My girlfriend is an Apple nut (she even asked for airpods for her birthday, now that I've listened to her use them for a two way conversation I can safely say they're garbage) and she tolerates me not only not having an iPhone but even using cheogram for all my MMS. We just use other protocols for chatting more than the protocols "messages" supports.
She even gave me one of her old iPhones to try to convert me but I wasn't impressed and eventually she dropped it. Would iMessage help if you're single? Maybe the same amount having some fancy shoes would but IMO it's really a surface level thing.
Texting androids from an iPhone is a legitimately bad experience. No clue why iPhone users don't just get whats app, but if they're not willing to it's not surprising that they're uninterested in having text conversations with androids.
It's a deliberate choice on Apple's behalf, too. iMessage could adopt RCS anytime without losing features and actually becoming more secure. Apple deliberately leaves iMessage as a terrible SMS fallback device to increase social pressure on competitors.
Obviously it's a deliberate choice, iMessage is somehow one of apple's strongest moats. Strange to me that users accept that though when their are so many great, free alternatives.
Competitive ... dating ... market? Have you considered hanging out with more, uh, human people?
I'm not exactly a playboy, but I've really never had this problem at all in my life. For what it's worth, approximately half of the women I speak to (in my subjective experience, eminently normal people) use Android phones.
The gay men I date also bullied me when I still had an Android. If your social circle uses discord then they’re probably not concerned with being normal.
Really? I don't think I've ever dated a man who cares more about the phone I use than the job I have or the clothes I'm wearing. I think if anyone pestered me about using a Thinkpad or an Android device, I'd walk out of the venue and foot them the bill.
Yes, gay male dating culture is also quite bad with its focus on superficialities and appearing normal, as you put it. Talking mostly about lesbian and non-binary/trans culture here.
She even gave me one of her old iPhones to try to convert me but I wasn't impressed and eventually she dropped it. Would iMessage help if you're single? Maybe the same amount having some fancy shoes would but IMO it's really a surface level thing.