[grok22]

I have never used iMessage (I use Android phones). What is the 'really good' part of it? I am used to WhatsApp and it seems pretty perfect to me. Just enough features as a messaging app, but not too much.

[cafed00d]

A few “delightful” features are:

1. When sharing multiple photos a carousel of photos is created instead of a boring boxy grid of photos.

2. You can paste stickers of your Memoji (Apple’s Bitmoji) onto text bubbles. All my friends have discovered that feature through me and they love it!

3. You can send balloons or confetti for “happy birthday” messages.

4. The latest and greatest hardware features always have tight, polished iMessage integration (on-device Siri driven replies, Dynamic Island UI bounciness etc)

5. The UI has a few nice touches like loopy loops for threaded conversations, fun animation when a message is deleted, super tight integration with Siri

[woojoo666]

If this is all there is I don't see what makes iMessage _really good_ like the top comment emphasized. Comparing iMessage with FB Messenger (my main messenger) on the points you described:

1. Seems a bit subjective, I tend to dislike carousels

2. I guess I haven't used memoji to fairly compare this, but when it comes to stickers I liked FB messenger's offering more

3. Messenger does this as well, with balloons instead of confetti iirc

4. Dynamic Islands requires iPhone 14 right? Seems like less of an iMessage feature and more of an iPhone 14 feature. As for Siri integration, I don't use Google Assistant much but I believe it can also reply on whatsapp/messenger, you just have to specify "WhatsApp" or "Messenger" in the command

5. When it comes to animations and other small UI quirks, a lot of it is subjective. I prefer Messenger's UI over iMessage, but probably because I'm used to it

[cafed00d]

1. Given that you agree this is subjective, it follows pretty indisputably that this feature qualifies as “really good”. Perhaps your pov on disliking carousels is a negligible outlier in the population of people who consider iMessage “really good” :)

2. 3. Sure. But nobody using iPhone to take group pictures is going to share it on FB messenger instead of WhatsApp or iMessage. I mean, the only reason we _don’t_ share on WhatsApp is the loss of quality and tight integration into iOS. There’s a million better Photo Album apps on iPhone. Everybody’s is definitely using the built in app more than anything else. Similarly, everybodys _prefers_ to use the “really good” feature of iMessage of being built into iOS.

One would say Messenger is at feature parity with iMessage. But those people tend to be people who say stickers on messenger are similar to Memoji on iMessage. Talk to one the user experience designers and they’ll pick out a 100 differences.

4. Yup sure does. But that’s the point. Did I say Dynamic Island? Oh, sorry, I meant the new LIDAR sensor on iPhone 12 Pro which takes better portrait mode photos at night. Oh, sorry, did I say LiDAR sensor on iPhone 12 Pro; I meant the new ultra wide lens on the iPhone 11 which takes better photos with the bokeh effect. Oh sorry did I say iPhone 11 Pro? I meant.. ultimately, as soon as a new hardware feature comes out the first messaging app that supports it is iMessage. So sharing software artifacts of that hardware (photos, Animoji, Memoji whatever) is always going to be “lossless” when done using iMessage. The real feature is: preserving iPhone users’ ability to share iPhone features with other iPhone users.

5. Sure

[woojoo666]

But when the experience is so close and subjective, surely it's not worth greatly degrading the experience of your Android friends over? Why not just use a messenger that everybody can use

[cafed00d]

Sure. That’s exactly what everybody who have an Android friend do. They use WhatsApp, or messenger or whatever else. And yes, it’s _an_ Android friend; singular; always that one guy.

Doesn’t take away from the delightful features on iMessage though :-)

The people complaining about iMessage vs. Android green bubbles are going to go the way of Betamax vs VHS. Or blu-ray vs HDDVD. We’re all going to die and our children’s children will fight over something new vs some other thing new.

[the_third_wave]

Those are features of the client - which I would mostly want to switch off, I loathe the Fisher-Price/Anime love child interface style this indicates. The question is what, other than platform standardisation, make this better than any of the alternative messaging protocols? Under the hood, that is. What does it have over e.g. XMPP+OMEMO, Matrix, Signal, Telegram, etc. Had e.g. XMPP+OMEMO been the standard on Android in the way that iMessage is on Apple-things, which one would have been "better"? I think they would have been more or less comparable with XMPP having the advantage of being standardised.

[egwynn]

Just want to add that I make extensive use of “tapbacks” with pretty much everyone I use iM with.

[Markoff]

I think SMS fallback is the only killer feature missing in Whatsapp. I'd be glad to ditch my dedicated SMS app for something else (I have Whatsapp anyway already). I used Signal for few years as SMS replacement plus IM on top of it (though used IM only with family since nobody use it), but got rid off that horrible app (and same with extended family where I promoted it) and there is nothing else which I could use for SMS and IM at same time. It would be killer feature, since I must have some SMS app in phone anyway, so why not have IM app which can handle also SMS, but Signal won't touch my phone again.