But while carriers and Android OEMs might be on board, I don't really see why Apple would bother, short of being forced. Maybe that's part of the strategy.
With imessage pirating OSX will let you connect again (although it's a major pain, and you have to go generating serial numbers and trying to log in.) Is there something like that for Android? Or do you just not get to talk to your friends if you take the sim card out of your old phone.
imo the best reason to abandon every chat service that does not have an opensource client.
I use iMessage for what it works well — short temporary conversations. But if one wants to maintain a community there are far better options. Like Rocket Chat, Slack or Discord.
So when you switch OSes you get kicked out of the group.
For some reason there are a number of people on hackernews that are really struggling with this idea and I'm kind of surprised it's so difficult to understand. I thought the last guy I talked to was just particularly dense but maybe I'm failing to communicate it effectively? Maybe it's harder to understand than I thought it was? I'm not sure.
So I guess my experience is that you don't get kicked out of the group.
And I gotta say, when the person you're chatting with is also on Android Messages, the silent upgrade to RCS has been great. It finally feels like texting in the 21st century. So if Google can start rolling this out as the default experience for US-based Android users, it's gonna make a lot of people happy without them ever realizing it.