Why is iMessage even an issue? All phones can send conventional texts to each other
The average Joe does not know the difference between a Tesla and a Toyota, specifically the more advanced features that the Tesla offers. Should Tesla be required to change their system to be more “compatible“ with Toyota?
This whole iMessage android debacle just sounds like sour grapes.
My group is more than ten people, and we work in a hospital (large building with heavy concrete structure - cell reception is entirely absent from significant areas, and we often depend on iMessage over the WiFi for delivering information). Any alternative solution (Signal, GroupMe, whatever) would have to be installed by all. Before I switched to an iPhone, I was one of two out of about 30 who didn't have one. This meant that group messages simply didn't get to me, and I discovered (e.g.) that our secretary had cancer when she asked me about good restaurants near M.D. Anderson.
This is bad behavior by Apple, but I decided to be practical about it: I can either be included in important information by buying an iPhone, or I can try to change almost 30 other people who want to keep on using one app for all their text-ish communications. You don't have an option like you do on Android to use Signal, which will send over their own protocol if possible but will revert to SMS for non-users. And, as others have noted, you don't have RCS. But I'm not going to change Apple singlehandedly, and I'm unlikely to force everyone else to use a different app solely to talk to me and one other guy. They'll just keep doing what they've been doing, and we will continue to be out of the loop.
Oh, and hospital IT blocks WiFi calling (but not texts). So far, my workaround has been to set up OpenVPN inside my home network and just VPN my entire phone and iPad through that. It takes a few seconds to connect properly, but it does work.
Also iMessage automatically just works by default. You don't download an app and make an account. So for anybody who is not tech savvy they have to do nothing.
Try to explain to my grandma she has to download a messaging app and sign up for an account so I can send her a video. Not going to happen.
To add to what you're saying: RCS (which everyone except Apple uses) offers all of those things as well, and offers them in a way that is interoperable with all non-Apple phones.
iMessage doesn't actually do anything that RCS doesn't do. Apple simply refuses to adopt RCS (or make iMessage interoperable) because they want to use the lock-in to drive more sales of Apple products.
iMessage still has some features that RCS doesn't, and Apple had a 10 year head start on integrating these features into their phones.
I would imagine Apple would say that this is one of the big features of iMessage, and is partly because they control the system end-to-end. I'm sure they could make a system that interoperates with Android and works quite reliably, but it's not quite so easy to argue that they have a legal obligation to build and maintain such a system.