Sure, but I'm left out of the group chat if I don't leave my OSX VM running.

This is just as true for Facebook or Google or any messaging system. There is nothing special about Apple in this regard. It’s just a feature of current messaging technologies.

I stopped using Facebook earlier this year, and I am missing out on a bunch of social groups the contain people I know in real life.

What we need to do is build technology that doesn’t these downsides.