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A comment on 87% of American teens own an iPhone; 88% expect an iPhone to be their next phone. Parent comment

Re:87% of American teens own an iPhone; 88% expect an iPhone... by qubitcoder on Wednesday October 12, 2022 @11:36PM (#33186887)
Respectfully, this comment solidifies why iMessage is superior. Try sending a 4K HDR video, or low-quality video, files, or photos with a resolution greater than a Nokia phone from 10 years ago, or a multitude of other things over SMS.

Signal, WhatsApp, etc. don't come close to what iMessage offers seamlessly. For iPhone/macOS/iPadOS users, SMS is garbage. Yes, it's a closed system; but it works without a cell signal or roaming charges anywhere in the world over WiFi for free.

RCS seems like a half-baked attempt at catching up with features that've existed since 2011 on one platform. Even third-party messaging apps fail miserably compared to iMessage.

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Re:87% of American teens own an iPhone; 88% expect an iPhone... by sofixa on Thursday October 13, 2022 @02:42AM (#33187980)
> Signal, WhatsApp, etc. don't come close to what iMessage offers seamlessly

In what way? I know WhatsApp compress media files, which is why people use Telegram when high quality matters. Is there anything else? In any case Signal and WhatsApp have UX barely better than SMS, the real comparison should be against something with legitimately better UX. Is iMessage better than Telegram?

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Re:87% of American teens own an iPhone; 88% expect an iPhone... by saxonww on Thursday October 13, 2022 @11:56AM (#33192755)
Oh I agree with you, and that's something I forgot to mention - if you do SMS/MMS routed through Fi, they downscale everything. Forget 4k video - any video you take is getting repackaged as a .3gpp file at very low resolution (144p? idk, it's pretty bad). Audio-only clips are similarly compressed a lot, and very noisy as a result. Images don't seem to be affected, but I haven't tried sending anything big.

It's not useless, but vastly better for short text conversations than anything else. Not surprising, it's SMS.

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