on “WhatsApp Desktop”
Posts » WhatsApp Desktop » Comments » Comment
Antonio Bustamante@antonio_bustamante · Designer, Engineer at Kite
Essentially a wrapper of their web application. Two big obstacles right now: - Their architecture. Having to depend on my phone to have a Whatsapp conversation is archaic. Sometimes I don't have my phone with me, or it's simply not connected to the same network. - Phone numbers. Whatsapp is obsessed about phone numbers, and they uniquely identify sessions … See more
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Tanmay Desai@tanmaydesai89 · will always go the extra mile.
@antonio_bustamante I don't see them as obstaclrs. 1. Verifying with phone is actually a good security hack, and really easy one. It's like magic password link(Slack). 2. People I care about are in my phonebook, and not on Facebook. Never have I ever added anyone to WhatsApp. Everyone was already there from my phonebook and they keep coming. I guess the o… See more
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Nir Dremer@nird · Co-Founder & CEO, Yodas
@antonio_bustamante Totally Agree. Nice to see an official release but I could not find a single difference from ChitChat (Mac wrapper).
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Chris@christeso · Founder/CEO Chirpify
@antonio_bustamante How is the world moving away from phone numbers?
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Antonio Bustamante@antonio_bustamante · Designer, Engineer at Kite
@christeso Phone numbers change up and down, and they depend on a number of factors. Keeping them is hard if you change operators, and impossible if you change countries. Modern messaging apps rely on email addresses and other identifiers that persist much longer and that allow for more flexibility.
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Chris@christeso · Founder/CEO Chirpify
@antonio_bustamante Interesting. I always thought phone numbers lasted longer than email addresses. Thanks for the thoughts.
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Andreas Duess@andreasduess · CCO, Nourish Food Marketing
@christeso @antonio_bustamante I had my email address for 15 years, in that time I had 4 phone numbers in three countries.
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Michael Lipman@mlipman1
@antonio_bustamante There's a very intentional reason both of those "limitations" exist (phone numbers and phone required). Basically, it makes the technical work much easier if you can depend on that. For example, their new feature of strong encryption by default on all conversations doesn't work if you can log in to your whatsapp account without your phone… See more
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Antonio Bustamante@antonio_bustamante · Designer, Engineer at Kite
@mlipman1 I'm sure this approach is definitely easier from the technical standpoint, but the moment your internal architecture affects the experience of your users, it's time to think it through. There are other ways to achieve end-to-end encryption without depending on your phone; if that weren't the case, Telegram wouldn't exist.
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Mario Scott@mlsj1
@andreasduess @christeso @antonio_bustamante as a percentage of the population, you are rare
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Antonio Bustamante@antonio_bustamante · Designer, Engineer at Kite
@mlsj1 @andreasduess @christeso For this specific case, yes. The broader point, though, is the lack of flexibility involved in depending on phone numbers to uniquely identify users. On top of that, phone numbers lack semantics and identification at first glance. There's a reason why most services will ask you to login with your email, rather than your phone … See more
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Mario Scott@mlsj1
@antonio_bustamante @andreasduess @christeso Well it is the biggest messaging app on the planet. The phone number limitation must not be hurting it that much.
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