They tried to make a bazillion messenger apps, all of which failed, and now they try to piggyback on an existing standardized protocol but don't expose any APIs for other apps.
While at the same time pushing this "Apple is bad because green bubble" narrative because Apple doesn't support it. It's somewhat amusing in some ways. Companies (Google or Apple) are never on the consumers side, and yet we fall for it all the time.
So today it's either Google or Samsung messages and Jibe, otherwise RCS is essentially useless. From what I know Facebook wanted to get on board at some point, I'm not sure why this didn't work out.
The fact Google publicly whining about the iMessage lock-in is pretty rich.
Really? Do "we"? Everyone keeps warning of these issues while getting laughed out of the room. At some point I have to believe that most of society actually actively wants to be screwed over.
If you need to actually send files etc use another one of a multitude of messaging apps out there including the latest Google TalkMsgChatThing (but it works)
Most of society is brainwashed by commercials, don't even understand half of the words techies use and would call you pretentious if you are not using iOS or Android
It genuinely surprises me how often the HN crowd falls for it.
I would have expected them to be more aware than the average consumer of how tech companies use lock-in to trap their users.
Perhaps there's a blind spot because lots of HN folks work on projects or for companies that (hope to) use the same tactic?
Apple phones are simply good to use and work well. Me getting a generic phone and installing Arch Linux in it or something will have little effect on its own. But it will make my life very inconvenient!