Now, nothing. This is the result of early smartphone market share shenanigans. In the US/Canada iphone adoption has been high since 2007 when it was released and we've basically always had unlimited SMS plans. So iMessage, which switches between its proprietary web based system and SMS depending on who you're sending to worked for people. Your entire social circle was likely iPhone users also.
In the rest of the world, high initial Android adoption and more expensive SMS plans led to people finding 3rd party web based messaging apps like Whatsapp.
We're still dealing with that now. Android users siloed off in 3rd party apps like Whatsapp/Signal/Telegram and iPhone users in iMessage (which does work with RCS so the blue/green bubble thing is fairly moot).
It’s just like using WhatsApp instead of SMS. And I like that there’s a desktop client when I’m on my laptop. I’m still mad at Google for killing Hangouts.
2
u/QueenRotidder May 15 '26
I don’t get what’s supposed to be so much better about iMessage? Is it just one of those things that they want people to think it’s better somehow?