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Comment by esolyt | Hacker News Reader

Is it really "on top of SMS" though? The way I see, it's just a messaging app like WhatsApp, Telegram etc but they just combined it with the SMS app on their platform.

I am failing to see the additional value of combining them. If Google bought WhatsApp and combined it with the stock SMS app of Android, I don't think I would prefer that.

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One underrated feature of iMessage is graceful degradation. If I'm unable to send/receive data for whatever reason, my message (and their replies) automatically fall back to SMS. There's been a few occasions where this was my only way of communicating important information, so I'm grateful for it.

Does this also apply when the recipient cannot receive data?

Yes. If the message is unable to be delivered to the recipient via iMessage, then it is sent as SMS instead. So for example if you try to send a message to someone and their phone is turned off or doesn’t have signal, it will eventually fail and then send as SMS.

This is all controlled via a setting in iOS iMessage settings “Send as SMS”, which I believe is turned on by default but I’m not sure. So your mileage may vary.

The value to Apple was that if you tried to SMS someone, iPhone would check if the destination phone number was registered with Apple, and silently switch to iMessage via Apple instead.

Cynically, they intercepted millions of people's comms with hardly a murmer. Charitably they switched millions of people from country-dependent, pricey and limited SMS to internet messaging with read receipts, pictures, video, emoji, audio recordings without any hassle of logging in, changing apps, choosing clients, etc.

> I am failing to see the additional value of combining them. If Google bought WhatsApp and combined it with the stock SMS app of Android, I don't think I would prefer that.

Well, it's not useful now, but imagine in the 00s when a minority of users had iPhones. Having two clients, one for SMS and one for iMessages, would have gone against the simplicity Apple was aiming for with respect to user experience. Combining it meant that users could get a better experience (than SMS/MMS at least) when communicating with other iMessage peoples, but not have to swap out clients to chat with others.

Personally as a college student, all my friends use iPhones still. I have always wanted to switch to andriod, but one of the things that really holds me back is the fact iMessage still feels leagues above how SMS and texting works on andriod. Many subtle features of Imessage really make a difference with the overall texting experience on the iPhone over the long term.

Most of my friends do not have whatsapp, and we are constantly sharing photos and video. Regular SMS can barely send pictures let alone videos, and I don't want to go through other means to simply shoot my friend a quick video of something.

And I think the biggest of those subtle features is the blue coloured bubble, isn’t it?

For me it's the fact that you can generally see the other person typing in an iMessage, while you can't in normal SMS.

That tells me whether the person is replying right now, so it's worth keeping my phone out, or busy and therefore won't be getting back to me for a while.

The time savings add up.

No. iMessage has the low entry barrier of SMS, but has features like a real chat app. SMS is not an iMessage replacement. Instead you have to get everyone you message with to change to something like WhatsApp.

This blue coloured bubble thing I've never heard anyone outside of Silicon Valley engineers/media mention, but I've heard it extrapolated as a deciding factor to the rest of the world by those same people many times.

I don't think most people actually give a shit about the bubble colour.

> iMessage still feels leagues above how SMS and texting works on andriod

iMessage is a messaging app that uses internet. It should be compared to WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, WeChat, FB Messenger.

It doesn't make sense to compare iMessage to SMS. Because nobody uses SMS as their main communication method. The only people who ever use SMS are iPhone users when they text Android users.

All this confusion comes from the fact that Apple merged their messaging app with the SMS app. This creates the illusion that iMessaging isn't just a messaging app but it is actually something built on top of SMS. It's just a messaging app that is not cross-platform.

> I don't want to go through other means to simply shoot my friend a quick video of something.

By "other means", do you mean installing a new messaging app? I'm guessing this isn't about the effort of downloading an app but rather it's about getting used to a new app and convincing your friends to switch to it.

“convincing your friends to switch to it” is the real issue. Or remembering which platform various friends use and keeping that straight. And when you have multiple friends who prefer different platforms, figuring out the intersection of messaging platforms that they all use. Or when you have a friend on Facebook messenger but you don’t know their phone number, or a friend who can’t have WeChat installed on their corporate phone, or any number of other situations.

Google has this already - check out Messages by google. Behaves the same as iMessage

iMessage is a vestigial product from the days when people had unlimited data but also only 400 text messages a month. It made sense then. It doesn't make much sense now.

It still makes sense over SMS/MMS which are terrible protocols in comparison. Even if you get unlimited messaging now, group and media messages are still remarkably unreliable.

iMessage is not a protocol, it's an app. Nobody uses SMS because everybody uses a messaging app. It comes down to whether you choose to use a cross-platform one or an iOS-exclusive one.

I think it is less that we have more SMS allotment and more that nobody wants to actually use them anymore, because they're insecure / don't work on wifi / are slow / etc.

The additional value for Apple is that their platform had a billion+ users from the start.

Apple had nowhere near a billion customers when iMessage was launched.

There were a billion people you could send messages to, and receive messages from. That’s what got them of the ground.

A system where you can’t message half your friends because they bought their phone from a different manufacturer would have had more trouble getting traction.

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