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Comment by rezonant | Hacker News Reader

Please don't conflate messaging apps with texting, it's disingenuous. Texting is the feature users expect of any smartphone to be able to send a message to any other user who has a smartphone, regardless of what apps they have installed.

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My vague understanding is nobody uses SMS outside America and the entire population is on WhatsApp.

If only! My wife seems to juggle her friends between SMS, iMessage, WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal.

Sounds complicated. No wonder people in the US don't want to do that when texting is 100% free (with their phone plan) and universal.

Yeah I’m not installing an app to send a message. I get video and gifs and all sorts of whatever I need with iMessage.

Only android people fuss with third party apps because their phones can’t reasonably send messages by default.

Android devices can reasonably send messages between each other, by default. The whole issue here is that Apple has been intentionally holding back the cross-platform messaging experience in order to make competitors seem less appealing.

I can easily send SMS to any Android phone from my iPhone. I really dont understand your reasoning.

IOW, SMS is cross-platform. Whats the issue?

As an iOS user myself, SMS is still a low quality messaging experience, cross platform or not. Apple could have taken RCS seriously years ago, raising the standard of cross platform messaging for everyone. This would result in an objectively better experience for users of all platforms, including iOS.

Contrary to you, I only have a subjective opinion on the matter. In the 12 years that I sometimes use SMS on iOS, I never missed anything. What is it that I am apparently not intelligent enough to miss?

In no way am I intending to insult your intelligence, and I apologize for any lack of clarity that could lead to such a misunderstanding.

Unlike modern messaging platforms, SMS has no:

- guaranteed delivery

- read receipts

- proper support for group chats (MMS adds this, but the implementation is poor compared to modern platforms)

- support for multimedia (again, MMS added this, but support is poor)

- support for replies

- support for reactions

- support for any kind of encryption

- support for typing indicators

- ability to work independently of an active cellular connection

If SMS works for your needs, and you have no issues with it, that’s great. Ultimately, SMS does work, but many users rightfully expect more of a messaging platform at this point. There are real benefits to users from upgrading to a more modern system.

And without wanting to insult your intelligence, none of the features you listed were something I really wanted or needed from SMS. Its just that, a short message service. Relying on encryption in a world where each and every country does an attack on E2EE every two years is unrealistic. Read notifications are just a "let me spy into your day" feature that I, no-control-freak, never ever needed. The rest also just reads like a corporate feature list, many nice to haves, but nothing, for me at least, essential.

I am fine with using SMS, and it has always served me well.

The difference between SMS and iMessage doesn't really count in this context, since usage is largely transparent. Its the same app, and the same contact list.

They have completely different privacy and reliability expectations: SMS is ephemeral, unreliable, unencrypted and short; whereas iMessage is semi-persistent, reliable, end-to-end encrypted and long.

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