I was just thinking of doing this myself. I'm hoping Apple doesn't shut it down. I recently switched to an iPhone because all of my friends use iMessage (I'm in

I was just thinking of doing this myself. I'm hoping Apple doesn't shut it down. I recently switched to an iPhone because all of my friends use iMessage (I'm in the US). I'm not happy about having to switch, but it's how they choose to communicate and it's a heck of a lot better than SMS/MMS. I'm planning to buy a used Mac Mini and connect it to some messaging gateway or build my own. Then I can use whatever phone I want (used to be a pinephone user).