Egads, no. The abuse heaped on me by Apple pales in comparison to the spam phone calls and emails I get. If I start getting spam via iMessage, I'll be an extremely unhappy camper. It already happens with text messages and that's bad enough.
Anyhow, sure, if you want to give away your freedom to actually own your devices, just so you don't get spam... I guess that's your choice. I just don't want to be locked into a system where that's the only choice.
Regardless, iPhones also receive SMSes. If it's impossible to spam over iMessage, they'll just use SMS. If it becomes impossible to spam over SMS, then presumably Apple can implement similar measures for iMessage that don't require us all to have hermetically-sealed, locked-down devices.
Same folks who didn't realize that all messages show up in the same color, the blue bubbles only happen when you send. They're getting SMS spam.
> I just don't want to be locked into a system where that's the only choice.
Who's locked in? I can and have switched back and forth between iPhone and Android devices. My contacts are sync'd between them, calendar, mail, all of it just works either way. Only reason I'm back on iPhone right now is because the churn (and by extension, TCO) is significantly lower. If the calculus changes on that, I'll jump ship again, no big deal.
The cost to switch is not trivial for most of the world. And the cost of iPhones is high compared to the alternatives.
Why not?
> And the cost of iPhones is high compared to the alternatives.
Given that the discussion is about switching from Apple being hard, this seems like the opposite of the point you're trying to make.
Because iPhones and Androids of comparable quality are not cheap. And many people don't know how to move their data and photos among devices regardless.
> Given that the discussion is about switching from Apple being hard, this seems like the opposite of the point you're trying to make.
You said you switched back and forth repeatedly. I was responding to that, since I view it as a luxury not everyone can afford. And folks who've sold an organ to get a blue bubble may have some sunk-cost fallacy to overcome even if they're only going from Apple to anything else.
Doesn't seem that's the case. Folks have followed up confirming that the messages are coming over iMessage, and not SMS.
Nitpick, that's not an iMessage feature, but at "Messages" feature -- the app. The filtering applies to both iMessage and SMS.
What do people need ? Apple coming and killing their cat ?