I've been trying to get friends and family to switch to Telegram from iMessage and WhatsApp. Their native apps are great platform, speed is awesome, and, above all, it's a platform-agnostic system. I highly recommend it.
This is a huge hurdle in my opinion. Most of my friends own an iPhone and since I also own one, we group message on iMessage. If I wanted to switch to an Android, I would have to either convince them to switch to WhatsApp, Telegram etc etc or stop being part of that group chat, I think they call this FOMO. So having a bunch of friends with an iPhone that I regularly communicate with is a big pressure to continue buying Apple products.
Isn't WhatsApp more secure than telegram now that it implements the textsecure protocol? I guess the biggest hurdle with whatsapp now is what to do when the public key for a user changes...
WhatsApp is still a complete pain to use once you are used to Telegram. Wanna switch phones? Better get ready to backup all your messages by hand. Want to use something other than a phone? Here, use our shitty web app. Your phone is out of battery? sucks for you i guess!
>> Your phone is out of battery? sucks for you i guess!
??
Can you use telegram from another device? I think WhatsApp now has a windows client, maybe macos as well, recently announced.
No idea what the security is like though.
--edit-- Erm, I'm confused at the downvote, the parent raised a series of objections to WhatsApp and I asked for clarification of what they meant and suggested a non-phone client was available.
I've done the research now and it turns out to be utterly useless if your phone's out of batteries as it does some sort of sync'ing and relies on the phone being on, so it's not fit for the purpose.
You can use Telegram on any device you want at same time. PC, Phone, tablet, you name it.
WhatsApp on the other hand only works in one device (your phone). They released a webchat, that just works as a proxy to connect to your phone. So in order to use the WhatsApp web, you need your phone on and with internet connection.
People will probably continue downvoting you as long as you continue to complain about downvotes. Downvotes happen, whether randomly or because someone is having a bad day. Making a fuss out of it is counterproductive.
They say they have done it for Android, but as far as I know there hasn't been any similar announcement for iOS. There doesn't seem to be a way to verify public keys either like how Threema does.
I wonder whether telegram could offer a bridge service to proxy WhatsApp accounts, meaning you could switch to WhatsApp without losing any contacts...
Alternatively, perhaps the API can be glued to WhatsApp somehow.