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I think maybe your idea of “fine” differs from mine. It is a much worse experience than iMessage.

1. No threading is supported. If you reply, it duplicates the message being replied to.

2. “Tapbacks” (reactions) duplicate the message being reacted to with “so-and-so likes message … message”

3. Photos are reduced to a size that fits in MMS (very low quality)

4. Videos look like postage stamps

5. The chat cannot be renamed or have a photo added

6. Members cannot be added or removed without starting a new group (conversation)

7. No message effects

There may be others, but this is off the top of my head.



We can disagree and still be friends.

> 1. No threading is supported. If you reply, it duplicates the message being replied to.

Threading (using "Reply") is not supported in mixed iMessage/SMS/MMS text chains. (I'm using iOS 16, so this may have been (unwisely) supported in earlier Message versions.)

> 2. “Tapbacks” (reactions) duplicate the message being reacted to with “so-and-so likes message … message”

You can now see iPhone tapbacks on Android phones in Google Messages. I'm not sure if it's on defaultly yet. https://www.macworld.com/article/610908/google-messages-andr...

The other things you list are limitations and side-effects of the standards used. They're valid, but I consider the experience "fine" without them. If the groups I text with cared about these we would probably use WhatsApp since everyone has that. Signal would be my preference, but it's hard to change people's habits.


Didn’t know about Tapback support on Android. Wish iOS had that support for non-iMessage chats!

I think the point I want to stress is that when everyone uses iMessage, it’s as easy as texting, but just about as good as WhatsApp/etc. from a feature/user experience point of view.

Agree that we can be friends. Hopefully my comment wasn’t seen as adversarial. I just get annoyed when I see the green text bubbles, because people try to use iMessage features and it’s just bad. Non-techies don’t realize it’s different because it’s the same app, but then wonder why photos aren’t high resolution, or things don’t work as expected.




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