If you are in an iMessage group chat and you switch to Android, you need to create a new group chat to continue talking to your friends.

This function even harms iOS only groupchats. I walk to an area of low reception and try and message the group chat, it defaults as an sms due to the poor signal and breaks the group in the same way.

Not sure what advantages an imessage vs sms groupchat even give me in this era of unlimited texting. Pretty hearts?

> Not sure what advantages an imessage vs sms groupchat even give me in this era of unlimited texting. Pretty hearts?

Some cellular carriers still charge per MMS message, so group chats (which use MMS) can get expensive. MMS group messages also have some undesirable properties -- in particular, adding or removing users from a group is unreliable, because each device is responsible for generating a list of recipients itself.

Plus, iMessage uses end-to-end encryption. MMS does not.

Off the top of my head:

* more than 10 participants * can set a topic for the group * can add and remove participants * end to end encryption * typing indicators (i think? Can’t remember if these work in groups)

Falling back to SMS is an option in Settings. I personally have it disabled - when disabled, it spends longer trying to resend the iMessage rather than sending an SMS rather quickly.

Well iMessage works over wifi so if you don't have cell service it is handy. I just got home from visiting family and their local airport has no cell service.

Um… yes? iMessage is a feature of iOS and macOS. It isn't available on Android devices, and its group chats don't exist outside those platforms. But I don't see how this constitutes Apple "blocking" anything.

> It's not a position you're put into with WhatsApp or any other app.

Sure it is! You can't continue a group conversation from WhatsApp -- or any other messenger, really -- on another messenger service without manually recreating the group. There is literally nothing which makes iMessage unique in this regard.

> There is literally nothing which makes iMessage unique in this regard.

Sure there is. If you try to "text" someone (as in SMS) and the Messages app (which is the ONLY way you can send SMS on iOS) detects your number as registered to iMessage, it will send an iMessage by default.

So even though your number didn't change, and everyone is still using the "Messages" app to talk to you, it inexplicably doesn't work anymore for group chats, and your regular private message colors have mysteriously turned green.

What really sucks is that it means iPhone Signal isn't a transparent drop-in replacement for the sms app like it is on Android, meaning I can never get iphone-having contacts to use it.

> which is the ONLY way you can send SMS on iOS

There are plenty of SMS-API-provider-backed "texting apps" on iOS. There are also softphone apps that provide SMS service.

I think you specifically mean "the only way you can send SMS messages from the DID number that your carrier maps to your phone's MMC IMEI registration.

This is unnecessarily pedantic. It's rather obvious in context that "sending an SMS" means sending an SMS from your phone (you know, the thing SMS was invented for) rather than using a third-party web service to send an SMS on your behalf.

I appreciated the clarification.

You're proving the point that you have to use ludicrously non-obvious ways to make normal phone functionality work in the way you'd expect.

> There is literally nothing which makes iMessage unique in this regard.

Except for the vendor lock-in, which makes this a problem to begin with. Other services work on a majority of devices.

Then your complaint is about Apple locking iMessage to Apple devices.

Which is a legitimate complaint especially since Apple had said they would be opening it up (or was that FaceTime...I'm not sure).

But that's a wholly different complaint from the fact that Apple, like nearly every other messaging service, does not allow you to export groups to other services.

Apple was going to make the peer-to-peer video call technology they were using for FaceTime public. Then they got sued by VirnetX over a patent related to that technology, so they had to rework the service to run through a central server. With that change, there was no longer anything worth open-sourcing.

It's open and federated protocol, not open source, that everybody else wants from them.

It's not "wholly different"! It's distinct but deeply related.

Well WhatsApp is free and iMessage has a multiple hundred dollar price tag attached.

Apple consciously doesn't make the APIs for iMessage available.

By that logic WhatsApp isn't free. I have to spend hundreds of dollars upfront to buy a phone, and worse, hundreds of dollars each year to maintain a phone line to use WhatsApp.

WhatsApp doesn't provide an API so I could use it on my existing laptop over WiFi for free (the WhatsApp web requires it to be setup on a phone first).

>I have to spend hundreds of dollars upfront to buy a phone

But the phone doesn't have to be bought from Facebook, whereas with iMessage you have to pay Apple for a phone.

>maintain a phone line to use WhatsApp.

I wonder what the reason for this is. Maybe to reduce spam? Data collection?

But I get to choose who to pay - and most people already have a phone.

maintaining a phone line doesn't cost hundreds of dollars a year

Yea that’s not free

WhatsApp is as effectively free as it can be within the segment of the population that needs or wants it.

This is like arguing that free Wi-Fi isn't "free" because some people only use ethernet. If you don't already own a compatible device, you aren't their customer anyway.

Then, following your logic, no software is free as in beer because you always need a computer to run it, and computer hardware isn't free...

Well yeah but it's not tied to the operating system of your phone manufacturer!

And WhatsApp and Facebook are just paragons of virtue.

iMessage isn't MMS. Android does group messages with the latter.

iMessage does MMS for group chat with non-iMessage clients.

Yes, but what the poster above describes as "locking you out of group messages" sounds like a member of an all-iMessage group switching to android, and the group message continuing on in iMessages-only, rather than being restarted as MMS to include the Android.