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I think a bigger reason it's doing so well is because you don't need a phone number to contact someone. I have several friends who I first talked to on FB Messe
by PascLeRasc 10y ago
I think a bigger reason it's doing so well is because you don't need a phone number to contact someone. I have several friends who I first talked to on FB Messenger before I had their phone number.
Their wifi/data-based group messaging is also far superior to MMS groups.
- TazeTSchnitzel 10y agoYou don't need to use a phone number for iMessage and FaceTime, IIRC it also supports email addresses.
- stcredzero 10y agoThen it would be nice if Apple simply supported your preferred email address wholeheartedly and didn't keep trying to always rope you into an icloud email. Seriously, those are dark patterns that people hated (and still hate) about Microsoft and Windows.
- TazeTSchnitzel 10y agoHuh? Apple lets me use my own email address, unlike say, Google.
- stcredzero 10y agoIt may well be that Google is worse, but I keep on having to opt-in my accustomed email address and shut off the icloud one. I've probably shut that thing off in Facetime over a dozen times. It keeps on coming back like some sort of boss zombie. It has even caused arguments with a girlfriend, when emails got sent to the icloud address because it keeps coming back. (Now forwarded.)
- tjohns 10y agoGoogle lets you use your own email address. Not sure what the complaint here is.
- mkj 10y agoIf you also have an associated Gmail account it won't let you use another email address as the primary one. That said I'm in some apple limbo land where I need to switch to an email address for iCloud but it won't let me use mine since I had a pre-email appleID. Yay.
- Dayshine 10y agoWhat do you mean by primary? You can't change your "username", but you can set it to send all correspondence, recovery, etc, to your non-gmail address.
- mkj 10y agoI guess I mean the username. It was previously my@email.com but now it's an ugly user.gtalkfix@gmail.com in all the Google UI. Oh well, I avoid logging in anyway :)
- Adverblessly 10y agoI'm not sure if you'll find that helpful, but you can create a Google account with a non-gmail email. When you create your account, below the username textbox is a blue "I prefer to use my current email address". Never tried it myself though..
- agret 10y agoThey've changed it now so if you want to signup for a Google account it asks for your existing email and has a text link to signup for a gmail. If you are on the gmail landing page and hit sign up then it's how you stated though.
- tiglionabbit 10y agoMy Apple ID is a Gmail address. Never saw a problem with that.
- PascLeRasc 10y agoStill, you can meet someone organically and follow up with talking to them the next day knowing just their name and what mutual friends you have. Email and phone numbers are both unnatural arbitrary strings compared to names.