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Facebook is quite different from this case. If you friends use Facebook to communicate, you need to as well. There is, as far as I know, no alternative. But if your friends use iMessage to communicate, you can easily communicate with them through SMS. Just turn off iMessage, and Apple will recognize this and fallback to SMS. You are not forced to use iMessage just because your friends does.

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You wish Apple would recognize this. But in fact my sister did this, and filled out their web form and did everything else they suggest. And Apple still does not recognize it. (On the inbound side. )

She can text me, but when I or anybody else On an iPhone try to text her it goes to iMessage and she never receives it.

Yes this is "just a bug", but it also seriously promotes lock-in. It's a very strategic bug, and if she hadn't bought a new phone she would probably be back on iMessage.

iMessage is not always a choice, sometimes it's for life whether you wanted it to be or not.

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