You know what's funny here? You seem to be actively defending their decision and putting it in the vein of "well they sell hardware so they are going to do anything they can to get you to use their hardware!!". And that's supposed to make it OK? Fuck that logic.

As other people have mentioned, if iMessage would have opened up to other platforms it would probably be what everyone uses and would be GOOD FOR EVERYONE. But instead, they wall it to their shit. My mom constantly tells me she doesn't get my text messages from android to her 100% apple ecosystem. I can't do anything about it. It doesn't make any sense, but it's on Apple. They probably even leave these "unfixed issues" to get everyone to move to imessage just so they will buy their hardware.

Fuck Apple for their decision on this. Stop defending it. It's a horrible decision.