The only rough edge I have with this setup is that I lose video playback in client compared to say Messenger or TG. Maybe one day...
The docs could be better, but I didn't find them too terribly hard to set up. If you decide to try it out and need any help feel free to ask around in #matrix-puppet-bridge:matrix.org
...turns you back into a first class iMessage citizen. Meaning better security, more features, and a special color for the messages to signal all that to your recipients with an iphone.
If I'm understanding you correctly, are you suggesting that iMessages has a superior security protocol than Matrix?
* OP has an iphone and some kind of non-iphone messaging interface accessed through ssh which can somehow send messages to iphone users through iMessage
* OP prefers to use the non-iphone messaging interface to send messages to iMessage recipients (I'm assuming both OP and recipients are using a modern generation of the iphone)
I'm saying that-- as it stands today-- OP is accepting a decrease in security by sending to the iMessage recipients from the non-iphone setup instead of from OP's iphone.
Regardless of the security protocol of Matrix and regardless of which client OP is using, what I'm claiming will be true.
It's also trivial to refute-- if I'm wrong then the messages OP is sending from their custom box should show up with a blue background in iMessage on the recipient's iphone. Is that the case or not?
The distinction that the iOS messaging app uses to set the color of the message bubbles is whether messages are sent over SMS/MMS or iMessage. Since they're sent over iMessage, the message bubbles will be blue.
But yes, adding Matrix to the mix does add more potential failure points, since there are now two messaging protocols involved instead of one. That's just the nature of bridging messaging protocols though.
Being able to see and respond to all my messages from all those services while I'm ssh'd into a weechat client is surreal and amazing. Going back to tapping out messages on my phone in iMessage or opening up the god-awful hangouts web client that shows my chat in a phone-sized window even on my 43 inch monitor feels like a joke at this point.
For now, that kind of setup isn't really accessible to a non-technical user, but even so it's the killer feature. Matrix has a few rough edges, but it genuinely feels like it's growing into something that is objectively better than all the other proprietary services out there.