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It's pretty ridiculous in the Apple world, the will look down on you if your first bubble isn't the same as theirs and their friends.
It's just the network effect. Here unfortunately it's WhatsApp, you pretty much have to use it because people organize events in groups with it and whatnot, and you're the weirdo if you don't have it. I actually deleted my account for a couple years but recently caved and made one again because people just wouldn't use anything else and having someone else relay messages is annoying for both them and me.
I use iMessage when it's available but I wish for groups (or just in general tbh) everyone would just use Signal because it's both not tied to an expensive device and also not owned by a corporation with a track record of shamelessly exploiting user data.
It's really not the network effect.
iMessage is deliberately used as a "buy an iPhone or else". Imagine if Google refused to show search results, emails, or DNS traffic for Apple and we just said it's because people are tribal or some shit.
Apple needs to open up iMessage or adopt RCS for it to be "network effect"
Okay, sure, that's just all of Apple's software though. With a few exceptions (Apple Music and Safari for Windows (RIP) I believe) all their software has only been available for their own operating systems. And (especially since I'm a Linux user) it would be great if cross-platform software were the standard, I don't think software can be truly cross-platform without being open source. And as much as I think forcing every company to open source all their code would be epic, I don't think it's reasonable, as much as I don't think it's reasonable to force them to port to every platform.
Rather I think that generally all software anyone can legally obtain should require any sort of file format, network protocol, or other protocols that are used to transfer information between computers to have (usable) public domain documentation, plus, in case the protocol makes use of device authentication, anyone to obtain a valid certificate for their device. This would solve the iMessage problem because it would allow anyone to write clients for it for any platform, but it would solve the same problem for iCloud, Microsoft Office (LibreOffice could have so much better compatibility if they didn't have to reverse-engineer the file format), Photoshop, Dis "custom clients are against TOS" cord, and thousands of other proprietary software. Because those are all the same exact problem as far as I'm concerned.
Maybe you're saying something along the same lines. But I don't think it's specifically an iMessage problem.
It's not exclusively an iMessage problem, you're right but it is for teenagers. This is probably the weakest point of my position but teenagers in my experience don't peer pressure over tech specs but off obvious shit. iMessage directly shows you who is a green bubble or blue and who is going to send you compressed as hell videos and shit because of it.
Apple deliberately created a distinction of their own making with iMessage by making the bubbles different colors and refusing to support features to improve green bubbles for over a decade now. But the people who are razzing and peer pressuring aren't exactly going to understand that iMessage wasn't special tech or anything. RCS was out three years in advance to iMessage and all Apple had to do was allow it on iPhones.
Now outside of teenagers I have never really seen someone pressure people to have an iPhone. It's a really childish thing to do because they're really the same damn thing for the most part.