this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2023
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The issue is that if Google does create a competitor, or an open standards competitor is created, like RCS vs iMessage, Apple isn't going to implement that, or in any way interoperate with it. So even if Google or someone else made a better system that worked beautifully on Android and any hypothetical alternatives, but Apple only implemented their own system and refused to share, things would remain shit. Which is exactly where we are.
Apple doesn't want to live in a world where multiple brands and types of mobile phones operating systems exist harmoniously. They want to intentionally make life difficult for anyone who didn't buy an iPhone. In the process they make it intentionally difficult for people who did buy an iPhone, because their communications with non-iPhone friends are hampered.
They're also egging easily influenced teenagers on to shame other teenagers for having "worse" phones and creating unnecessary divides and unhappiness among friends. All so kids will bully other kids into buying iPhones.
None of these features are difficult to invent or implement. They should all be open standards and iPhone users and Android users should all together be angry at Apple for putting a malicious profit motive above the creation of a smooth and universally interoperable user experience.
If Google had a popular competitor to iMessage, Apple users would feel left out, and that's what would force integration.
All they had to do was add sms to one of their chat apps, and people would have migrated over word of mouth for the extra features slowly overtime.
This is uniquely an issue in the U.S. because there are plenty of popular cross-platform competitors that are widely used in Europe: WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram.
iMessage is unpopular in Europe precisely because it's not interoperable and your friend group will look at you funny if you want to use some stupid system that only works on iPhones.
Nobody uses SMS for anything here, aside from notifications from businesses and such.
You just described "Google Hangouts".
Google could have avoided all this many many years ago, but they fucked up big time. In Europe Whatsapp solved this issue, in China Wechat did, in other parts of the world Telegram or Viber or Messanger or some other app did. The reality is, only the US somehow stuck with SMS for the longest time and then transitioned to iMessage as the main IM app, an app that only exists on one platform.
If anyone doubts how poorly Google have managed messaging, they need only to read this article: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/a-decade-and-a-half-of-instability-the-history-of-google-messaging-apps/
It's decades of Google screwing up and shooting themselves in the foot.