I agree! Trust me, I was resentful for buying an iPhone too. They are my friend because we can't really move the conversation to any other platform. Some of my friends took #DeleteFacebook very seriously and deleted Insta/WhatsApp/FB while others refuse to download Line/WeChat/Telegram or any others because I'd be the only one they'd use that with. The network effect is bad and the only "standardized" communication platform that we all have is SMS. But because they are all iPhone users, it defaults to iMessage and they hate me for causing them to default to SMS/MMS because they see it as "slower and not as instant"... So other than emailing one another, there wasn't really any other options...

> because I'd be the only one they'd use that with

I started using hangouts, WhatsApp, signal, FB, and just yesterday line for a single person. This is really not a good excuse. People should be more important than tech.

Agreed. Unfortunately, many millennials don't see it that way. There's so many stories about the Green Bubble effect and how lazy people are to switch to anything else. It's sad.

>not the time to move conversation to WhatsApp/FB/line/telegram/WeChat/

None of these are an alternative to iMessage. They all either are missing key features or require you to deal with unencrypted communications or relayed encryption.

WhatsApp, signal, matrix has e2e. It's not an exhaustive list either - there are tons of solutions to choose from. What are the other key features?

WhatsApp, though, is still owned by Facebook and, therefore, has all kinds of privacy concerns. Last I heard, the encryption wasn't e2e and used a key that was generated by the app. If that's the case, then Facebook has a copy of that key.

The key has to be generated either in the app or on some server. There are no other choices really, unless you use only ephemeral keys - and that gives you secrecy but doesn't validate the other side. (And you can still copy that key) WhatsApp is e2e on all devices since 2016 and uses open whisper, which is the same encryption as signal.

Regarding the key - you have to trust the app it doesn't share it with the app authors. That's regardless of who/how implements the encryption. And it's true for iMessage as well.

>it's true for iMessage as well

Are you sure about that? I was under the impression that, according to the security white paper released by Apple, that the key is generated on-device in the Secure Enclave and that Apple never has access to it. The Enclave itself also doesn't have network access so there's no way for that to be transmitted anywhere by any other means except for physical access, which is also limited in the hardware.

You still have to trust the app to use the secure enclave and not generate the key in standard code.

iMessage does that, though. This has been verified by the jailbreak community and the netsec community.