Skip to main content

Apple job listing teases further ventures into the world of Android

Apple Music
Bill Roberson/Digital Trends
When Apple announced it would release Apple Music for Android later this year, it represented the company’s first venture into Google’s mobile ecosystem. However, it looks like Apple won’t stop there, based on a recent job listing that the company posted, reports 9to5Mac.

According to the listing, Apple wants to hire an Applications Software Engineer for Android. However, it’s not just for Apple Music, as the company named after a fruit is “looking for engineers to help us bring exciting new mobile products to the Android platform.”

Recommended Videos

Accepting this invitation to speculate, we would wager that the easiest apps Apple could port over are the company’s iWork and iCloud Drive applications. Given Microsoft’s efforts to make sure its Office suite is widely available for mobile, it would make sense for Apple to release its own suite of productivity apps for Android in a bid to stem that tide. Meanwhile, releasing iCloud Drive on Android would give users yet another option for accessing their files.

Of course, Apple could also release a slew of other apps, with Safari, iMessage, and iTunes being prime candidates for a migration. iMessage in particular would be a great move, seeing how people have had problems over the years with users not being able to receive messages from iPhone owners after they decided to use another phone.

Regardless of what other apps Apple might want to move to Android, the company can no longer pretend to ignore Android, with iOS recently losing ground to Google’s mobile operating system in the United States and China, two of the biggest smartphone markets in the world. And developing apps for Android is a pro-consumer move, since customers would no longer be forced to buy Apple devices if they wanted to use apps like Pages on the go from something else.

Apple has yet to reveal what these “new mobile products” are exactly, so only time will tell what other Android developments Apple has up its sleeve.

Williams Pelegrin
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Williams is an avid New York Yankees fan, speaks Spanish, resides in Colorado, and has an affinity for Frosted Flakes. Send…
Why RCS for the iPhone is Apple’s biggest announcement of 2023
A person holding the Apple iPhone 15 Plus.

Hell has frozen over. On November 16, 2023, Apple made the very unexpected announcement that it was bringing support for RCS on the iPhone in 2024.

In 2022, Tim Cook himself said that he’d rather sell you an iPhone instead of ever bringing RCS support to the iPhone because he thought customer demand for RCS wasn’t there. Google has made numerous attempts to shame Apple over its pushback of RCS over the years.

Read more
It’s finally happening — your iPhone is getting RCS in 2024
iMessage on an iPhone 14 Pro Max, plus iMessage on an Android phone using the Beeper app.

Today is a day I truly didn't expect would ever happen. On November 16, 2023, Apple officially confirmed that RCS texting is finally coming to the iPhone in 2024.

Yes, you read that correctly. Starting "later next year," Apple will add RCS support to the iPhone. In other words, if you have an Android phone and are texting someone with an iPhone, you'll be able to text each other over RCS instead of SMS. That means you'll get many iMessage-like features such as typing indicators, read receipts, higher-resolution photo/video sharing, etc.

Read more
One of our favorite Android phones just got its own iMessage app
Nothing Chats app on a. phone.

Nothing is trying to bridge the great blue/green bubble divide for Android users of iMessage. This is not a personal crusade to shatter walls and open windows, as much as Nothing CEO Carl Pei would want you to believe that. Instead, Nothing is piggybacking on tech created by New York-based startup Sunbird. 
Technically, the Sunbird app can be installed on any Android phone and it features a blue bubble for all iMessage text exchanges involving an Android phone. No more green bubble shame that could get you kicked out of groups for disrupting the harmony or even slim your dating chances. That’s how bad it is! 
Nothing is adopting the Sunbird tech and bundling it as its very own app under the name Nothing Chats. But here’s the fun part. The app only works on the Nothing Phone 2 and not the Nothing Phone 1. And this life-altering boon will only be bestowed upon users in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., or the EU bloc.

The app is currently in the beta phase, which means some iMessage features will be broken or absent. Once the app is downloaded on your Nothing Phone 2, you can create a new account or sign up with your Apple ID to get going with blue bubble texts. 
Just in case you’re concerned, all messages will be end-to-end encrypted, and the app doesn’t collect any personal information, such as the users’ geographic location or the texts exchanged. Right now, Sunbird and Nothing have not detailed the iMessage features and those that are broken. 
We made iMessage for Android...
The Washington Post tried an early version of the Nothing Chats app and notes that the blue bubble system works just fine. Texts between an Android device and an iPhone are neatly arranged in a thread, and multimedia exchange is also allowed at full quality. 
However, message editing is apparently not available, and a double-tap gesture for responding with a quick emoji doesn’t work either. We don’t know when these features will be added. Nothing's Sunbird-based app will expand to other territories soon. 
Sunbird, however, offers a handful of other tricks aside from serving the iMessage blue bubble on Android. It also brings all your other messaging apps, such as WhatsApp and Instagram, in one place. This isn’t an original formula, as Beeper offers the same convenience.

Read more