Apple Music on Android Testing Support for Android Tablets

Even the peasants have Apple Music now.

It's been available on Android tablets since the Android app launched, you mean to say they are getting around to optimizing the app for tablets specifically which is new.

And while I agree I don't foresee them doing it voluntarily I do see RCS at least being somewhat of a pending competition and it wouldn't hurt to incentivize people to more exclusive features of Apple through freebies like iMessage that if offered, would eradicate WhatsApp rapidly. Also on the security portion of it, RCS isn't encrypted and that could be another push. Apple is running into shallow water with the prices of their phones putting them out of reach of even beginning to get into the ecosystem to enjoy the full benefits let alone partial ones. It's theories really but I do see just reasons for them to open the gates, even if it's watered down.

I just remembered that Steve Jobs said FaceTime would be open source when it was announced, but I believe that never happened due to a patent dispute. I don't know if I missed that being mentioned in the discussion. Apple has been getting more aggressive in the services arena, so it's not impossible.

Apple's showing more support for Android tablets than most Android devs.

I'm surprised there wasn't already a tablet app.

I don’t believe many apps on Android have app specifically designed for tablets. That’s an Apple thing. They generally just scale up the size.

Well yes iTunes was a great source of media management but you aren't required to own an iPod to use it, granted it does have a revenue generating effect. But to the point of them not being able to split time, they seem to do it just fine with their services that run on Windows and I doubt their overly saturated developer infrastructure would be taxed by taking on something that isn't a wild goose chase for once. Apple picks up and drops new ideas and avenues for products internally on a daily basis and after working with them for over 3 years this would really not be a detriment to dedicate some resources to something long term that's got 95% of the groundwork covered as it is. There is also co-development that already exists to handle their own stuff that does exist like this already to cover both sides of things. They "don't" store any of those features, the backend of the work is through their already optimized systems that don't cost any more to operate than they do now and they already have a capacity to (and do) handle continents worth of traffic that would be generated for the handshakes of device-to-device while the majority of the workload (data) is handed off to the service providers.

iMessages and FaceTime would both consume additional resources on Apple's servers that you seem to be ignoring as well. Who is going to pay for that?

As far as free services offered beyond the Apple ecosystem being a bad idea, for who exactly? For Apple, possibly. But how would that not be beneficial to anyone else to have a universalized system? iTunes is free and I don't see anyone complaining about how unfair that is for Apple's business.

Lol, I’m gonna go ahead and let you use your own critical thinking skills on this one... but I think it’s fair to say that nobody was choosing whether to buy a Windows PC or a Mac PC based on whether iTunes was available.
Further... again, iTunes is free.
A service like iMessage costs Apple a lot of money to provide. They gladly absorb that cost, as the users that benefit from it have paid them for hardware. Essentially, they already paid for it!
OF COURSE it would be handy for Android users, were Apple to pick up the tab for hosting iMessage for them & pass that expense on to people buying iPhones... but why on earth would they do that????
That would be a really really really unheard of stupid business decision.
This is the equivalent of you hearing that Apple has a promotion where if you purchase a MacBook Pro you get a free pair of Beats & saying: “Apple should really offer a free pair of Beats to anyone that buys a Surface as well!”.
Lol. Like... wtf?? Why would Apple literally PAY for someone to use a different platform?
Making paid services available to as many as possible is great business, making free services free for other platforms would be the height of insanity.