iMessage is the greatest long con that isn't a con of all time. You don't know how great it is until you talk to someone that isn't on iMessage or you lose access to it. It just slowly sneaks into your life until you think it just IS text messaging. Never bought into iMessage "apps" or sticker packs but I love things like typing indicators/read receipts/etc.

I don’t understand the group features at all though. Do people really have groups of friends in which noone has an Android phone?

In smaller or very similar groups yes. I have a group iMessage with 11 friends in it but even so for group messages I normally use FB messenger, a surprising good product, so android/ios is equal.

Out of 40-50 family and friends that I text regularly, maybe 3 are on Android.

Certainly in Europe WhatsApp fills that gap. There isn't much point solely using iMessage when at least 50% of your friends have Android phones.

The web version is fast and functional too.

Does the web version keep login credentials well? I tried the desktop app, but it was taking an insane amount of storage for some reason.

You login with a QR code from your phone.

I don't think WhatsApp even has accounts - just phone numbers.

Oh I know. I meant whether the login stays persistent or whether you have to scan repeatedly on the web version. On the desktop app you can once and it lasts months.

I have an iPhone and almost never use it. I use FB messenger, WhatsApp, Slack, and Discord for 99% of my contacts.

To me, iMessage on the Mac is almost a sad indictment of just how little progress has been made in computing in the last 2 decades.

It's a feature that was obvious back when we were all using Nokia 3310s. Connect phone and computer as one thing. Call and message from either. Heck, calling from your computer was an obvious feature-to-be back in the monochrome screen days!

It's ridiculous that a) Apple is the only company that has this right now, and b) it took them so long to get there in the first place.

What the hell is everyone doing!?