> Not only are Apple's services bad, they've becoming inescapable.

As long as you decide to stay in Apple's jail. Next time you need or want a new phone, buy a Pixel 9a for $399 on sale, flash Graphene, and you can be 100% Apple and Google free. It's even better when paired with FOSS apps only like Nextcloud and Home Assistant.

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cdrnsf 14 hours ago | parent [-]

My family has made it clear that I need to be available on iMessage or I'd be right there with you.

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asdff 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Why? There is literally no difference. imessage is seamless with sms and mms.

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drnick1 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

iPhones default to sending plain old texts to non-Apple devices so it's hardly an issue unless you don't have a phone number.

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TheDong 13 hours ago | parent [-]

iMessage and RCS have some very different affordances, and apple keeps it that way to keep people walled into the system.

Most notably, a single non-iMessage member in a group chat will degrade the experience for everyone significantly.

It's very much an issue in the US.

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asdff 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

By "degrade the experience" you mean you get a text that says "TheDong liked $message." The horror! Maybe people will go back to just sending a thumbs up emoji.

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TheDong 9 hours ago | parent [-]

By "degrade the experience" I mean:

1. Unable to remove members, or change member's phone-numbers without recreating the entire chat and losing continuity / bothering everyone with noise about these changes.

2. Green bubbles, so if your teenage child talks in the group chat at school and one of their classmates sees the green bubble, they'll be bullied for the rest of the time in school.

3. Unable to send high quality photos or videos

4. Just plain failure to deliver messages with shocking frequency for a supposedly modern messaging system.

5. RCS still isn't supported by carriers in a bunch of countries, so when one member of the group chat travels, roams to a foreign network that doesn't support RCS, and chats the group chat can split into one for MMS and one for RCS, and then it's a total crapshoot based on network conditions as to which one the messages go to in the future, with messages having now an even higher chance of vanishing into the void.

Basically, it's a subpar experience. Every other group messaging app (signal, whatsapp, etc) works fine on iOS and android, Apple really should be publishing iMessage for Android to solve this. But, due to reason 2 where green bubbles result in becoming a social outcast and being bullied, they of course won't.

Like, signal, a company running on donations iirc, is able to build a messaging app for windows/linux/iOS/android, and yet Apple isn't capable of that? Come on.

	▲	trinix912 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Outside the US people use WhatsApp and other third party messengers so none of that is necessarily a big issue. As for teenagers they mostly use Snapchat and Instagram for groupchats nowadays.

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drnick1 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Then use a vendor-agnostic platform instead for group chats like Signal or Matrix.

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TheDong 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I do with anyone I can. Unfortunately some people I want to chat with (i.e. family) are too scared to install any third-party apps from the app store because each time they tried, they clicked on an app store ad and get garbage instead.

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dodos 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It would be great if people actually did this, but in the US that is not the case. There are only so many people you can convince to move off of their main platform, and usually you have to meet people where they are.

	▲	cdrnsf 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Exactly — I know a good portion of my family simply wouldn't switch. SMS and MMS are also less secure and a poor experience (e.g. photos are often swapped via iMessage).