Apple jumping on the self destructing messaging band wagon in iOS8

Here at Beat The Cyberbully we made the move across to Apple products a few years ago. I (Barry) an ex Microsoft employee no less, ventured across the water when the iPad 2 came out. This was my first Apple product. And from there it’s evolved into the iPhone5s and a 27 inch iMac for the office. I love their products. When I first moved across it was hard. Everyone had spoken about how intuitive it was, but after years of Windows, it’s not intuitive at all. You have to learn how intuitive it is! But once you do, it’s great.

Every year Apple has it’s World Wide Developer Conference which it uses as a platform to let everyone know the latest and greatest that will be coming from the Palo Alto workforce. There has been a tendency to focus more on the consumer rather than the developers that the conference is targeted at. But this year, there was most definitely a focus on the developer as well as the release of iOS8 and Yosemite for the desktops – even better still was the coming together of iOS and OSX to blur the line between the mobile operating platform and the desktop. I particularly like the fact that we will be able to make and receive calls through our iMac as if they are one entity!

Something else that caught our attention though was the announcement that Apple will, rather than innovate and push forwards, copy some functionality already in use in countless Apps on the market, and build self destructing messages into the iMessage platform. Yes that’s right, you know this functionality from our friend Snapchat, who have been touting this as their USP since their release. What’s slightly worrying, is that with their late entry to the market with this, they are providing a service to a better educated market. We are all too aware of the fact that there is no such things as complete anonymity online and that self destructing or disappearing messages never actually self destruct or disappear completely. I question why Apple have gone down this route? It seems to me, completely unnecessary and quite frankly lazy on behalf of Apple.

From the BTCB perspective we want parents to keep an eye out as always – previously we have made you aware of App icons to be aware of if you see them on your children’s devices, but now Apple is building this into the native application. As always we want parents to be active in explaining to their children that self destructing messages will not protect them should they feel the need to use the platform to send derogatory messages or single out other people for ridicule. The message of education and awareness prevails, if they know the ins and outs of the systems, they can use them safely.

Stop | Think | Post most definitely applies and something we tweeted the other day which we took from Kapersky’s blog to bear in mind – ‘If you wouldn’t say it in person, don’t say it online’