Seriously. In the meantime, the rest of the world all uses WhatsApp. For group chat it's hard to beat. I use signal with family and some friends but getting people to switch is impossible. And allegedly it has group chat but it's not obvious how that works even to a techie like me. Asking people to switch phone platforms is ridiculous, especially people from poorer countries where an iPhone costs at least a couple months' salary. Lately I've also used keybase with another friend and it seems promising but the user base is almost nonexistent.
Re:Android 10
by dkonofalski on Tuesday September 03, 2019 @06:37PM
(#20871982)
Because there are some huge, genuinely great benefits to using it. No one really cares that much but, when the difference between the two experiences is as great as it currently is, it really affects the conversation.
For example, we don't really pressure friends to buy iPhones but we legitimately have a separate conversation group for just iOS users from the main SMS group chat so we can send images, video, or other media at full quality. Most of us are pretty tech savvy too so we're not really keen on using WhatsApp or Telegram or any of the other dirty data apps.
What are the great benefits? As far as I can tell, Google voice + Hangouts has all the features and more.
Re:Android 10
by dkonofalski on Thursday September 05, 2019 @01:52PM
(#20889175)
>Google voice + Hangouts has all the features and more
Most of the features and a boat-load of data and privacy concerns to go along with it.
iMessage sends messages via cell data (or WiFi) too, if that’s what you meant by “dirty data app”.
Re:Android 10
by dkonofalski on Thursday September 05, 2019 @01:54PM
(#20889188)
No, I mean "dirty data" as in all your data is collected and there's very little transparency regarding what those apps/companies are doing with your data. I haven't exhaustively tested all these apps but I have tested a few and know that Apple doesn't send any information or data from iMessage to their servers that isn't encrypted on-device. Unlike these other apps, Apple couldn't leak your data or usage from these apps because it's never collected in the first place.
I've never had this from my friends. I read about this all the time and all I can think is, "Why would I be friends with people who care about that enough to peer pressure me into using an iPhone?"