[toomuchtodo]

It's hilarious because everyone in this sub-thread is correct. Its why I moved to an iPhone 6 and use iMessages and Facetime for all of my messaging/communications needs.

No fan boy, just someone who likes things to work when I need it. Its like Google doesn't care at all that the experience sucks.

[unsignedint]

The biggest problem of that is that it only works if you can assume everyone in your contact list uses iOS. How do you deal with that problem? (I'm just curious...)

[toomuchtodo]

Everyone in my immediate family, as well as my colleagues and my immediate friends have iPhones. Network effects I guess.

I only have two or three friends without iPhones. We simply text or call back and forth.

[s3r3nity]

This -- I recently switched to Android thinking "iPhones are luxury phones. Surely a bunch of my friends use Android." Was immediately known as "Green Bubbles" guys for a few weeks by family and friends.

[Ntrails]

But even the green bubble solution is "perfect". One app. One experience. I want to message this person, through the internet for free if possible and if not - just send it as a text. I don't want 4 apps on my phone to do the same thing, and that's why I don't see the point in being an also-ran

[unsignedint]

Hah, I didn't even get "green bubbles" reference until I came back here just now :-) (I'm not an iOS user.)

Some of the downside about text is that it often shows unpredictable behavior, especially when it involves going over carrier's gateway to other networks, or involving some non-ordinary systems like Google Voice. Though, it seems to be improving now, but I used to see anything from garbled messages to complete silence, and it often exhibited different behavior between combinations of different sender and receiver. (For instance A, and B in same network might have worked OK, but A to some user in another network being able to receive, or sometimes being able to receive one way, but corrupts for the other way around, etc.)

Google Voice until recently (maybe a year ago?) or so, couldn't do any group MMS at all, and would simply get ignored. One blamed would be one who deviates from standards, but my most pet peeve of SMS/MMS is that it offers very little to no error indications when something goes wrong.

I actually manage a volunteer team of 30 or so with varying types of devices, where one to many communication is highly needed, and I find messaging solution very complicated problem to solve. (And yes, I'm likely resort to having like 2 to 3 apps to get it done...)

[joshstrange]

Oh yes, you "green bubble" people. I pretty much only talk to them on FB and if we have to talk in a group I'll use a FB group. I'm no fan of facebook but messenger blows SMS out of the water and at least brings everyone up to the same level. Just 1 sms-only user in an iMessage group and you are back to the dark ages it feels like... No offense to android users it's just a PITA to have to revert to SMS when 90% of the people in the group have iOS/iMessage.