Hacker news holds Apple and Google to different standards, so I doubt this post will get much traction. (I'm still angry about how I must use an iPhone if I want to be able to text high quality video to people I don't know very well)
And even then, I can still sync my 20+ year old firewire ipod with the most recent Apple Music (formally iTunes) on my m4 MacBook with the right converter.
iTunes -> Apple Music
Apple TV Remote App -> Apple TV Remote in Control Center
Dashboard -> Desktop Widgets
Find My Friends -> Find My
iPhoto -> Photos
Game Center app -> Games/Apple Arcade
Newsstand -> Apple News
iChat -> iMessage
Final Cut Studio/Server -> Final Cut Pro
AppleTalk -> AirDrop
as just a few examples.
You’re mad at the wrong people in this case though. iMessage can do high quality video and images because it’s a separate channel from the telecoms. RCS can now do high quality video and images too because it’s a newer standard and was built for that (and iPhones do support RCS now). But for normal “text” messages using the MMS/SMS systems, your quality is capped by the carriers and the carries have ridiculously (relative to current standards) low size limits. AT&T limits them to 1MB [1]. Verizon limits you to 1.2MB for images and 3.5MB for video [2] and T-Mobile limits you to 1MB for outbound and 3MB for inbound. Low quality is just baked into those paths and there’s nothing Apple (or Google) can do about it other than build parallel messaging systems
[1]: https://www.att.com/support/article/wireless/KM1041906/
[2]: https://www.verizon.com/support/knowledge-base-14641/
[3]: https://www.t-mobile.com/support/devices/device-troubleshoot...
Apple is clearly the bad guy on the RCS issue.