> 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!