And that is entirely Apple's fault.

That is one of my main frustrations with Apple: In order to compel more people to use their platform, they made a proprietary communication service, and preloaded it on all of their devices. Now I have to deal with this arbitrary segregation, just because some corporation decided it would help their bottom line.

This is exactly the kind of practice rms warned us about decades ago, and there is nothing any individual can do about it.

> And that is entirely Apple's fault.

If Skype didn't suck so much it could be the cross platform standard.

Google Duo works just fine on iPhones.

The problem is that it isn't preinstalled, while iMessage and Facetime are.

Apple tries very hard to convince its users that its practices are not the problem, but those who choose not to use Apple products. Anything that doesn't come preinstalled is seen as an unnecessary inconvenience by most iPhone users.

Given that the app is free, and that people are willing to install apps their friends recommend, I don't think this is much of a barrier.

WhatsApp doesn't seem to have this issue, for instance.

> I don't think this is much of a barrier.

Unfortunately, many iOS users do, and Apple cultivates that attitude as its culture.

No, they just prefer what iOS provides, or they don't know many people who use WhatsApp. For all it's popularity elsewhere, here in the States, WhatsApp is not used very much.

I've never downloaded WhatsApp, mainly because I don't know anyone who's on it. That's a bigger barrier than anything being preinstalled.

Skype was the 'goto' for a long time, but then facetime came out and it split the family into apple users and the rest of us.

I had apple products as well as others, I chose the rest of the family anyways :p

We had video chat before the iPhone. It's part of the UMTS standard and was one of the major selling points when the carriers rolled it out in the early 2000's. I don't know much about its technical merits, it would surprise me if it was any good using today's standards, but it was cross platform and could have been built upon if the two new mobile OS makers had been interested. But since the iPhone didn't even have UMTS when it was launched it's no surprise Apple didn't include support for it.

I am sure the cell carriers would have been excited to charge a very hefty premium for that service, if anyone bothered to use it.