4 ms·
I think you underestimate the degree of vendor lock in Apple has. If you are a heavy user of iMessage, and you are a participant in multiple iMessage group thre
by erikpukinskis 10y ago
I think you underestimate the degree of vendor lock in Apple has. If you are a heavy user of iMessage, and you are a participant in multiple iMessage group threads, and you switch to Android, you will never be able to participate in those threads again. There's no way to convert an existing iMessafe thread to a hybrid MMS one without getting every participant to delete the old thread and start a new one. Good luck communicating that fact to all of your contacts
Every time I post this on HN I get a bunch of people telling me you can deregister your phone number, or start a new thread, but iMessage won't convert its own threads to MMS automatically. Every participant in every thread has to delete it. This is considered expected behavior by Apple.
If you want uninterrupted communication with your contacts, and you can't afford a few missed messages, you have no choice but to stay on iPhone forever. SMS is dead. Apple owns your messaging identity now, and it's platform locked.
- tormeh 10y agoWhere do people use iMessage? Do they refuse to be friends with Android users? The whole phenomenon sounds bizarre, like people who only communicate with people using the same carrier or something.
- erikpukinskis 10y agoIt's random... if you have three friends who happen to all have iPhones, that thread will be iMessage only forever. If one of the participants has an Android, it will use MMS. I've been in friend circles where people were using mostly iPhones.
- probe 10y agoSame in my social circle - in fact if someone is on Android, we hate using text in general and go straight to FB messenger (or GroupMe depending on the size, but less so recently).