But you can use any of a wide variety of actually useful messenger applications with no platform limitations…

Line, Telegram, Signal, Whatsapp, Messenger.

Why do these people insist on iMessage?

Because that's what they're used to and that what works with all of their friends.

To be clear, I completely agree, and I wish they did use a cross-platform messenger. But the reality is that, in the US, the vast majority of iPhone users use iMessage primarily.

Because it is the default.

Yeah, but you’d think they could be bothered to switch so that all their friends can participate equally.

Especially considering the burdensome cost of absolutely free.

Half of the engineers I (want to) talk to refuse to switch from IRC, and the other half refuse to use it. In the end, I use both, and so do lots of other people.

Should we expect ordinary, non-technical users to behave substantially different? It's not clear to me that we should; most people find the status quo "good enough," and the activation energy for switching is higher than the minor inconvenience of some of your social circle having a slightly worse user experience.

Americans are lazy status-seeking morons is why.

How is the experience broken for anybody? I've been on group chats with my wife and parents (all iPhoners) for years and it's totally fine. I recently got a Pixel and now even the stupid emotes display properly (though it was easy to know what they meant before). I had an iphone forever ago (when my parents were paying for it), and I don't recall the experience of group chats being notably better or worse.

It's more annoying that I have three apps (signal, groupme, and discord) which each have a single friend or friend group that use them but that isn't an android/iphone problem.

Have you never sent a video?

People have different usage patterns. I don't think I've ever sent or received a video.

In mixed group chats with iPhone and Android, it is not that rare of an occurrence to have issues with texts not going through / being delayed. I also can't emote without a wall of text showing up, or edit messages after sending.

None of those are issues if everyone is blue.

SMS and MMS group chats are pretty unreliable compared to basically every modern platform.

The worst is that group chats aren’t reliable in that some messages won’t go to all participants.

But if everyone is iMessage everything goes through. I’m sure it’s an iPhone bug, but it means that mentally I can count on iMessage chats to go through and mixed chats I’m frequently wondering and having to check with each member, “did you get that.” So it means that mixed chats are extra chatty with people confirming with “oks.”

It’s just a crappier experience with green chats and everything goes smoothly so try blue chats.

I wouldn’t cut out friends because of it, but I have a small iota of sadness when I start a chat and it turns green because of someone.

For kids it’s kind of brutal with friends literally not talking to people because they aren’t using emojis.

It’s not android’s fault, but it’s an easy pain to spare my child by buying an iPhone. Not to mention my iPhones last years longer than my android phones and one kid is even using an ancient iPhone 6 to chat with friends.

I'm not going to make apologies for SMS and MMS group chats, but in my close and extended circles (US, SF bay area) every single person has either Signal or WhatsApp. These aren't all tech people either, just people who are conscientious about privacy.