Apple gives Mastodon good lovin’ as iMessage gains previews

A new home on Mastodon

While I confess the time I spend on Twitter has been dramatically improved since I blocked Elon Musk from occupying my feed like some Quatermass ego, I’m still putting my hopes into Mastodon for a long term online social experience.

That’s why I’m so pleased to note that Apple has quietly given that service a little more establishment credibility with a brilliant new improvement in iOS 16.4.

iMessage now supports rich content previews for Mastodon

What this means is that when you put a link to a Mastodon post inside of an iMessage the recipient will get a nice rich content preview of that item. This will help boost Mastodon’s profile in a small but profound way, as it means we’ll be able to better pester others into making use of the far superior, Elon Musk free environment.

As 9-5 explains it, the “integration means that when sharing a link to a Mastodon post, iMessage fetches details like the post text, author name, attachments and renders it inline in the conversation thread.”

Hugs and roses

It’s a good nod of support from Apple to benefit the far more independent social network, which is now used by Apple Fellow, Phil Schiller.

I think it’s a welcome improvement.

In other news, iOS 16.4 isn’t yet available as it’s still a developer beta, though a public beta is expected shortly. The other exciting features are better support for web apps and small tweaks to the Apple Music interface.

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