[palata]

> We don't have to bring Google or Apple into this relationship, it's a choice people make because the prefer texting and being available to everyone they ever met 24/7

You're changing the discussion now.

The original point is this: Given that people want to be able to text with their friends in what is perceived as a normal way, how can they do it without a smartphone?

If you change the rules ("Given that people are fine being disconnected"), of course it changes everything.

[prmoustache]

I don't think that 24/7 availability is universally perceived as "a normal way". A large number of my contacts will answer several days after a message. In my experience it is usually only inside the nuclear family that people expect answer within 2 hours and these are the kind of people who can always choose to call instead of text if they know their child/sibling/parent is not usually text available.

[palata]

I don't know how many time I would have to repeat it, so I'll do it one last time.

The beginning was:

> what would it take to escape the Apple/Google duopoly?

To which someone answered:

> Has no one mentioned not using a smartphone as an option?

To which I answered that in a ton of situations this is just not an option.

And yet I keep getting answers that give examples of when it is an option. Sure, sometimes it is an option. Now for the majority of normal people who don't consider "not having a smartphone" as an option, I was saying that it is very, very hard to escape Apple/Google.

I am NOT saying that most people would die on the stop if they suddenly did not have access to a smartphone. I am saying that there is no solution to that that most people would consider viable.

> I don't think that 24/7 availability is universally perceived as "a normal way".

I never said 24/7 availability. I said "not having access to WhatsApp/Signal [in one's pocket, some of the time]". The part in brackets was implicit because we were talking about smartphone operating systems.