14 DAY TRIAL // In a rare move, this week WhatsApp singled out iOS with the release of a web tool that mirrors users’ incoming and outgoing messages, allowing for a faster input method when in front of a computer.
The web-based WhatsApp is fairly easy to pick up and use. There's QR code scanner built into the updated app. You use it to point your phone’s camera at the code displayed on web.whatsapp.com and the page instantly turns into a chat window.
Easier said than done on iOS platforms, which WhatsApp decided to leave out of this equation. Normally iOS users are the first to get anything new out of the IM service, but not this time around, apparently.
“Platform limitations”
While the service works well (from what we’ve heard) on Android, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry, on Apple devices there seems to be a roadblock set in place by Apple that prevents the service from being used with an iOS client of WhatsApp.
According to the app’s developers, “Unfortunately for now, we will not be able to provide web client to our iOS users due to Apple platform limitations.”
The WhatsApp team doesn’t specify what those limitations are. Seeing how WhatsApp Web works almost identically to a remote-computing client like Parallels Access or Chrome Remote Desktop, we’re left to assume it might have something to do with Apple’s own solution: iMessage.
Apple is known to be overly protective of its services, and whenever someone steps in with a replica, the company tends to keep the gates closed. This is mere speculation on our behalf, mind you.
Potential security concerns
Another theory is that Apple somehow finds this product unsafe, and prevents the OS (via software) from using the service as designed by WhatsApp engineers.
Developer Lars Schütze opines on Twitter that “They seem to tunnel the data from the phone to the browser.”
We’ve reached out to WhatsApp for comment but we have yet to receive a reply. In the interim, you can learn more about the service here: WhatsApp Messenger Web App Now Available.
@CosminVasile @Manu343726 They seem to tunnel the data from the phone to the browser. Don't like the approach as well as it fails on iOS.
— Lars Schütze (@larsschuetze) January 21, 2015