In many countries carriers did offer unlimited sms plans, but they would cost a significant amount more over base plans which would say include 100 free texts a month. Also until EU regulations hit if you had any family or friends in other countries or ever went on holiday the cost of SMS was astronomical.
It took many carriers awhile to realize that "free" messaging apps were a significant threat, I assume because they were also charging heavily for data and just assumed because these used data they would make just as much money. Ignoring things like WiFi and how in the long run these apps would use such a small % of the data a user demanded they would be effectively free.
The US phased out their SMS fees about the same time smart phones started to become popular. I think it was only due to regulation.
Here's a contemporary article (2008) about the "Rising Cost of Texting" (voice+data+200 SMS/month for $75): https://www.cnet.com/culture/the-rising-cost-of-texting/
I know a lot of people that cringe when one non-iPhone user is added to a group chat and it turns everything you send green instead of blue.
Encryption, like deadbolts, helps society function.
Signal doesn't keep logs, and is end-to-end encrypted without a key escrow or plaintext escrow backdoor for the transiting middle service. You can review their actual response documents to law enforcement.
so now i have to drop $700 on an iphone for a text messaging app. fucking ridiculous, but i want better communication with my friends without telling them what to do
For the bigger groups, or groups with older people, we use WhatsApp since there might be an Android user or less risk of having to exclude someone because they switched to Android.
Edit: it seems like the way to ensure sharing photos/video at original quality in iOS/macOS is to select the media in photos app, and then share, and then select “copy iCloud link”.
> When shared, photos are reduced to 2048 pixels on the long edge, except panoramic photos, which can be up to 5400 pixels wide. You can share GIFs that are 100MB or smaller.
I do not see a material advantage of iMessage over WhatsApp now.
1. iMessage interacts with SMS just like normal
2. It gives you the "blue bubble" which is a sign of higher class, because you have the more expensive iphone platform.
But if someone messages me from iMessage, I can only reply via old school SMS/MMS because Apple won't allow any non-Apple users access to their IM platform. This is incredibly annoying and well established as an intentional selling point.
All I hear is "if you want me to really listen to you, then you need to buy a specific brand of device."
A "green bubble person" is just someone forced to use crappy fallback measures because your preferred messaging platform wants to be exclusive. I'd gladly install iMessage (as I've installed many other IM apps) if it was an option, if only so I could stop the endless complaints about "green bubble people" ruining everyone's day.
All my friends on Telegram have iPhones and Android. Oh, and Telegram is objectively a better experience from a UI and UX standpoint than iMessage. And it's more reliable and much faster when sending images or videos, and does not randomly convert my links into obnoxious previews. I don't mind spending ten seconds installing the app _and_ making an account (since that's literally how long it takes) to get that experience.
If only it was fully e2e encrypted, but maybe that's why it's so frictionless. OTOH, e2e encryption is weak when you have groups, as anyone can enter public groups, and a compromised participant in a private group can read everyone's messages.
iMessage doesn't interact with SMS just like normal — the Messages app does. It just switches between SMS and iMessage based on the recipient.