[turquoisevar]

> It’s the only way to get an encrypted message into a user’s iMessage inbox

True.

> and iMessage is, unchangeably, the only possible default messaging app on an iPhone—the only one you can use from Contacts and so on.

You kind of lost me here.

The Messages app is the default app on iPhone that handles both SMS/MMS and the iMessage protocol. So it goes without saying that it’s the only way to get get an encrypted message into a user’s “iMessage” inbox.

But it’s not the only one you can use from the Contacts app, nor is the only one you can use with Siri or the only one that pops up in the share sheet or the only one that you can use with CarPlay or the only one that you can receive notifications from or the only one that can ring your phone (if you want to count FaceTime as part of iMessage), etc, etc.

The Messages app, which supports iMessage, is the only app that can receive SMS/MMS via the cellular network. That’s pretty much the only limitation.

Other than that, there’s pretty much complete feature parity with iMessage in terms of native access, available should the third party messaging service want to implement it (and many do).

Take WhatsApp for example. WhatsApp will show up as an option in under contacts[0], WhatsApp message notifications will be read by Siri if you wear AirPods, use Siri to send messages and even set which default messaging app to use[1], have WhatsApp pop up as a suggestion in share sheets[2], and so on.

0: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/46422640/how-iphone-cont... this was 6 years ago, it’s now much more sleeker and you can set a default messaging service, but I couldn’t be bothered to upload a screenshot

1: https://i0.wp.com/9to5mac.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/202...

2: https://wabetainfo.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/WA13_Share...

[msteffen]

Well, in case anyone else reads this: I mean that if you click the huge “message” button at the top of a contact’s page, that opens iMessage, and there’s nothing I can do to change that if I don’t want to be using iMessage.

For contrast, Android lets users use third party texting apps, remove the default messaging app, have all “message”-oriented actions open the app of your choice, etc. Apple, I claim, does not support this because it means that every iPhone user is also an iMessage user. But iMessage is a social network (a la WhatsApp), and a separate product.