Rumor has it that, despite Apple's public claims, one reason why is that iMessage is tied to a physical device. This helps keeps spam, malware, and banned devices all under control. Expanding to Windows and Android by definition means that iMessage can no longer have that per-device tie, which undermines these controls.

This is a total bullshit reason. Literally every other messaging app, including well regarded secure ones, have cross platform versions available.

Yeah, and that's exactly why I've never received spam through iMessage even once over many years (despite being active in a bunch of group chats and 1:1 conversations).

All while I receive whatsapp/telegram message spam on a fairly regular basis, despite not being active in any groups or channels on those apps (and in general, opening them maybe once or twice a week at most). The only reason I even use those 2 apps is to talk to select few old relatives of mine who are not very tech literate and who just happened to learn how to use those apps +a couple of friends who simply insist on using those apps.

I have the opposite experience for what it's worth.

To make sure I understand it correctly, you actually receive imessage spam, not sms spam? Because regular sms spam (green bubbles) could still arrive.

Oh yea it’s normal, but so what? Still sends me a notification

Then your point doesn't apply to iMessage. You receive SMS spam, not iMessage spam.

But iMessage has done nothing to lower the amount of spam I receive so I don't see any benefit.

That doesn't make a lot of sense to me

1. It's multi-device at least when we're talking about non-phones; that's one of its better features, being able to use it from your Mac or iPad

2. You can make an iMessage account without having an iPhone; just having an email/Apple ID and some other Apple device to use it from

3. If you had an Android phone, presumably you wouldn't also have an iPhone at the same time? And even if you were using it on an iPhone, it seems like nothing stops you from being logged in on a second iPhone

But points being:

1. RCS is now available and a standard. iMessage already "degrades" to sending SMS messages to those not on iMessage. There is no reason they can't better support RCS.

2. While MMS groups were missing a ton of features, there are just things now that are much worse as an Android user interacting with an iMessage group than it was previously in an MMS group. I.e. I never used to have issues with dropped images before, but in an iMessage group it's like a crapshoot whether my photos get delivered.

There's many reasons not to support RCS.

It is a bag of standard parts thrown together by a bunch of telecommunications companies in a desperate attempt to hold on to their 50c per message cash cow.

If you spend more than a minute actually looking into it, you'll realise that Apple would basically have to run it in a virtual machine for security, and then hand over control to a bunch of telcos that can't even all agree on what is and isn't included in RCS.

Still better than SMS/MMS. But apple can come up with a new standard if they want. Or... they can port the one they've already invented to android.

> It is a bag of standard parts thrown together by a bunch of telecommunications companies in a desperate attempt to hold on to their 50c per message cash cow.

But in the US (the market being discussed here) basically all US mobile plans include unlimited texting anyway...

Well then, why not use whatsapp or whatever the rest of the world is using?