Like with so many mainstream usecase projects, I'd wager to say the protocol/backend is the easy part. It all depends on good easy to use clients.
And yet, in 2016, 9 years after the first iPhone, XMPP still struggled to provide any of the modern conveniences on the protocol level: https://gultsch.de/xmpp_2016.html (at the time most of the links marked as "solution available" were going to experimental and beta proposals)
The protocol/backend can be, and often is, as much hindrance as the clients.
Noting is "I need to spend a significunt chunk of my time for no renumeration"-friendly.
And yet there are numerous free, or pay-less-than-a-cup-of-coffee clients for many things and services, whether those are open or closed, free or paid (Ivory for Mastodon https://tapbots.com/ivory/ and Wikipedia's app come to mind).
Thanks for the tip for Siskin and Monal! Even a few years ago the situation was dire.
Fair point. I'm a dreamer ;)
I believe the lack of great clients for apple platforms is due to how little the overlap is between people who see value in using a self-hosted, federated, lightweight chat system and people who want to use apple products.
point stands, as both deliver a subpar experience with either dm's or groups