I don't understand the obsession with imessage, what is so special about it?
- Extremely responsive, native, fast app with no clutter whatsoever, on both phones and on desktop devices (personally, I highly dislike web/electron apps)
- Close to no spam (whatsapp in particular seems to have a ton, way worse than Telegram even)
- Highest quality (amongst all the apps) audio/video calls with Facetime
- e2e encrypted by default, does not have the unconscious bias that you’re using a Facebook owned product for doing something secure, even if it really is (and as far as power users go, I don’t really particularly dislike the company like many do)
My next favorite messenger, that does Groups better than iMessage, is Telegram. I don’t wish to get into the privacy concerns (and it’s valid!) but as far as making a responsive, native app that does chat and does it well, it’s pretty superior to both Whatsapp and Signal.
gTalk of old was amazing, but I don’t think that’s coming back :(
As for "fast", just the animation in the main action menu would like a word. And then try to select stickers
Signal could be like Telegram in this regard but its hardline no third party client policy means the official Electron app is the only option.
Signal is great for certain times and places, but as a daily app it's still a bit clunky and not widely adopted.
99% of the time, iMessage just does what it says and at a high quality. No bullshit, barely any spam, and OS-level integration with my other devices.
I loved signal when it was my MMS client. It did what iMessage did, only for android, and it worked in my mixed env (Mac, android).
Now no more mms. I have stories now. I didn't get signal for stories, I didn't want an encrypted social network.
It made totally sense to go this way.
iChat and signal had parity at that intersection. The color of the bubbles means something in ichat, there was a known ui component to convey that message...
Signal went from being mms + encrypted side channel to ... another messaging app adding social media features.
It is and always wanted to be a secure messenger which does not share your data with some big company.
Providing an insecure feature within the app was stupid. People didn't even realize that this was an issue, and those who ran away now never even cared about the core features of Signal. They just wanted to have another SMS client.
That's a slight annoyance but it's extremely new, and doesn't reflect the typical WhatsApp experience over its many years of explosive growth. It's just a simple cross-platform chat app that, as the de facto standard in most of Europe, nobody has trouble using.
Or if you mean why anyone uses it, it's because SMS is automatically upgraded to iMessage between two iPhone users. Most people wouldn't know how to prevent that from happening or downgrade to SMS and because it feels like texting with a few extra features, they don't want to. That approach has accumulated about a billion users.
It just works. As soon as I log into my Apple account on any Apple device I can access all of my messages, and seamlessly carry on a conversation on whatever device is at hand. It works with SMS as well, and I just don't have to think about it.
I know that WhatsApp is similar, but their desktop app, especially authentication, kinda sucks (I need my phone to login, and it seemingly logs me out weekly). Whatsapp is also FILLED with weird porn spam, and scammers.
I have a mac laptop and an android phone. My son has an iphone. Half of his responses to my text messages go to my phone, the other half go to my laptop and I miss them. This is a major problem, imessage shouldn't be greedy about grabbing messages, especially when replying to an SMS. I've missed picking him up from places because I didn't get the reply.
Messages are always lost, or marked as read when they are not, or marked as unread even if I deleted them on other device, or...
For a while I was switching between an iPhone and Android (I was deving on both platforms and so would switch them out regularly).
Then I found out the Apple would think I was still using the iPhone, and would therefore would send my messages via iMessage, and I'd have no idea I wasn't getting them.
But what incentive does Apple have to change this? And realistically, how many people does it impact.
Do most apple people know that iMessage isn't using SMS? I think they just look at it as an app that sends messages to everyone.
Funnily enough, no. iOS <-> MacOS sync has been broken for ages, and keeps being subtly broken in different ways with each new oOS release
I was speaking to my own experience. Across an iPhone, Watch, two laptops (one corporate managed), and an iPad, it all 'just works' so to speak.
I've seen your issue before and it usually is because your non-iMessage phone number is associated with the same contact record as your iMessage computer account (probably your email). The iPhone will preference sending an iMessage over a text, so if your computer is on, you won't get a text. Sadly there is no 'force-sms' setting so the (admittedly awful) workaround is to create a second contact in your son's phone that is just your phone number.
It is indeed bullshit that it doesn't work for you.
Also, imagine this scenario from the perspective of a non-technical user: You buy an expensive but high quality phone that's easy to use and has a great camera and great apps. Most of your friends have the same phone and everything works great with them. Then you try to talk to someone new but they have a phone that was probably cheaper and has a worse camera and looks like it's harder to use and full of ads. Every time they message you it turns off a bunch of your features and ruins group chats for everyone. Who are you going to blame, your phone manufacturer whose product seems to work great, or this guy with a phone so cheap and buggy that it breaks everyone else's?
Thus, non-technical iMessage users see no reason to go out of their way to use weird third party messengers. It's not their fault - it's the android users' faults for being cheap.
(For clarity, I am a hardcore android phone but I'm not delusional enough to think the average person will have a better experience on Android then iOS. I had to install fdroid and a custom launcher and a bunch of side loaded apps to get a decent experience. The average person doesn't and arguably shouldn't need to know about all that)
iMessage just works:
• It works beautifully on watchOS, iPadOS, macOS, in addition to iOS
• there's no ads
• E2EE by default
• You can send media at full quality and the recipient receives it as as you intended
• No bullshit whatsoever
My Android friends though are never able to standardize on any one app, some of them want you to use WhatsApp, some want Telegram, some want Signal. None of them have watchOS clients, they either can't be bothered with iPadOS at all or their desktop "client" is really just an lazy Electron disaster that they expect you to put up with. And when you try to explain how all of these third party alternatives are inferior, Android people look at you like you're an alien and don't understand.
It's frustrating and I wish they would just get iMessage already.
- all useful interactions are hidden behind useless slow animation and multiple additional clicks
- photo selection is an awkward double scroll
- stickers are tied to external apps, cannot be searched, take ages to load when you switch between sets
- link unfurling and file previews are hit and miss, often take ages to happen
- pinned chats are useless awkward circles that take up space instead of being actual pinned chats
- continuously broken on MacOS (photo selections, unread status synchronizations, keyboard shortcuts etc.)
And it's a key app they have on two platforms.
Compare that to Telegram which exists on 5 platforms and web, developed by just a handful of people, and has everything and more.
Maybe this is why I prefer it. Text is first class on iMessage.
WhatsApp and Telegram messages tend to have crud, e.g. stickers and weird shit happening with photos. To each their own.
But when you need to, it's there at your fingertips, not hidden behind laggy animations, seconds of loading, and awkward interactions
I don't care much for its stickers but it has a ton of quality of life features. Group chats with topics. Built in translation. Fully supported bots that can add tons of functionality. Voice message transcription. Full access to everything on the web. No problems with bridges (eg to matrix). I'm happily paying the premium fee too which is only 30€ a year. It provides even more quality of life stuff like fully automatic translations (my Spanish isn't the best yet)
Here in Spain it's used a lot especially for groups. WhatsApp is still #1 for 1:1 chats but all the groups (eg associations) i know use telegram.