[jolux]

iMessage is free, SMS is not. That's the tradeoff. iMessage is also encrypted. How do you propose adding those benefits to SMS without any cost to the user?

Exactly. iMessage exists because SMS sucks, not just because they don't want you leaving. Same reason for the green bubbles. They know you'll berate your Android friends into switching because of them.

[ac29]

SMS are free in the US on all but the lowest of the low end plans. If you are paying for them you likely don't have a data plan to use with iMessage anyways, or a prohbitively expensive one.

Ideally something like Signal would take off. Its free, cross-platform, encrypted, and supports more or less everything that SMS/MMS does without actually using those protocols.

That being said, aside from encryption, I think SMS really doesn't suck. What messaging system exists on virtually every phone manufactured in the past 15 years, is a built in feature, isn't tied to a country, carrier, or platform, doesn't require data service, and costs nothing or next to it?

[jolux]

When iMessage was created SMS wasn't free on almost every data plan. That's a huge part of why it exists. I say it sucks because they charge for it at all when it doesn't actually cost them anything to provide and they aren't doing a heckuva lot of R&D work on SMS. It's also slower than iMessage and doesn't support delivery confirmations or read receipts.

Signal is great. It would be awesome if more people used Signal. But iMessage is the next best thing IMO and it has what really matters: users.