this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2023
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I never understood the complaint. If iPhone users don't like the way Apple messaging works with Android contacts, they can just use an alternative like Whatsapp. Right?
I'm my experience, if iPhone users don't like the way Apple messaging works with Android contacts, they bitch at the person using Android telling them to get an iPhone.
It's interesting how different the experience is inside the US vs the rest of the world. In Europe, where Android holds a majority, basically everyone is using 3rd party chat apps like WhatsApp, Signal, etc...
It is very interesting, I'm south american in my country in particular, everyone uses 3rd party as well, mostly WhatsApp and Telegram (although they are on the rocks legally right now), no one really natively texts anymore. That's for company automated texts, like Google verification codes and spam.
That's not really because of the Apple vs Android ecosystem wars though. My understanding is that most of Europe uses third party apps because, at least until recently, pricing for phone and text plans was exorbitant, when considering that many Europeans are "roaming" and communicating with people in adjacent countries.
Oh yeah true forgot about that part. Pricing for phone and text plans within a country weren't the issue but across country was (and still is) is super costly and in Europe especially close to borders it's quite common to have friends and family that lives in another country, so having a cheap/free way to message them is also what gave rise to 3rd party messaging apps ^^
It doesn't even occur to them that they also break features on the Android users' ends as well, but I only see iPhone users complaining. It really isn't that big of a deal to share a file over SMS/MMS with a link rather than trying to share the actual file directly. Is that difficult to do on an iPhone?
My dad likes to send me videos. He sent me one yesterday... It seemed like he was at a harbor by the 8 pixels that got through
He also frequently emails me from his phone. I used to ask him to send videos to my email. Even tried to coach him through the process -surely they must have a share button?
I think iPhones are designed around the idea that "either it just works, or you shouldn't be doing it at all".
Even my technical friends seem to forget the fact they understand how all of this works the minute they look at their phone - I had to coach one through uploading a larger video to Google drive and sending me the link. My brother in Christ, we use GitHub together. We use Google meets regularly. We used Dropbox in college. Why are you acting like I told you to put it on a flash drive and mail it to me?
Photos you can share using iCloud links, you have to go into the Photos app and share from there instead of adding the photo from Messages, otherwise it looks like it will try to share as MMS (I haven't tested actually sending it). But that's similar on Android as well, right? I've never used SMS on Android anyway when I could avoid it, always another messenger. One of those other messengers is just built into the iPhone and exclusive to it, for better or worse.
Apparently the EU is trying to make Apple open iMessage up to Android (link). We'll see what comes of that. More interoperability is always good either way.
Oh that would be some progress.
It's mostly an issue that android users in the US don't use what's app
Facebook Messenger is more popular than WhatsApp here. So it's not like there aren't alternatives.
The point is that it's not really Android users' problem. There are options for iPhone users and, yes, if they really want to use the native iPhone messaging app they can complain to Tim Apple. Cc: @[email protected]
Yeah that's what I'm saying. Android users themselves don't care about modern messaging features. Some people do tho.
Are you implying that the RCS that comes with Google Messages is significantly less modern than whatever ships with iPhones?
Edit: Or, are you saying that most Android users wouldn't care if that was the case?
RCS is less “modern” or at least feature full compared to iMessage or at least was last I checked which was last year at some point. Group chats weren’t encrypted is a big one and it doesn’t interact with other apps the way iMessage can with apple wallet etc
The app integration is fine, although I don't know what integration with a payment app is supposed to accomplish. I was confused about it when Signal tried to incorporate a payment feature. Rcs group chat encryption is supposed to be there, but I don't have any groups to test it where everyone is using a compatible messaging app.
Or they can bitch at Apple to fix their SMS/MMS problems.
Why would anyone want to sms? Modern messaging is much nicer experience.
Their problem is that iMessage falls back to that instead of them adopting RCS, and treats MMS in particular way worse (terrible image quality, etc)
They could still keep iMessage, but just automatically fall back to RCS instead of SMS/MMS. God forbid!
None of my android friends use RCS
I don’t want to sms, but also a lot of my friends aren’t techies, not to mention my family. Convincing them all to download and use the same messaging app is just not going to happen.
Apple has a SMS/MMS problem the same way some people have a rodent problem.
I mean the right answer is something like Signal, but you have to really beat on people for that.
I tried for years. I'm over it.